From: scott (bign2cars@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Jan 03 2006 - 02:56:32 PST
i have been in the blimp hanger in lakehurst ,nj and
scott
--- Everette <194cbteng@bellsouth.net> wrote:
words can not describe how massive it is in person.i
bet there are not many of those left in the us.
>
> January 2
>
> 1942 Navy opens a blimp base in New Jersey
>
> On this day, the Navy Airship Patrol Group 1 and Air
> Ship Squadron 12 are
> established at Lakehurst, N.J. The U.S. Navy was the
> only military service
> in the world to use airships--also known as
> blimps--during the war.
> The U.S. Navy was actually behind the times in the
> use of blimps; it didn't
> get around to ordering its first until 1915, at
> which time even the U.S.
> Army was using them. By the close of World War I,
> the Navy had recognized
> their value and was using several blimps for
> patrolling coastlines for enemy
> submarines. They proved extremely effective; in
> fact, no convoy supported by
> blimp surveillance ever lost a ship.
> Between the wars, it was agreed that the Army would
> use nonrigid airships to
> patrol the coasts of the United States, while the
> Navy would use rigid
> airships (which were aluminum-hulled and kept their
> shape whether or not
> they were filled with gas) for long-range scouting
> and fleet support. The
> Navy ended its construction and employment of the
> rigid airships in the
> 1930s after two, the Akron and the Macon, crashed at
> sea. In 1937, the Army
> transferred all its remaining nonrigid blimps to the
> Navy.
> Meanwhile, in the civilian world, the Hindenburg, a
> commercial dirigible,
> burst into flames over Lakehurst on May 6, 1937.
> Thirty-six of the 97
> passengers aboard were killed. The explosion was
> caused by an electric
> discharge that ignited a hydrogen gas leak; the
> tragedy effectively ended
> the use of airships for commercial travel, but they
> were still used to great
> advantage in the U.S. military.
> At the outbreak of World War II, the Navy had 10
> blimps in service; that
> number expanded to 167 by the end of the war. The
> only U.S. blimp lost was
> the K-74, which, on July 18, 1943, spotted a German
> U-boat. The blimp opened
> fire on the submarine and damaged it, but only one
> of its two depth charges
> released. The submarine fired back and sent the
> blimp into the sea, but the
> crew was rescued. The only German blimp involved in
> the war was a passenger
> craft, Graf Zeppelin, which was used for electronic
> surveillance just before
> the outbreak of the war.
>
> And as a note to this it is my understanding the
> only balloon training base
> during WW II was at Paris Tennessee, some of the
> original building are still
> standing and in use by an industry that supplies
> clay used in the
> manufacture of ceramic toilet fixtures.
>
>
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