Effect on Aeronautics of Post-War Reaction
[Illustration: Airship and escort planes]
Development of non-rigid airships slowed down after the impetus of the
war had spent itself, as was the case in aeronautics generally and in
all defense efforts.
With the Armistice of November, 1918, the world was through with war.
Men relaxed and reaction set in. There would not be another major war in
a hundred years. Well-meaning people everywhere grasped at the straw of
universal peace, of negotiated settlement of difficulties between
nations, of disarmament of military forces to the point of being little
more than an international police force. Germany, the trouble-maker, had
been disarmed and handcuffed, would make no more trouble. The world,
breathing freely after four years, wanted only to be left alone.
Today with major countries striving feverishly to build guns and navies,
it is hard to believe that naïve nations were scrapping ships only a few
years ago and pledging themselves to limit future building. No one in
the immediate post-war era could believe that men must prepare for
another war, an all-out war more terrible and ruthless than men had
known,—one which would send flame-spitting machines down from the air
and through woods and fields, against which conventional foot soldiers
would be as helpless as if they carried bows and arrows. Wishing only to
live at peace with other nations, we could conceive no need to make
defense preparation against frightfulness.
Congress was divided between “big navy men” and “little navy men,” and
generals and admirals who brought in programs for expansion or even
reasonable maintenance were shouted down. The public was in no mood to
listen.
If the usefulness of the Army and Navy was discounted during this
period, more so was the rising new Air Force. Few were interested in
airplanes, and these chiefly wartime pilots, who sought to keep aviation
alive, made a precarious living flying wartime “Jennies” and “Standards”
out of cow pastures, carrying passengers at a dollar a head, or how much
have you. The word “haywire” came into the language, as they made
open-air repairs to wings and fuselage with baling wire.
Lighter-than-air had no Rickenbackers or Richthofens to point to, but
got some advantage during this period from the activities of the
Shenandoah, completed in 1923, and the Los Angeles, delivered in 1924.
These ships could not be regarded as military craft, carried no arms.
The Shenandoah was experimental, based on a 1916 design. The Los Angeles
was technically a commercial ship, with passenger accommodations built
in, could be used only for training.
This grew out of the fact that the Allies planned to order the Zeppelin
works at Friedrichshafen torn down but had held up the order long enough
for it to turn out one more ship. This last ship would be given to
United States in lieu of the Zeppelin this country would have received
from Germany, if the airship crews, like those of the surface fleet, had
not scuttled their craft after the Armistice, to keep them from falling
into enemy hands. The Allies stipulated that the Los Angeles should
carry no armament. It took a specific waiver from them for the ship to
take part several years later in fleet maneuvers.
Other airship activities in this country were at a minimum. The blimps,
little heard of in this country during War I, remained in the
background. A joint board of the two services gave the Navy
responsibility for developing rigid airships, the Army to take
non-rigids and semi-rigids. The Navy maintained a few post-war blimps
for training, had little funds except for maintenance.
The Army, having Wright Field to do its engineering and experimental
work, fared somewhat better, carried on a training and something of a
development program. It built bases at Scott Field, Ill., and Langley
Field, Va., ordered one or two non-rigid ships a year, purchased a
semi-rigid ship from Italy, ordered another, the RS-1, from Goodyear,
operated it successfully.
The Army’s non-rigids, however, were overshadowed by the Navy’s rigids
and even more by its own airplanes, with the result finally that the
Chief of the Air Corps, Major General O. O. Westover, a believer in
lighter-than-air, an airship as well as airplane pilot, and a former
winner of the James Gordon Bennett cup in international balloon racing,
told Congress bluntly that there was no point in dragging along, that
unless funds were appropriated for a real airship program the Army might
as well close up shop. And this step Congress, in the end, took, and the
Army blimps and equipment were transferred to the Navy, and the
experimental program started by the one service was carried on by the
other.
The rigid ships were in more favorable position because they seemed to
have commercial possibilities, and it was the long-range policy of the
government to aid transportation. Government support to commercial
airships could be justified under the policy by which the government
gave land grants to the railways, built highways for the automobile,
deepened harbors and built lighthouses for the steamships, laid out
airports for planes, gave airmail contracts to keep the U. S. merchant
flag floating on the high seas and air routes open over land.
On this theory Navy airships, even though semi-military, got some
support during the reaction period, because they might blaze a trail
later for commercial lines—which, with ships and crews and terminals,
would be available in emergency as a secondary line of defense, like the
merchant marine.
The little non-rigid blimps remained the neglected Cinderellas of
post-war days.
The Goodyear Company at Akron, which had built 1000 balloons of all
types and 100 airships during and after the war, stepped into the
picture during this period with a modest program of its own. The first
of the Goodyear fleet, the pioneer, helium-inflated Pilgrim, now in the
Smithsonian Institute, was built in 1925.
[Illustration: The Atlantic crossing of the Graf Zeppelin in 1928
and its round-the-world flight in the following year gave new
stimulus to all aeronautics. With a relatively tiny Goodyear blimp
as escort, the Graf lands at Los Angeles after crossing the
Pacific.]
[Illustration: At Lakehurst the Graf tries out the “Iron Horse,” the
U.S. Navy’s mobile mooring mast, finds it highly useful, utilized
masting equipment thereafter to compile an unusual record for
regularity of departures, even under highly unfavorable weather
conditions. (U. S. Navy photo)]
[Illustration: The U.S.S. Akron, first result growing out of renewed
interest in aeronautics after the reaction period, goes on the mast
inside the Goodyear air dock, prior to leaving for her trial
flights.]
[Illustration: No large ground crews are needed with the mobile
mast. Even the mighty Akron swings around easily at anchorage, heads
into the wind like a weather vane, its control car resting on the
ground.]
In building this ship, Mr. Litchfield and his company indicated their
belief in the value of big airships for trans-oceanic travel, for which
the blimps would provide inexpensive training for pilots, and experience
in operating under varying weather conditions.
The Pilgrim, the Puritan, the Vigilant, the Mayflower and the rest of
the Goodyear fleet which followed—named after cup defenders in
international yacht racing—would also uncover during the course of
day-after-day operations, improvements in ships and operating technique,
which would be available to its customers, the Army and Navy.
In building its own ships, Goodyear was following the tradition of
American industry, which does not sit back and merely build goods to
order, but has sought by developing better goods to anticipate and
stimulate customer demand. In the automobile industry, for example,
self-starters, closed cars, steel bodies, balloon tires, streamlining,
and the rest were initiated by industry to increase public acceptance
and further popularize the automobile. By building its own airships and
flying them, Goodyear hoped to expand the market for military and
commercial airships.
The doldrum period, which made progress difficult, came to an end with
dramatic suddenness. In the year 1927 a youthful pilot flew an airplane,
alone, across the Atlantic ocean, and in the following year a
middle-aged scientist made a round trip from Europe to America by
airship, with 24 people aboard. The imagination of America and the world
took fire. Aeronautics started anew.
Perhaps no events in years have appealed so fully to the public
consciousness or had such dynamic effects. Almost from the day of
Lindbergh’s flight and the Graf Zeppelin’s arrival at Lakehurst,
aeronautical engineers found themselves with money to spend in research
and machinery. Airports unrolled across the carpet of America, night
lighting came in, pilots became business men, appropriations were rushed
through Congress, state assemblies, and city councils, and aeronautics
became Big Business almost over night. The period of inaction and of
reaction was over.