Examines the history of the U.S. Navy's airship program from its beginning in World War I, to its end in 1962

Sky Ships: A History of the Airship in the United States Navy

Politics & Social Sciences

Althoff, William F.

Politics & Government

Pacifica Press

Aviation historian William Althoff tells the story of the U.S. Navy’s airship, USS Los Angeles, the most successful aircraft of its type ever flown. In dramatic detail, Althoff recounts how the U.S. Navy arranged for the famed German Zeppelin Company to build the ship, thwarted schemes by the U.S. Army’s Air Service to take control of it, and helped plan its record-breaking, historic four-day flight from Germany to the United States. After years of experiments meant to determine its military and commercial application, the airship ultimately failed to command a consensus in the Navy. “Relegated to a lower tier,” Althoff writes, “the rigid type receded to marginal relevance until, on the eve of World War Two, it vanished altogether.” In this book, the early achievements and unceremonious demise of the Los Angeles after a long career symbolize the airship’s unfulfilled promise. Nonetheless, the operational record of this one machine altered American naval aeronautics and greatly influenced transoceanic commercial air transport during a critical period of its development.

Uss Los Angeles: The Navy's Venerable Airship and Aviation Technology

History

Military

Potomac Books Inc.

USS Los Angeles: The Navy's Venerable Airship and Aviation Technology

Closed to conventional passage, the Arctic Ocean and peripheral seas have nevertheless known European explorers since the sixteenth century. Systematic observation, however, dates only from the last years of the nineteenth century, with the epic drift of Fridtjof Nansen’s ice ship Fram (1893-1896), the first scientific expedition of the modern era. Twentieth-century technology―the icebreaker, radio transmission, nuclear power, and aircraft―opened the Arctic for survey, basic research, and observation. World War II saw the inhospitable circumpolar Arctic transformed into a theater of military operations. The Cold War and the missile age saw governments staking further claims, because only a relatively short arc of maritime boreal waste separated North America and Eurasia. The complex interactions of air, ice, and water that drive circumpolar systems also serve as engines of oceanic and atmospheric circulation. As a result, meteorology, oceanography, geophysics, and many other areas of scientific research in the region soon became acutely linked to the economic, political, and particularly the politico-military interests of the Soviet Union, the United States, Canada, and the other Arctic nations. In response, both superpowers established “drift stations”―that is, isolated camps based on nomadic ice floes―to conduct crucial scientific research. During the Cold War, they were the objects of suspicion, particularly the Soviet stations, which often stood accused as bases for espionage. Today, with the world’s climate system and global warming under study, Russian expertise, data, geography, and stewardship are crucial to the world community.

Drift Station: Arctic Outposts of Superpower Science

POTOMAC BOOKS

Airships are the forgotten weapon of World War II. Forgotten Weapons analyzes the development of airships as weapons for antisubmarine warfare, examines how scientists and airmen collaborated to combat U-boats and reveals the little-known accomplishments of airship crews. As William F. Althoff demonstrates, the naval airship logged an admirable operational record during the Battle of the Atlantic, the longest continued armed contest during the war. Their useful deployment depended first, however, on effective collaboration between naval airmen and government-sponsored research institutions, such as the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC). The Battle of the Atlantic saw a race to gain technological advantage German measures met by Allied counter measures with both sides producing various weapons and sensors designed either to destroy or to protect Allied merchant shipping. For the antisubmarine campaign, U.S. contract laboratories devised the magnetic airborne detector (MAD), microwave radar, the Loran long-range navigation systems, radio sono-buoys, and pattern ordnance, all of which were fitted to airships. Key NDRC projects exploited lighter-than-air platforms for airborne tests. Hurried into production, special devices for antisubmarine warfare were fitted onto fleet airships as well as in airplanes and surface forces. The result turned the tide against the U-boat menace and saved countless lives, supplies, and shipping. This book is an invaluable history and reference for readers interested in airships, antisubmarine warfare, the Battle of the Atlantic, and the bygone squadrons of unique airmen who helped defeat the Nazi war on commerce from 1939 to 1945.

Forgotten Weapon: U.S. Navy Airships and the U-Boat War

Naval_Institute_Press

Originally published in 1990, Sky Ships is easily the most comprehensive history of U.S. Navy airships ever written. The Naval Institute Press is releasing this new edition-- complete with two hundred new photographs--to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the book's publication. 
Impressed by Germany's commercial and military Zeppelins, the United States initiated its own airship program in 1915. Naval Air Station Lakehurst in New Jersey was homeport for several of the largest machines ever to navigate the air. The success of the commercial rigid airship peaked in 1936 with transatlantic round trips between Central Europe and the Americas by Hindenburg and by Graf Zeppelin-- ending with the infamous fire in 1937. That setback, the onset of war, and the accelerated progress of heavier-than-air technology ended rigid airship development. The Navy continued to use blimps to protect Allied shipping during World War II. Following the war, the Navy persisted with efforts to integrate the airships, but the program was finally discontinued in the early 1960s.

Sky Ships: A History of the Airship in the United States Navy, 25th Anniversary Edition

Airships are the forgotten weapon of World War II. As William F. Althoff demonstrates, the naval airship logged an admirable operational record during the Battle of the Atlantic, the longest continued armed contest during the war. Their useful deployment depended first, however, on effective collaboration between naval airmen and government-sponsored research institutions, such as the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC). The Battle of the Atlantic saw a race to gain technological advantage—German measures met by Allied countermeasures—with both sides producing various weapons and sensors designed either to destroy or to protect Allied merchant shipping. For the antisubmarine campaign, U.S. contract laboratories devised the magnetic airborne detector (MAD), microwave radar, the Loran long-range navigation systems, radio sonobuoys, and “pattern” ordnance, all of which were fitted to airships. Key NDRC projects exploited lighter-than-air platforms for airborne tests. Hurried into production, special devices for antisubmarine warfare were fitted onto fleet airships as well as in airplanes and surface forces. The result turned the tide against the U-boat menace and saved countless lives, supplies, and shipping. This book is an invaluable history and reference for readers interested in airships, antisubmarine warfare, the Battle of the Atlantic, and the bygone squadrons of unique airmen who helped defeat the Nazi war on commerce from 1939 to 1945.

Forgotten Weapon: U.S. Navy Airships and the U-Boat War in the Atlantic

Artic Mission recounts two concurrent Navy Department penetrations of the Arctic, in 1958: one an unclassified project, the other absolutely secret. The Cold War posed alarm and threat; amid its urgencies, the International Geophysical Year of 1957-58 was underway. Sputnik had opened the Space Age--for Americans, a national humiliation. The White House needed a success. Sailing under the direct orders of the Commander in Chief, the nuclear submarine Nautilus (SSN-571) would---if successful--reaffirm U.S. technological prowess with a stupendous demonstration: an under-ice transit of the Arctic Basin via the North Pole. The airship's unclassified mission was an Office of Naval Research project. Objective: to assess the suitability of non-rigid airships (blimps) for support of field parties deployed throughout the North, ashore and afloat. That IGY August, BUNO 126719 crossed the Arctic Circle--the sole military airship ever to do so--en route to rendezvous with a U.S. Air Force ice-rafted camp (drifting station) in the Arctic Ocean. As "719" (delayed) pressed north, Nautilus pierced the geographic pole then without changing course logged the first-ever transit of the deep-ocean Arctic, Pacific to Atlantic. 
Based on interviews and correspondence with dozens of participants, and on Navy Department reports, the work presents first-hand material throughout--a distinct contribution to the naval literature. Indeed, Arctic Mission may be the first in-depth (non-popular) account of the boat's epic cruise to 90° N. Further, the ONR expedition across Arctic Canada to IGY BRAVO (ice island T-3) is a singular unknown--even to naval aviators.

Arctic Mission: 90 North by Airship and Submarine

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