The Sea Hunters II: More True Adventures with Famous Shipwrecks

I Lighter Than Air 1931-1933

“Drop ballast,” Commander Frank McCord ordered.

A seaman sprinted across the short space of the control room and twisted the emergency ballast lever. Within seconds, four thousand pounds of water poured into the stormy air surrounding Akron.

The blimp rose a few hundred feet. She was now at thirteen hundred feet and holding.

The eight engines were pointed down and running full out — the ballast had been jettisoned. For a time, it seemed they had succeeded. Then the lightning, thunder, and gusts of winds enveloped them again. Within seconds, the rudder control wires were ripped loose, and the helm stopped responding.

Those on board had no way of knowing, but Akron had only minutes to live.

“Damn,” Lieutenant (jg) “Red” Dugan said, “you could put an entire circus in this building, with room left over for a couple of Egyptian pyramids.”

Dugan was taking his first glance inside the Goodyear Zeppelin air dock in Akron, Ohio. The interior was cavernous, making the workers at the far end appear to be the size of insects. The air dock building was rounded at the top, with skylights in the sides partway up the walls to help with lighting. Huge banks of spotlights also added illumination, and at this moment they were being directed from the floor of the hangar up to the middle.

A single round duraluminum ring was suspended from the ceiling of the building. It was the first of a total of thirty-six rings that would be assembled together to form a lighter-than-air ship that would measure 785 feet in length and stand fifteen stories tall when completed. The ring consisted of inner and outer circles attached to one another by an intricate spiderweb of diamond-shaped aluminum struts. Nearest the floor and inside the inner circle were a pair of humps, where the walkways through the ship would eventually be located. The entire contraption was glowing with the dull silver color of fresh aluminum.

The Goodyear representative, Bruce Harding, was used to such reactions.

“We needed a big building to build the navy a big airship,” he said, smiling.

“What does it cost…” Dugan began to say.

“To heat it in winter?” Harding said, answering the unasked question.

“How did you know that would be my question?” Dugan asked.

“Because, Lieutenant Dugan,” Harding said, “it’s the first one everyone asks.”

“So?” Dugan said.

“A lot,” Harding said, as he directed Harding farther inside.

When finished, U.S.S. Akron would be a behemoth. The flexible skin would contain 6 million cubic feet of gas. Power would come from eight Maybach Model VL-11 engines that each produced 560 horsepower. The power plants were a twelve-cylinder V-design with a dry weight of 1,200 pounds each.

Housed in eight engine rooms, the Maybachs transferred power via sixteen-foot-long shafts to the propeller shaft. The two-bladed, sixteen-foot-diameter propellers rotated so that they were able to provide thrust in four directions.

To fuel the eight engines, Akron would carry 126,000 gallons of fuel stored in a total of 110 tanks. Extensive pipes throughout the ship would allow the aircraft commander to redistribute the fuel as it burned. This, in addition to the unique water-recovery system — a collector was mounted close to the hull above each of the eight engines — allowed the commander to keep the ship on an even keel. But that only touched on what needed to be finished.

“Everything is on schedule, Lieutenant Dugan,” Harding said. “It’s just a lot to do.”

The electrical power needed for radios, telephones, lights, winches, pumps, and fans would come from a pair of eight-kilowatt internal combustion generators. The radios were state-of-the-art, with both intermediate-frequency and high-frequency transmitters. The high-frequency transmitter gave Akron a radio range of 5,000 nautical miles. Future plans called for the addition of facsimile equipment for receiving weather maps and other data. The antenna streamed 100 feet along the hull and sometimes 800 feet deployed alongside.

Because of the 785-foot length and the many systems requiring monitoring, communication aboard the airship would be critical. A total of eighteen telephones would be installed aboard Akron, with each able to sound an alarm. Voice tubes, a holdover from days past, would also be used. Mechanical engine telegraphs, similar to those on other navy ships, would be used to communicate with the engine rooms.

“What about the control car?” Dugan asked.

“It will be a streamlined affair,” Harding said. “The forward third will house rudder, ballast, engine controls, and the like. The middle third is the navigation station. The last third provides access into the hull via a ladder.”

“What about a redundant control station?” Dugan asked.

“It’ll be located in the stem at the bottom of the lower control fin,” Harding said.

Dugan had studied the plans. Most of what Harding was saying was old hat.

There was to be an airplane compartment of seventy by thirty-two feet, where the five Curtiss F9C2 airplanes would be hangared. Then there were the living accommodations that would be built on each side of the aircraft compartment — a total of eight eight- by ten-foot spaces housing the crew’s toilet and washroom, bunk rooms with canvas bunks, galleys and messes for the officers, CPOs, and regular crews.

Akron was to be a minicity, complete with airport, when finished.

“It gets cold up there in the wild blue yonder,” Dugan said.

“Aluminum piping from the forward engine rooms provides heat to the control rooms, common areas, and hangars,” Harding said, “and I’m sure the navy has some nice warm clothing for those that venture in the walkways while aloft.”

“Do you know they just changed the crew roster again?” Dugan asked.

“No,” Harding said, “what’s the latest?”

“Thirty-eight men, ten officers, and the pilots,” Dugan said.

“Over fifty men, then,” Harding said easily.

“That’s the current plan,” Dugan said.

Harding stared at the intricately woven struts that formed the single massive ring suspended from the ceiling of the hangar. “When she’s done, she’ll carry them,” Harding said, “and a whole lot more, if need be.”

Alongside the framework of Akron, the Goodyear workers looked like ants on a watermelon. The workers swarmed from place to place as orders were shouted over radios and through bullhorns. The radio calls went to the operator of the overhead cranes, who carefully maneuvered the completed sections into place to be bolted to the frame. The bullhorns were used by the workers on the hull who were attaching the pieces together.

Today, the nose cone was being mounted.

The bow section was a thing of beauty: gently arcing longitudinal struts that met near the point at a small circular opening crisscrossed with aluminum support beams. It was delicate in design, sturdy in appearance, and detailed in the extreme. The crane operator dropped a hook into the center and waited while a harness was attached.

Then the crane operator raised the piece a few feet into the air to check the balance. Satisfied, the operator radioed down for the workers to attach another pair of lines starboard and port. These were attached to a second set of cranes. Once the cone was rigged, it was slowly hoisted upright, rotated sideways, and then brought alongside the main section of the hull.

Once positioned, the bow section was moved inch by inch into perfect alignment, then temporarily pinned and later bolted into place. By January of 1931, the main sections of the hull were in place and fastened down. The next few months saw the addition of the fins, elevators, and rudders. Once that was done, work began on the outer covering. The covering was sixty-five-pound-strength cotton seventy-four feet long and a foot or two wide with eyelets that were laced to the framework. This was covered with four coats of dope, two regular acetate, the last two containing aluminum powder. More than thirty thousand square yards of fabric would eventually cover the framework.

By July, the engines, propellers, water-recovery system, and other mechanical parts were being installed. On August 8, 1931, U.S.S. Akron was christened at a ceremony in Akron, Ohio. September 23 would be her maiden flight.

U.S.S. Akron, the latest U.S. military airship, came from a long line that stretched back to the country’s formation. President George Washington witnessed the first U.S. balloon flight in January 1793, when Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard touched down from Philadelphia. Years later, the Civil War brought balloon development on both the Union and Confederate sides. Even so, it was not until the turn of the twentieth century that development truly accelerated.

In France in 1903, Albert Santos-Dumont built a successful powered dirigible, which he flew over the Parisian rooftops. A half-dozen years later, fellow Frenchman Louis Bleriot made a successful crossing of the English Channel in a powered airship capable of forty-five miles an hour. The following year, the U.S. Navy formed her first aviation group at Greenbury Point, Maryland, near Annapolis.

That first group was primarily concerned with airplanes, but there were students of lighter-than-air flight as well. By the year 1911, the British military had proved the worth of airships by successfully using them for North Sea patrol duty. That same year in Germany, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin began the first commercial airline, with a total of five dirigibles in service.

World War I saw the first airship attack, as German lighter-than-air craft bombed London. Aviation was moving from science to practicality, and the uses continued to grow. By 1921, the U.S. Navy was compelled to form a new bureau to handle aeronautics. The bureau would be led by Admiral William A. Moffett. Almost immediately, the program suffered losses. On August 24, 1921, while undergoing trials near Hull, England, the airship that the navy had planned to purchase from England, to be designated U.S. Navy ZR-2, broke apart. Forty-three men were lost, including most of the infant U.S. Navy aeronautics program.

But the program forged on.

Using L-49, a captured German zeppelin, construction was under way on a similar 680-foot airship, to be designated ZR -1. She was scheduled to fly in 1923. In the meantime, only two weeks before the crash of ZR-2, the navy had taken delivery of an Italian-made semirigid airship they would name Roma. Quite honestly, Roma was a pile of trash. Her half-dozen Asaldo engines were found to be unreliable and were later replaced with U.S.-made Liberty engines. Her outer covering contained a total of 184 holes that needed patching. Once those hurdles were overcome, she took to the air. At this time, hydrogen gas was used instead of the safer helium because of cost. Roma made a few flights powered by the unstable gas.

On February 22,1922, however, all went wrong.

While on a flight from Langley Field to Hampton Roads, Virginia, the pilot was unable to control the unwieldy airship. Striking a telephone pole that sparked, the Italian craft burst into flames. Of the forty-five aboard, thirty-four were killed and eight injured. Remarkably, three on board exited the wreckage virtually unscathed. The incident forced the U.S. Navy to take a hard look at using hydrogen as a lifting agent and at the aeronautics program as a whole.

By 1927, when Charles Lindbergh made his historic solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean, the U.S. Navy had only a single airship in service, Los Angeles, which had been constructed in Germany. Around this time, the navy put out contract specifications for the construction of two large airships to supplement the fleet. The bid was won by the Goodyear-Zeppelin Corporation, based in Akron, Ohio. Two years later, in 1929, interest in lighter-than-air craft increased. The German airship Graf Zeppelin attempted a round-the-world flight, which was featured daily in the Hearst newspapers.

That same year, the U.S. Navy took delivery of ZMC-2, a pudgy, metal-clad zeppelin that featured eight tail fins arranged at equal intervals around the stern. From the rear, ZMC-2 had the appearance of an airplane nose cone, complete with stubby propellers. ZMC-2’s length was just under 150 feet, and she was powered by a pair of 200-horsepower Wright Whirlwind engines.

The next year, initial construction began on U.S.S. Akron.

Tuesday, October 24, 1931, was a big day. Today Akron was due to be commissioned. In the huge hangar at the Rigid Airship and Experimental Squadron at Lakehurst, New Jersey, the crowd was filled with dignitaries. President Litchfield of the Goodyear-Zeppelin Corporation led the speeches.

The entire affair was broadcast on NBC affiliate WEAF for nationwide consumption. From New York City, John Phillip Sousa and his band performed a lively rendition of “Anchors Aweigh.” From Baltimore, Secretary of the Navy Charles Francis Adams made remarks, followed by Assistant Secretary of the Navy David Ingalls. From Washington, Rear Admiral William Moffett added his comments.

Back in New Jersey, the future commander of Akron, Captain Charles Rosendahl, listened to the ceremony in amusement. Rosendahl was no rookie to zeppelins. As senior surviving officer aboard the ill-fated U.S.S. Shenandoah, Rosendahl was known as a courageous airman. After that, Rosendahl had spent some years as skipper of Los Angeles, and had been a participant on Graf Zeppelin’s round-the-world cruise.

Rosendahl was seasoned and ready.

Five days after the ceremony, Akron made her first official flight. The passenger list included 10 officers and 49 men. This load was complemented by 31 members of the press and 19 other guests. Total passenger load was 109. Once everyone was aboard, Rosendahl began the orders to lift off.

“Engines three, four, seven, and eight,” Rosendahl said, “tilt toward ground.”

An airman repeated the instructions.

“Course two, seven, zero,” Rosendahl said.

“Roger,” the helmsman said.

The time was 7:15 A.M. Akron was flying south toward Annapolis.

“There’s the academy,” Milton Perkins, the rumpled Associated Press reporter, remarked.

His compatriot from the New York Times, Harold Temper, stared down at his wristwatch. “I make it twenty minutes past nine.”

Less than an hour later, Akron was above Washington, D.C.’s naval yard.

Lunchtime came with Akron high above the Pennsylvania countryside.

Temper stared at his plate of food. “Think the crew usually eats like this?”

Perkins cut a piece of steak and left it on his fork while he wolfed down a shrimp. “Nope,” he said, “this spread is just for the special guests and reporters.”

“They must want a nice story to come out,” Temper said.

“They must want Congress to give them more money,” Perkins said, “so they can build some more of these.”

“Why not?” Temper said. “Why not?”

Later that afternoon, Akron passed over Philadelphia and steered down toward Trenton. Near sunset, she landed back at her base at Lakehurst.

All in all, it was a successful debut.

For the ordinary sailor, choosing an airship instead of a water ship was usually rewarded with better working conditions. The fact was, airship duty was dangerous. Crashes at the start of the program were frequent, but they were becoming less so. Still, if an airship went down, the chance of dying was great.

However, if one put that aside, the actual work aboard was a great deal better than that at sea. For one thing, there was almost no rust to contend with — the great bane of sailors at sea. The duraluminum did not rust, and because of weight limitations, iron was almost nonexistent. As far as food and shelter went, airship travel had a lot going for it — for one thing, the crews were smaller.

Instead of the cook needing to feed thousands of sailors at a single sitting, the pace of work aboard a dirigible lent itself to small groups of men in the mess at one time. Everyone got a hot meal. As far as bunk arrangements went, because of the crew rotation the berths were never crowded. In addition, the motion of Akron gently rocked the canvas hammocks while under way.

Even so, the work was not simple and required a recruit with a higher-than-average intelligence and physical stamina. The numerous systems that made up Akron were complex and constantly in need of monitoring and adjustment, and it was important that accurate records were kept. As for stamina, movement inside the hull was along a series of ladders and walkways. The distances were great, and there was sometimes a need for speed.

And then there was the view — an endless carpet of America beneath you.

The view made up for any trying times.

Commander Alger Dresel thought he was running late.

Steering his 1926 Pierce-Arrow Roadster past the guard gate at the entrance to Lakehurst, Dresel quickly accelerated down the access roads leading to the blimp hangar. The Pierce was a beautiful two-tone blue, with a tan top, and featured a golf bag compartment that was accessible from outside. He patted the thick buckskin leather on the seat in the forward compartment, then stared at the dash, where an ornate windup clock was set in the stainless steel engine-turned dashboard. Like everything aboard the aged automobile, the clock worked perfectly. Dresel was a lover of all things mechanical, and he personally maintained the Pierce-Arrow to perfection. Nine-fifteen A.M. He would arrive right on time.

Quickly parking, Dresel turned off the engine and removed his luggage.

“Ascending,” the rudder man said loudly.

It was Sunday May 8, 1932, just before 6 A.M. Akron rose above Lakehurst on the first leg of a cross-country cruise. So far, only one of the new Curtiss planes, XF9C, had been delivered. The new plane and the older-model N2Y would fly up and attach to the amidships hook hanging under Akron’s belly once the airship was over Barnegat Bay, some sixty miles south.

This was Captain Rosendahl’s last cruise as commander of Akron. His future replacement, Dresel, stood alongside him in the control car. At 7:20 A.M., just past Toms River, the telephone rang. Rosendahl lifted the receiver.

“Captain,” a crewman in the aircraft dock said, “both planes are safely aboard.”

“Very good,” Rosendahl said. He turned to Dresel. “Both planes are secured. How would you like to take over command for a time?”

“That would be fine, Captain,” Dresel said.

“Command to Commander Dresel,” Rosendahl said.

Rosendahl turned to leave the control car. For the last couple of weeks, he had observed Dresel while on the ground. Rosendahl’s observations had led him to believe that Commander Dresel was a calm and sober officer who cared about his men and his command. Rosendahl was not worried about turning Akron over to him, he just wanted to give the junior officer the benefit of as much flight experience as possible.

Rosendahl had learned that ground training went only so far.

Lieutenant Howard Young started back down the ladder into his Curtiss. It always felt odd to enter the plane when she was hanging below Akron. Climbing up out of the plane was not so strange — the huge fuselage of the airship was overhead, and the mass signaled safety — but descending was another matter. First, the plane was attached by a hook that did not appear to be all that stable. Second, when climbing down, a person had a bird’s-eye view of the ground passing thousands of feet below.

Young made it inside. He retrieved his logbook and a pack of Beeman’s gum he had left inside. Slipping the book inside his leather flight suit, he pulled up the zipper so the book rode close to his stomach, then started back up the ladder. Young was no stranger to blimp operations — he had nearly five dozen takeoffs and landings under his belt — so climbing the ladder was nothing new. He quickly bounded up the rungs. Halfway between the plane and the opening into Akron, Young missed a rung. Luckily, his hands were firmly attached to the steps above. As Young’s feet broke loose, he hung in the air by his hands as the wind outside buffeted him. A crewman above started down the ladder, but Young quickly recovered and continued up the ladder.

“You okay, sir?” the crewman asked, when Young entered the cockpit.

“Fine, fine,” Young said, smiling.

“I’m glad,” the crewman said, “because that’s one long step down.”

Young stared out the opening at the ground passing below.

“One real long step,” he said.

The eastern seaboard passed underneath Akron as she cruised south.

With the officers, men, and pair of pilots, the total personnel aboard numbered eighty exactly. Staying over the ocean, Akron passed Cape Hatteras, then turned to land. By lunchtime, she was passing over the navy yards at Norfolk, Virginia; just after eight that night she was over Augusta, Georgia.

While the airship was under way, there was a litany of jobs to be performed. Along with the cooking and serving the food, the cooks and mess men were responsible for cleaning the galleys and planning the menu. Electricians prowled the walkways inside the hull, checking connections and tending to any minor or major troubles that might arise. Radio operators handled the communications chores, while engine men tended to each of the eight engines. Riggers climbed inside the hull, making sure that the cloth covering was taut and not leaking, while mechanics tended to the frames and supports. Akron was a miniature city while in flight.

Monday the ninth, Akron passed over Houston just before 4 P.M.

An hour later, the first problem arose.

“Sir,” the crewman shouted over the telephone, “we have a leak in a port fuel tank. Gasoline is entering the hull.”

Rosendahl was in command of the blimp.

“Shut down all the engines save number seven,” he said over the telephone to all hands. “We have liquid fuel inside the hull.”

Next he adjusted the telephone to recall the crewman reporting the spill.

“How much have we lost?” he asked.

“Fifteen hundred gallons, sir,” the man answered.

“Is the fuel still flowing?” Rosendahl asked.

“No, sir,” the crewman said. “It was a crack alongside a weld. The level in the tank is now level with or slightly below the crack. If the ship remains stable, we should not have any further flow.”

“I’ll send a mechanic,” Rosendahl said, “to see if we can temporarily patch the tank.”

“Yes, sir,” the seaman said.

Rosendahl turned to Dresel. “We need to vent the fumes,” he said. “Will you take charge of that?”

“Yes, sir,” Dresel said.

Akron limped along on engine seven as the fuel was vented.

An hour later, things were looking up. The thick fumes in the control car were receding, and Dresel was reporting that most of the liquid gasoline had flowed out of the hull between spaces in the covering. It seemed the worst had passed.

“Sir,” the radio operator reported by telephone, “San Antonio is reporting thunderstorms.”

Rosendahl stared ahead. The ominous black clouds were still miles ahead, and right now the only ones near Akron were a few white puffy clouds that looked like cotton balls. Just then the hair on Rosendahl’s arms stood out.

“Wow,” he said seconds later, as a huge bolt streaked from one of the innocent-looking clouds and struck the ground below, “all this air is charged.”

Dresel returned to the control car. “The fuel is vented as best we can,” he said. “The rest of the fumes will just need to work themselves out.”

“We’ve got a line of heavy weather ahead,” Rosendahl said. “I’m ordering a course change to the north.”

That night and all of the following day, Akron fought the storm.

Wednesday, May 11, Akron reached San Diego.

Mooring a blimp is not unlike mooring an aircraft carrier — there is a lot that can go wrong. Akron’s planes flew down through the cloud cover and landed safely; now it was the huge blimp’s turn to try. Camp Kearney outside San Diego sat on a plateau of scrub brush and dust. Prone to gusts of wind and changing temperatures, she was far from the ideal spot for a blimp base. Still, Rosendahl had little choice—Akron was low on fuel.

Fog and clouds made visibility difficult as Rosendahl ordered Akron to descend. They were less than 1,000 feet above the ground before the view cleared. Rosendahl caught sight of the primary winch. The time was 11:42 A.M.

“Get a line down to that winch,” he shouted over the telephone.

And then it all went wrong.

A freak of nature caused the temperature suddenly to drop ten degrees, causing a temporary loss of buoyancy. Rosendahl ordered the engines turned downward, but that stirred up the dust, making visibility difficult. Akron barely moved.

“Full open on the helium valves,” Rosendahl ordered.

But Akron’s angle kept growing.

Then several of the water ballast bags tipped over, pouring some three thousand gallons of water on those below. Nothing was going right.

“That’s it,” Rosendahl ordered. “I want free flight.”

Orders were given to cut the cable holding Akron to the winch.

Two men were assigned to the forward cable, but one had abandoned ship by sliding down the cable to ground when the ship had taken her last lurch upward. The single man left was unable to cut the 7/8-inch steel cable. He dropped the bolt cutters to a group on the ground, asking them to cut the cable from below.

At numerous points along Akron’s hull, sailors from Camp Kearney were holding lines that would later be attached to anchors. Only their weight held them to the ground. Once the cable was cut, Akron began rising.

Apprentice seaman “Bud” Cowart suddenly found himself dangling from a line some twenty feet in the air. Three other seamen had dropped safely to the ground, while Cowart and two more hung on for dear life. As Cowart watched, one of the men on the rope let go. The man plummeted downward. Akron was at a height of one hundred feet and continuing the ascent.

Cowart stared toward the ground in horror.

While the body plummeted down, the other remaining sailor was hanging on by one hand. Just before the first man struck the ground, the second man dropped. Akron was at a height of two hundred feet. A sailor dropped through the air with his arms windmilling. Cowart watched as the man slammed into the earth, bounced a few feet in the air, then came to rest facedown.

Neither man would survive the fall.

Cowart was now alone, and the giant airship continued to climb. Finding toggles on the manila rope, Cowart managed to fashion a crude boatswain’s seat as Akron hovered at fifteen hundred feet of elevation. On board the airship, the situation was coming back under control.

“Men,” Captain Rosendahl said over the telephone, “the landing was aborted and now we have a situation on our hands. One of the landing crew is dangling from our mooring line, and we need to get him aboard. Proceed to that objective at a safe pace.”

Hanging the receiver back in the cradle, Rosendahl turned to Dresel.

“You just witnessed the worst that can happen,” he said. “Remember it, and don’t let it happen to you.”

“Yes, sir,” Dresel said.

“Now take over the helm. I’m going back to see how Lieutenant Mayer is doing on bringing aboard that sailor.”

Cowart shouted up at the Akron. “When are you going to haul me aboard?”

“It may take an hour or better,” Mayer shouted back, “so secure yourself to ride it out.”

“What’s the deal?” Rosendahl asked.

“We need to get a line to him,” Mayer said, “then try to winch him aboard.”

It would be two long hours before Cowart was finally yanked aboard.

Seven hours after the first attempt, Akron finally moored at Camp Kearney.

Akron traveled north from San Diego to San Pedro. For the next few weeks, the airship would take part in training exercises off the West Coast of the United States. On June 6, the weather was right for the trip east to Lakehurst. From San Pedro to Banning, California, over the Salton Sea. Then south to Yuma, Phoenix, Tucson, and Douglas, Arizona. Next came El Paso, Odessa, Midland, Big Spring, and Abilene, Texas. Across the state line and past Shreveport, Louisiana. Mississippi and Alabama, a stop at Parris Island, South Carolina, and then the return to Lakehurst.

Akron had been away thirty-eight days and had traveled more than seventeen thousand miles.

As the new year dawned, Akron received her third captain in nineteen months as Commander Frank McCord assumed leadership of the blimp. McCord wasted no time on the ground — two hours after assuming control, Akron set off for a cruise to Miami.

Throughout January and February, McCord kept up a full flight schedule.

On March 4, Akron flew over the inauguration of President Franklin Roosevelt. That same night, she returned to Lakehurst and cold temperatures. The cold held for nearly a week, curtailing flight operations. As soon as it warmed enough, McCord set off for the warmer climes of Florida and the Bahamas. The grueling schedule continued throughout the rest of the month.

Then came the fickle winds of April.

Akron lifted off from Lakehurst on April 3,1933, at 7:28 P.M.

Commander Frank McCord was in charge, and he was assisted by Lieutenant Commander Herbert Wiley as his executive officer, as well as Lieutenant Dugan as his engineering officer. The crew would consist of seventy-six officers and men, including Rear Admiral Moffett, who wanted to see Akron in operation firsthand.

The temperature at liftoff was 41 degrees Fahrenheit, and the barometer read 29.72. Akron was carrying 73,600 gallons of fuel, enough for six days aloft, though this cruise was scheduled for forty-eight hours. Because of the fog, plane operations had just been canceled. As Akron lifted from the pad then turned her bow east, one of the pilots who was securing his Curtiss on the runway turned and stared up at the giant blimp. She was a beauty, no doubt about that — her silver fuselage at bow and stem was lit by the red and blue of the ground lights, while the red and green of her running lights added a festive touch as well. The pilot watched as the airship ascended. In seconds, the upper part of the hull was barely visible in the fog; by the time a full minute had passed, only a hazy outline of the lower hull and control car remained in sight. Then that was gone.

“Set a course east to Philadelphia,” McCord instructed the navigator. “The weather report indicates they have only scattered clouds.”

“Aye, Captain,” the navigator said.

Less than an hour later, Akron passed over Philadelphia, finding the visibility fair to good. In the control car, McCord stared at the latest weather report. A thunderstorm was being reported in Washington, D.C., and was said to be moving north and east toward them. McCord decided on a course east by southeast to skirt the storm. If all worked according to plan, he would miss the storm’s fury and arrive off Newport, Rhode Island, for a test scheduled for seven the next morning.

The test would never happen.

Saint Elmo’s fire. The brush discharge of electricity was dancing from the flagstaff of Phoebus. A flaming phenomenon that never signaled calm or comfort, a sign of disturbances in the heavens, a beacon of foul weather as sure as a snowball in the face.

Captain Carl Dalldorf burped as his ship rocked, tasting the sour tang of a dill pickle. Phoebus, a motor tanker registered in Danzig, Germany, was crewed by Germans. Dalldorf and his crew had spent a fine weekend in upper Manhattan, mingling with the German population and frequenting the Bierstubes. Casting off from Pier 6 at 2 P.M., Phoebus was bound for Tampico, Mexico. The ship had spent most of the afternoon and evening in a pea-soup fog. Now, just before 11 P.M., lightning began to strike the water around the vessel, while thunder reverberated loudly from the heavens.

Dalldorf stared at his barometer. There had been a sharp drop.

He knew the signs — this was a storm that bore watching.

Up the Delaware River, starboard back across New Jersey, hit the water near Asbury Park — that was the course. But the storm kept advancing.

“Get me the latest weather map,” McCord said, just after 11 P.M.

Wiley headed for the aerological office above the control car and consulted with Lieutenant Herb Wescoat. Wiley liked Wescoat, who, unlike some of the meteorological officers Wiley had served with, had at least an inkling of a sense of humor.

“What have you got?” Wiley asked.

“We received about two-thirds of the map — it came in code,” Wescoat replied, handing Wiley the copy.

“This doesn’t look too promising,” Wiley noted.

“No,” Wescoat said, “it doesn’t.”

“Do you have any recommendations for the captain?” Wiley asked.

“I’d ask him to land as soon as possible,” Wescoat said logically.

“I doubt he’ll do that with Admiral Moffett aboard,” Wiley said.

“Hmm,” Wescoat said slowly. “Then I’d recommend we all pray.”

Captain Dalldorf was due to remain on watch until midnight. By the look of the storm, he might stay on duty a while longer. A rogue wave had just rolled over Phoebus’s bow, a most rare occurrence. In addition, not five minutes before, his second in command had come across a sailor lying in the rain on the walkway outside the pilothouse. After he was revived, the man explained that when he’d gone to grip a handrail, an electrical charge had shocked him and thrown him back six feet, where he’d struck his head. That was just bizarre. Lightning usually passes through ships, leaving no damage. Dalldorf guessed that because Phoebus was carrying a load of truck batteries to Mexico, maybe the pooled energy had somehow created the shock.

Whatever the case, the storm and the general feeling in the air were disturbing.

“Bring me some more coffee,” Dalldorf ordered a crewman. Then he lit an American-made cigarette and took a puff.

They were minutes from death and miles from safety, as April 3 became April 4.

A lightning bolt streaked through the sky, and Akron was lit as though it were in the beam of a spotlight. At just that instant, the control car lurched from side to side.

“Drop ballast,” Commander McCord ordered.

A second later, the helmsman lost control of the rudder as the wires parted. The wheel began to spin wildly. Five squawks rang out over the telephone system, signaling landing positions. Akron continued to lose altitude.

“Drop more ballast,” McCord ordered.

Just then, a horrible shrieking was heard from the hull of Akron. The ship’s structure was breaking apart. The upper fin had been lost to the violence of the storm, and the strain from the loss of the fin broke frame girders. Some of the broken girders punctured the helium bags. Akron began to leak like a water-filled balloon poked by a pin. The airship continued to descend.

Wiley stared from a small window in the control car, as the blimp lowered through the thick fog. At about two hundred feet, he first caught sight of the waves below.

“I see the water approaching,” he said ominously.

No one in the control car replied.

Throughout Akron, the seventy-plus men made preparations for a water landing. Those with time fastened their coats firmly; a few managed to grab some light personal items. One scribbled a note to loved ones and stuffed it into the pipe forming one end of his hammock, never to be recovered. Many simply awaited the inevitable.

Akron sagged lower, her bones broken and her lungs punctured.

Then, at a distance of less than fifty feet above the waves, she stopped and hung in the air for a moment. There was no doubt she was a beautiful ship. A second later, a final lightning bolt lit her gleaming silver hull and surrounded the ship with a glow of electrical energy.

Then, like a rock dropped from a bridge, Akron plunged down into the ocean.

“The lights have disappeared,” the lookout declared.

“Are you certain?” Dalldorf asked.

“Yes, sir,” the lookout noted, “they dropped below the horizon a minute ago.”

“It’s probably an aircraft,” Dalldorf said. “Fix our position.”

The navigator took a minute to make notes on a sheet of paper. “Latitude 39 degrees, 40 minutes north; longitude 73 degrees, 40 minutes west,” he said.

Just then his second in command burst through the door of the pilothouse.

“The smell of gasoline is very heavy,” he said. “It’s all around us in the water.”

“Prepare to lower lifeboat number one,” Dalldorf said, “and stand by to rescue survivors.”

Phoebus remained until first light, when the Coast Guard arrived. Three men were taken aboard the German vessel. They were the only survivors of the crash of Akron.

II No Surfing in New Jersey 1986

Once I began researching early airships and their often tragic endings, I became hooked on their fascinating stories. The stories of Akron and her sister rigid airships Macon and Shenandoah tell of a bright future turned dark when all three fell out of the sky and crashed. I wondered if any of their wreckage had gone undiscovered.

Shenandoah’s crash site in Noble County, Ohio, is well known and marked in a farmer’s field by a memorial. Macon went down in deep water off Point Sur, California, in 1937. A search was launched for her resting site because of a desire to find the Curtiss aircraft that she’d taken into the sea with her. An expensive deepwater project was successful in finding her remains and a few of her aircraft, but none was salvaged. Video pictures of the wreckage revealed that the planes were too damaged and corroded by the sea to be restored, so they were left to rest on the bottom of the Pacific.

That left Akron.

I wish I could write an electrifying tale of adventure about finding Akron that would fire the imagination and leave a lasting impression. But the search was nothing but a struggle against a violent and unrelenting world. A search of the archives at the Washington Library put me on the track of the salvage vessels that recovered pieces of Akron’s wreckage and brought it to shore on a barge. An examination of the log of the Falcon, the famous navy salvage boat that had raised the submarine S-51 under the leadership of Commander Edward Ellsburg in 1925, and worked as a dive and survey boat for thirty years, put me on the track leading to the Akron’s grave. The logbook gave the coordinates where Falcon moored. Her position was reasonably close to the main debris field that was twenty-seven miles offshore from Beach Haven, New Jersey.

The volunteer NUMA team assembled in Beach Haven in July of 1986. Most came from Long Island, New York. A1 and Laura Ecke came with their thirty-four-foot boat. Dr. Ken Kamler acted as team physician and diver, along with Mike Duffy, a seasoned oceanographer. Zeff and Peggy Loria also came along to lend a hand, set up logistics, and run things when I had to go home a day early to begin a book tour. My good old pal, dependable Bill Shea, who suffered the seasickness of the damned on our voyages around the North Sea, also came along.

We gathered at a motel on the beach, a short drive from the marina where the Eckes’ boat was docked. The lady at the desk stood nearly six feet tall, her blond hair pulled back into a tight bun. She stared at me through steely piercing eyes that I swore were focusing on a calendar hanging on the wall directly behind my head.

“Ja, vas du you vant?”

I should have known I was in for it. She had the face of the town rat catcher.

“I have a reservation. My name is Cussler.”

She snapped open a ledgerlike book with razor precision and perused the names. “Ja, Cussler, a good German name. You will fill out the register.”

I signed.

“Your credit card.” It was a demand, not a request.

She made an imprint and handed back the card, but not before biting one corner as if it were a counterfeit coin. “Now the orders.”

I looked at her. “Orders?”

“You will not drink alcohol in your room. You will have no parties in your room. You will not bring animals into your room. You will not smoke in your room. You will not make loud sounds or play loud music in your room. You will not eat in your room.”

“Can I watch TV in my room?”

“Twenty-five cents for ten minutes. There is a slot next to the power button.”

“Can I use the bathroom?” I said, in a pathetic attempt to beleaguer her.

“If you are hygienically neat.”

“But can I sleep in the bed?”

A dark scowl crossed her face as she caught on. “If you do not adhere to the orders, you will have to stay somewhere else.”

“My friends are here.”

“That’s your problem.”

I couldn’t resist one more. “What time do we fall out in formation for roll call?”

“Here is your key. Room 27.”

“That’s upstairs,” I complained. “I’d prefer a room on ground level.”

“We do not play musical chairs,” she said, her hostility rising.

I could see it was a lost cause, so I picked up my luggage and hiked up the stairs. The room was dark when I entered. Hanging over the bed was a print of a man standing behind a desk. I walked closer, thinking he might have a spit curl over one eye and a clipped broom mustache.

But, no, it was Elvis Presley. I’d never seen a picture of him standing behind a desk before.

I unpacked and met the rest of the gang at dinner. We met several local divers, but none were familiar with Akron. The first three days we encountered miserable weather and stayed ashore. I might have risked the rough seas. I had certainly run search lanes dragging detection gear through much worse in the North Sea, but except for Bill, who would go despite his suffering, this was not a crew who relished eight- to ten-foot waves.

An unforeseen problem was Ecke’s boat. Though a nice and comfortable craft for short day trips, it had only one engine. If it faltered in a gale, forget it.

Stormy weather or not, since I was a California beach bum and enjoyed body surfing, I put on my swim trunks and headed to the beach, thinking the storm might kick up some good waves. Never having surfed the East Coast, I was stunned to find that the waves didn’t come up much above my knees, a condition that ranges from the Florida Keys until Long Island, New York. I went back to the motel, sat under an umbrella by the postage stamp-sized pool, and read the New York Times.

At last, after we enjoyed the preeminent lifestyle of Beach Haven in the rain for three days, the sun appeared, and our jolly band of sea hunters set sail from the dock at Little Egg Harbor and cruised out to sea. With only one engine, the boat drove through the waves with the sensation of a hacksaw cutting marble. It took us four hours to run the twenty-seven miles to our search grid.

The instant we arrived, Captain Ecke peered at some dark clouds on the eastern horizon and proclaimed, “We have to return to port. There’s a storm coming.”

“Storm, hell!” I protested. “We just got here.”

I argued, pleaded, and begged, finally cajoling him into remaining on station. The storm, as I predicted, continued north and we had calm seas for the search. The sidescan sonar went out and we began running lines. After four hours, not so much as a beer bottle could be seen protruding from the surface. Then the sonar recorded a strange anomaly, and I sent Mike Duffy and Dr. Kamler over the side to investigate. Ten minutes later, they surfaced and said the anomaly was nothing but a grotesque rock. Could the sands have buried Akron? I didn’t think so. The divers said the bottom had the consistency of gravel and seemed quite firm.

With a four-hour trip back to port staring us in the face, I called it quits for the day. We pulled up anchor and chugged home. Later, before we all headed out to a seafood restaurant for dinner, Ecke and I sat at a patio table and studied the charts to see if there was a discrepancy in the positions given by the navy salvage ships. No gleam of joy could have pierced the dismal gloom when I realized Harold had mistakenly converted the Falcon’s logbook coordinates to the wrong LORAN coordinates. We had searched over a mile away from where we were supposed to be.

When I called Harold on the error, he became indignant and shrugged his shoulders, as if the entire wasted day were a voyage down the lazy river in the noonday sun. Since he was supplying the boat, I bit my tongue and slinked off to the restaurant, wondering about the meaning of life.

The weather looked good the next morning, so we tried again. Déjà vu. We had no sooner arrived at the search grid than Harold swept his hand toward another front of storm clouds and turned the boat back to shore. These flights of fancy were beginning to get to me, but this time Harold had a point. The Coast Guard hailed us over the radio and urged us to find a safe harbor.

We sailed into the Beach Haven Channel just as the squall struck with fifty-mile-an-hour winds. Harold was in Nirvana. I’ve never seen a man in the throes of ecstasy before. He seemed to experience an unrestrained joy from motoring four hours out and four hours back without accomplishing anything. Still, I had to hand it to him. Being a fireman, he was as hardy as they come.

The third day was the charm. Clear sky and calm seas. We arrived at the proper coordinates and began searching. We quickly began to record debris scattered around the seafloor eighty feet under our keel. The divers went down and found a galley stove from the dirigible, as well as twisted duraluminum beams. No more were we broken and saddened souls.

I had to fly out the next morning to begin a tour for my latest book. The crew, bless them, then went out again with Zeff Loria running the sidescan, and found the aircraft’s lower fin lying on the bottom. Divers searched a small part of the seven-hundred-foot debris field and found piles of twisted beams and support frames half-buried in the seafloor. No aircraft were visible, since none were aboard when Akron crashed into the sea. There were few intact artifacts left from the great zeppelin, whose hull was only a hundred feet shorter than Titanic. Her career was short, but she and her sisters had made a lasting impression on the history of lighter-than-air aircraft. It was sad and unfortunate that the great airships could not have been a major stepping-stone into air transportation, but most all met with tragic fates. Now the graves of Akron, Macon, and Shenandoah are all accounted for. I wish that someday professional archaeologists would return to Akron, retrieve her artifacts, and put them on display in the museum at Lakehurst, New Jersey.

One final note on a very strange story related to Akron. Not long after she was launched, the dirigible was scheduled to fly over a football game in Huntington, West Virginia. The date was October 10,1931. As thousands watched, a huge zeppelin cruised over the Ohio River and approached the stadium at only three hundred feet. Then, to the spectators’ horror, it suddenly crumpled and crashed to the ground. Several men were seen to escape in parachutes. After a thorough search, however, rescuers were stunned to find no sign of the Akron. No victims or wreckage could be found. Later investigation revealed that the flight by the navy dirigible over the stadium had been canceled. Not only had Akron not crashed in full view of a horde of sworn witnesses, but she had been over a hundred miles away at the time, and no other lighter-than-air craft were reported missing.

The eerie apparition has never been explained.