Death of a Dirigible
by John Toland
From: American Heritage
February 1969, Volume X, Number 2
Over Lakehurst, New Jersey, the sky was unsettled on the afternoon of September 2, 1925. At
times it was almost clear; then ominous clouds would scud across the field of the Naval Air Station
and disappear as quickly as they had come. The airship Shenandoah, nose to her high mooring
mast, was floating gracefully with the variable breezes. Her twenty gas bags were about 91% full;
her tanks loaded with 9,075 pounds of water and 16, 620 pounds of gasoline. Sailors were riding
up the elevator to the top of the mast. The 682-foot ship- her Indian name meant "Daughter of the
Stars"- was almost ready for her fifty-eighth flight, a tour of Midwest state fairs. Everybody wanted
to see the flying battleship.
Commander Zachary Lansdowne, the Shenandoah's skipper, had not liked the original orders for
this trip. A native of Greene Ville, Ohio, he was familiar with the line squalls that swept over that
part of the country during the summer, and he had officially requested that the tour be postponed.
The navy had put it off until early September, but rejected any further delay. It would disappoint too
many thousands. And besides, the Shenandoah had already flown 25,000 miles in all kinds of
weather. Now almost the entire crew of 41 officers and men, together with two observers, had
gone aboard. Not far from the base of the mast, Lansdowne was talking quietly with his wife. An
Annapolis graduate with considerable lighter-than-air experience before taking command of the
Shenandoah, Lansdowne was a tall, rangy, rawboned man who had a reputation as a strict
disciplinarian aloft, but also as an understanding and affable officer who lent a sympathetic ear to the
personal problems of his crew.
At 2:52 P.M. the nose cone of the ship slid gently from the socket of the mast. The dirigible lifted
slowly. Water ballast streamed first from amidships, then from the tail- 2,225 pounds of it in all.
The Shenandoah swung around the mast and a few minutes later headed west into the uncertain
sky. Margaret Lansdowne turned her back as the dirigible sailed out over the pine woods. So did
the other wives who had come to the field. It was considered bad luck to watch your husband's
ship fade out of sight. The graceful Shenandoah was the first rigid dirigible made in America. Started
in 1920 at the naval aircraft factory in Philadelphia, its construction had been held up many months
by the failure of Congress to pass appropriations. The design of the Shenandoah was almost
identical with that of the captured wartime German Zeppelin, the L-49, but American navy
engineers had made one great step forward. From a natural gas found in exploitable form and
quantity only in the United States they had succeeded in isolating helium, so inert that it could not be
set afire with a match. The airshipman's greatest fear, fire, would now be a thing of the past.
But since helium had only 92.6 per cent of the lifting power of the inflammable hydrogen used in
German airships, a section ten meters long had been added to the middle of the Shenandoah. In
addition, the bow had been strengthened to withstand the strain of mast landings, the fins and
rudders had been redesigned, and a walkway for in-flight inspection had been fitted outside the
envelope along the very top of the ship. The rigid dirigible, invented by Count Ferdinand von
Zeppelin, had been greatly improved upon during World War I by his German countrymen. Already
it had accomplished great feats: two dirigibles, the British R-34 (with Lansdowne aboard as an
American observer) and the German LZ-126, had crossed the Atlantic, and another German ship,
the L-72, had been flown by French airshipmen on a nonstop, 4,500 mile trip in 118 hours and 41
minutes. Now, with the slender Shenandoah, the United States was attempting to take the lead in
the international airship field. In her first flights the Shenandoah had captured the imagination of the
world. Her triumphs had been many; she had been moored to the mast of a navy tanker, the
Patoka, at sea; she had successfully weathered a winter gale after being torn from her mast at
Lakehurst; and she had made a triumphant round trip to the Pacific Coast.
Now, an hour and 26 minutes after leaving Lakehurst, she hovered over Philadelphia. Before long
the Alleghenies were reached. The men off watch eased themselves into their bunks along the keel
amidships. The keel, a triangular tunnel running along inside the Shenandoah's bottom and tapering
at bow and tail, was the heart of the ship. Bisecting its base was a narrow catwalk, the other two
sides of the triangle being bounded by the gas cells. These bags, pressing against restraining
networks of wire and twine, were usually filled to about 85 per cent capacity at the start of a long
trip. As the ship rose, the gas expanded and the bags became swollen; 4,000 feet was the critical
"pressure height"- at that altitude the bags would be 100 per cent full. Every five meters along the
keel was a triangular frame of latticed girders, which bound together the circular outer ribs. Each of
these frames was marked with phosphorescent numbers so the men would always know where they
were in the dark interior. The numbering started at the base of the ship's rudders, the first girder
being called Frame O, the one farthest forward being numbered 194.75- meaning that it was
194.75 meters (about 640 feet) from the rudders. The crew space, a plywood deck twelve feet
square that served as the enlisted men's lounge and dining room, ran from Frames 100 to 105.
Farther forward were the officer's quarters. The control car was suspended on metal struts twenty
feet below Frame 160.
At midnight, as the Shenandoah's five engines propelled her westward, the sky was partially overcast. But the air was not rough. The night was warm, and the men off duty slept without blankets. Forward in the control car, the midnight weather observations had just been handed to the ship's aerologist, Lieutenant Joseph B. Anderson. Anderson, a studious young man, remained in the control car through most of the flight, and he was to remember vividly all that happened there during the eventful hours that lay ahead. Now he began to draw up his usual midnight weather report, and a few minutes later, getting up from his little desk, he handed it to the skipper. Lansdowne studied it for a few minutes, then nodded. Things weren't as bad as they could be. He started for the ladder, "Don't call me," he said wearily, "unless something unusual comes up." The first day, with the complications of take-off, was always the hardest. He climbed up the ladder and was soon in his bunk. But Lansdowne got little sleep. At 3 A.M. a storm began to brew in the northwest, and a few minutes later he was back in the control car.
The Shenandoah was making little progress against a strong head wind. Lansdowne ordered the
man at the elevator controls to bring the ship down to 2,000 feet, in an effort to find a hole in the
wall of wind. It was useless. For an hour and a half the slender airship struggled westward, drifting
first to port, then to starboard. At a few minutes after 5 A.M., E.P. Allen, the elevatorman, turned
to Lansdowne, "Captain," he said a slight undertone of nervousness in his voice, "the ship has
started to rise." "Check her," said Lansdowne. Allen turned the big elevator wheel clockwise to
drive the ship down. It was obvious that the Shenandoah was not responding to the controls. Sweat
covered Allen's forehead. "She's rising two meters per second. I can't check her, sir." Lansdowne
ordered engines 4 and 5 speeded up. But despite the increased power, the ship continued to rise. "I
can't hold her down," said Allen. There was a note of panic in his voice now. He started to pull the
wheel even farther over. Lansdowne stopped him. "Don't exceed that angle," he said in a calm,
confident voice that reassured everyone in the cabin. "We don't want to go into a stall." He ordered
Rudderman Ralph Joffray to change his course to the south. Joffray tugged his wheel
counterclockwise. He had to put his whole body into the effort. "Hard over, sir," he grunted, "and
she won't take it."
"I've got the flippers down and she won't check," said Allen, his voice rising again. "Don't worry,"
said Lansdowne as if there were nothing to fear. In spite of rudders, elevators, and motors, the ship
continued to shoot up, tail elevated about fifteen degrees, and to head relentlessly westward,
directly into the storm. The dirigible was rolling now like a raft in the sea. The situation was more
serious than the Shenandoah's crew, at least for the moment, suspected. Down on the ground, in a
little Ohio town called Caldwell, a man awakened when the wind slammed the furniture around on
his front porch. He went outside, looked up at the sky, and spotted the giant airship. Directly above
it was a dark cloud that seemed to be in a great turmoil. It looked to him, he later told friends, "as
though two storms had gone together." And in Ava a woman, seeing the same cloud, called her
husband out into the yard. "Come out and see the boiling cloud!" she cried. What they saw was a
line squall gathering directly above the ship. Formed by a clash of opposing winds- one moist and
warm, the other dry and cold- such a squall was capable of seizing the Shenandoah, twisting her in
different directions, and wringing out her light metal frame. The ship's rise was carrying her right into
the squall.
All over the Shenandoah, men were on the alert. Mechanics babied their motors, which were
beginning to cough and overheat; the ship's sharp tilt was disrupting the flow of gasoline and water
through their fuel-supply and cooling systems. Riggers scrambled down the keel ripping the covers
off the automatic valves so the already swollen gas bags wouldn't burst. In the control car the
atmosphere was quiet but tense. Allen called out, "Still rising two meters per second, sir!" They
were at 5,000 feet, far above the pressure height. Lansdowne glanced at the altimeter and held a
quick conference with his executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Lewis Hancock. Then he
turned. "All right," he said, "open the maneuvering valves." Thousands of cubic feet of helium were
valved off in the hope that this would check the Shenandoah's swift ascent. The sky was now solidly
overcast except far to the south and southwest. Lieutenant Anderson peered ahead, trying to
determine the safest course. Then, directly north of the ship and above, at an angle of 45 degrees,
he saw the huge threatening cloud extending above their course to the west. If their rise didn't stop
soon, they would shoot straight into the eye of the squall.
"Rising one meter per second," called Allen hopefully. The valving off of helium was finally taking
effect. Even so, they were close to 6,000 feet and still the Shenandoah rose. "Go up in the keel,
Andy," said Lansdowne to Anderson. He realized that at any moment the rise might stop and, with
so much helium valved away, they would begin a fast plunge to earth. "Pass the word to stand by
the slip tanks in case of an emergency." Lansdowne waited until Anderson had dashed up the
ladder. Then he ordered the valves closed. Above the control car, Anderson carried out his orders,
then started back down the ladder. Suddenly a blast of bitter-cold air rushed down the keel through
the ventilating hatches, hitting him in the face. The ship had just risen into the squall and was now in
the grip of two opposing forces, each wrenching it in a different direction. The fantastic rise stopped
sharply at 6,300 feet. The Shenandoah wavered for an instant and began to plunge. Elevatorman
Allen, standing near the altimeter, sounded the alarm. "The ship's falling!" he cried out. "She's falling
fast, very fast!" Soon no one aboard had to be told. Eardrums pounded as the Shenandoah
plummeted down 25 feet a second. "Water ballast!" Lansdowne called out. Tons of water were
dumped. The skipper then ordered the ship nosed upward. "She's still falling!" Allen called out.
"She's all right, Allen," said Lansdowne evenly. "We'll stop her." His self-possession once more had
its calculated effect. In spite of the ship's frightening drop, there was no panic.
In the gondolas, mechanics swore at their erratic motors. In the keel the few men still asleep were
pitched from their bunks, while those on duty clung to girders for support. Suddenly, at 2,500 feet,
the ship stopped falling and leveled off. But the men were still tense, wondering what would happen
now. Lansdowne gave an order to Rudderman Joffray, so quietly that no one else heard. The ship
headed south. Then the captain picked up the telephone. Rigger Mark Donovan, near Frame 60,
was the man farthest aft. When the telephone glass flashed red, he grabbed the receiver and sang
out, "Sixty, Donovan." "How are the cells aft?" asked Lansdowne quietly. "Okay aft of sixty, sir.
Fully intact." There was a slight pause. "Pass the word forward," said the skipper. "All men on their
toes." He hesitated a moment, then added quietly, "We are going through together." Donovan hung
up and started forward. As he did, there was a weird whistle of wind and the ship surged upward,
even faster than the first time. The engine telegraphs began ringing frequently in the control car.
Engines 1 and 2 were out and the mechanic on No. 3 reported it was heating up badly. Lansdowne
ordered Allen to nose the ship down as far as he could without stalling her. They were shooting up
incredibly fast. The rise had to be stopped. He turned and said, "Full speed!"
The altimeter was back at 3,500 feet. Joffray was pulling at the rudder wheel, straining away,
throwing his whole body into the struggle. It was a sight Anderson was never to forget. The ship
began turning rapidly in a circle. The tail was suddenly thrown up and wrenched to the right. The
ship had been caught by terrific opposing blasts of wind. Suddenly there was a shrill screech, as
girders began to twist and tear. Without raising his voice Commander Hancock said, "There she
goes." When Anderson heard the tear of girders he guessed that the Shenandoah was breaking up
amidships. Then the control car began to jar and shake. Every man in the car knew what was
happening. The struts that held the big gondola to the ship were being wrenched by wind and
torsion. In a matter of moments it would tear away from the ship and drop to earth.
Earlier, when the girders had snapped, the ship had opened at Frame 130 like an egg being cracked
from the bottom. Two men were pitched out into space. But the two sections were held together by
the many control wires that ran along the bottom of the keel. Donovan, the man farthest aft, had
moved back to Frame 30 when he heard a faraway crash of breaking girders. Then the
Shenandoah began to quiver, and Donovan smelled burning cloth. Nauseated, he hurried forward to
Frame 40, opened a hatch, and, leaning far out, took deep, gasping breaths. Below him the ground
was dim and seemed to be spinning rapidly. Just then something snapped in the tail. A trail of sparks
shot up under the keel. The main cable controls had broken loose from the elevators and rudders
and were running wildly up the length of the ship. Far forward Lieutenant Commander Charles E.
Rosendahl, the ship's navigator, who had been ordered by Lansdowne to supervise the dropping of
ballast, was working his way along the keel. He heard a fearful clashing and turned in time to see the
bottom panel of the ship's outer covering and several of the transverse structural members of the
keel cut loose along one side. He saw severed control wires being pulled out like guts of a fish as
the control car fell. The man who had the last look at the doomed gondola and its occupants was
Anderson, who had scrambled up to the catwalk just as the gondola was wrenching itself loose.
He looked over his left shoulder and saw it hanging down. Suddenly the ladder he was holding on
to was yanked away, and the car began its plunge to earth, carrying Lansdowne and seven others
to their deaths. Stunned, Anderson felt the catwalk and the girders on both sides of it collapsing like
a house of matches. He was pulled off the catwalk, but just as he was about to drop through the
great hole torn open by the control car, he managed to get hold of something. The next thing he
knew he was setting on a fragment of the catwalk suspended directly over the center of the jagged
hole. A few wires were all that held him and the fragment of catwalk to the rest of the ship. He
dared not make a move for fear he might topple off. The four men in the crew space amidships
looked forward and saw nothing but empty space; the bow section had broken off and was
ballooning high above them. Almost at once there came a new tearing and ripping aft of them,
followed by a sickening downward lurch as the ship broke again, this time just forward of engines 2
and 3, at Frame 100. The Shenandoah was now in three parts.
In the center section, smallest of the three, the gas bags had collapsed, and, weighted by engine
gondolas 4 and 5, it dropped "like an elevator with no brakes." To the four sailors in its tiny crew
space it seemed that they must surely follow the control car down to earth. But weakened girders
snapped again, the two engine cabs wrenched free, and the little helium remaining slowed their fall.
Jagged wreckage dangling at both ends, the center section smashed into the side of a little hill,
skidded down a slope, crashed into some trees, and stopped. The four men in the crew space were
injured but alive; four mechanics- three of them in the engine cabs- were killed. The 350- foot stern
section, meanwhile, was gliding toward the rolling hills at high speed, dragged down by the weight
of engine gondolas 1, 2, and 3. With eighteen men aboard, it was headed for the ground, tail first,
falling like an arrow and almost as fast. It struck glancingly against a wooded hillside, and again the
unlikely happened: the three engines were scraped off by the treetops, and the tail section bounded
free. It drifted into a small valley, snagged its port side against a tree, and tilted precariously.
Men tumbled out like spilled oranges. Finally, as it hit the ground, it began to pivot in a huge arc,
threatening to crush those who had jumped on the downhill side. One escaped by running uphill. A
second ran the other way. A third had gotten a dangling wire twisted around one ankle; after being
dragged for fifty yards like a roped steer, he managed to get the wire loose and scrambled up the
hill. He ducked just in time to avoid the downward sweep of the great tail fins. Slowly, dazedly, the
men began to collect. All eighteen of them had survived. Only the bow section remained aloft.
Anderson was still sitting on his fragile suspension bridge of two wires. The bow- now a free
balloon- was spinning on a horizontal plane. Anderson felt seasick. There was no sound but the high
wind and the creaking of wreckage. The shattered bow section was rising higher and higher. Soon
the gas cells would burst. Anderson believed he was alone. But he was wrong. There were six
others aboard. One, Navigator Rosendahl, took charge. They found a helium valve, opened it, and
stopped the wild ascent. Then Lieutenant Roland G. Mayer lowered a rope to Anderson. Since he
couldn't let go of the wires he was sitting on, the line was looped around Anderson and he was
pulled to safety.
With Anderson safe, Rosendahl surveyed the situation. Others aboard the floating bow section
shouted their reports: having found the helium valve control wire and one bag containing 1,600
pounds of water ballast, they decided to try for a landing. Moments later, down on the ground, a
telephone began ringing in the farmhouse of Ernest Nichols. Nichols picked up the receiver. It was a
neighbor telling him a crazy story about a runaway airship heading straight for his house. Nichols
hung up and went out in the yard. A big object, like a low cloud, was coming over his orchard. It
was the Shenandoah's bow. From above he heard men shouting, "Grab Hold!" Wires were dangling
from the nose. Nichols grabbed one of them and wrapped it around a fence post. The post
snapped. The floating wreckage turned slightly from its course, knocked off the top of a shed,
bowled over a grape arbor, skimmed over the ground, and settled down gently, open end first.
Anderson and another officer jumped out and made the lines fast to posts and trees. Once on the
ground Rosendahl called for pistols to puncture the helium cells and prevent the wreckage from
rising again into the air. Rosendahl looked at his watch.
It was 6:45 A.M. All of the Shenandoah was now on the ground. All told, fourteen men had died.
The fragments of the Shenandoah and its 29 survivors were scattered across twelve miles of
landscape.
First came the rescuers. They did everything they could to make its easier for the dazed survivors.
But soon, over the rutted back roads, in buggies, buckboards, and broken-down Model -T Fords,
came the curious. Many were full of pity; others treated the disaster like a picnic. By noon
thousands of looters and souvenir hunters had torn almost all the covering off both the larger
sections of the ship. Women came away from the wreckage staggering under yards of fabric they
had ripped from the frame. The looters were armed with knives, hatchets, pliers, and even
wrenches. They went away with the ship's logbooks, with fragments of girders up to eight feet long,
with blankets and valuable instruments. The still-dazed officers and enlisted men tried to keep
guard. When Major Frank Kennedy, an army airship expert from nearby McCook Field, arrived to
help he found Frank Masters, one of the Shenandoah's young riggers, trying desperately to guard
the control car. Masters was nervous and confused. As he rushed from one point to another, a
group of looters would dart in behind his back. He had had nothing to eat for many hours.
Sympathetic farmers offered to take him to breakfast, but he refused to leave his post.
Soon the two main sections of the ship, miles apart, looked like skeletons picked to the bone.
At nightfall, in spite of armed national guardsman who threatened to open fire, the looting continued.
By morning the control car too had been picked clean. Many instruments had been stolen, all the
toggles ripped out, everything movable torn free. Only the naked hull of the gondola was left, and
even that had been moved twenty yards from the place where it had struck. The Annapolis class
ring was missing from Zachary Lansdowne's finger. It had taken the "Daughter of the Stars" three
hours to die piecemeal, and all day to be stripped bare. But her story was far from over. Even
before the survivors' train reached Lakehurst it became evident that the disaster was to be a cause
celebre. In bold headlines Mrs. Lansdowne was quoted as accusing Secretary of the Navy Curtis
D. Wilbur of forcing her husband to take the flight for political purposes.
On September 4, a second sensational charge came from Captain Anton Heinan, a German airship
exert who had taught many of the Shenandoah's men to fly. "I tell you it was murder to take that
ship out," he said to a reporter from the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. The original eighteen-helium
safety valves, had explained, and had been reduced to eight. The ship had broken in two because
the expanding gas, with insufficient outlets for escape, had crushed the frame. The victims, he
declared, "gave their lives to save precious helium.
On September 21 at Lakehurst, a Navy Court of Inquiry opened hearings to investigate the
Shenandoah crash. The inquiry almost turned into a brawl when Captain Heinen was called upon to
explain his inflammatory remarks. The following week the proceedings were transferred to
Washington, and there, on October 9, Mrs. Lansdowne made her first appearance, dressed in deep
mourning. Most Navy people thought the attractive 23-year-old widow would repudiate the
statements attributed to her by the newspapers. Instead, she bluntly repeated them.
On the evening of November 7 the judge advocate (in a naval court, the prosecutor) paid a surprise
visit to Mrs. Lansdowne at the Washington home of her uncle, where she was staying for the
duration of the hearings. He said the Navy would like her to appear again. The next day the wife of
the Lakehurst commandant invited Mrs. Lansdowne to lunch at the Mayflower. As they were
leaving the hotel, the older woman slipped a piece of paper in her hand, saying it was something,
which the judge advocate thought she could use in court. It was a draft of a statement declaring that
Mrs. Lansdowne had changed her mind; that her husband had regarded the Shenandoah as a
man-of-war and that he had been ready to use it ant any time regardless of the weather. Furious,
she tore it up.
Three days later, on November 11, Mrs. Lansdowne appeared once more at the Navy hearings.
She and her counsel, Joseph E. Davies, walked into the hostile courtroom. The usual tensions of
such a hearing had been heightened by the fact that at the same time, in another part or the capitol,
the Army's court-martial of Colonel William ("Billy") Mitchell was in progress. (At Mitchell's request
Mrs. Lansdowne appeared at his trials and told the court about what she regarded as the Navy's
attempt to influence her testimony.) The glare of publicity from the two trials had put the services on
the defensive, and at the Shenandoah hearing the navy wives who made up the majority of the
courtroom audience were on the navy's side.
Davies (later United States ambassador to Russia just before World War II) insisted that he be
allowed to advise his client. The original judge advocate had resigned in order to appear as a
witness at the Mitchell trial and answer Mrs. Lansdowne's charges. A successor, Major Henry
Leonard of the Marine Corps, had been appointed, and at this juncture he rose to object. This was
not a civilian court, he declared, and Mrs. Lansdowne was merely a witness.
Davies told his client not to testify without his advice. The presiding officer, an elderly admiral,
warned Davies to be quiet. Davies insisted on his client's rights. The admiral, loosing his patients,
ordered him to be quiet or leave. When Davies did neither, the admiral reluctantly turned to the
marine guard and said. "You will remove the gentleman from the court." "My client is entitled to
counsel!" shouted Davies, but the marine grabbed him by the collar him by the collar and escorted
him, still protesting, from the courtroom. For three hours Mrs. Lansdowne was questioned. Every
time Major Leonard scored a point there would be a burst of applause from the Navy wives.
Whenever Mrs. Lansdowne scored, the incensed women would boo and hiss.
Leonard pointed out that there had been a "prudential" clause in Commander Lansdowne's order
that would have allowed him to postpone the flight if he had thought conditions warranted it. But
Mrs. Lansdowne, who was managing very well without a lawyer, seized upon the conclusion of the
clause, which read, "…remembering, however, that this route will be published in the press and that
many will be disappointed should the Shenandoah fail to follow the approved schedule. "That, " she
said, "is the pressure that is brought on officers in the Navy Department." Mrs. Lansdowne was
excused. The court never recalled her. The inquiry ended two weeks later. Most experts agreed
that the Shenandoah's gas cells had not ruptured, but that the ship had been torn apart by an
unfortunate series of natural forces.
Commander Lansdowne and the others who had died with the ship had not made a useless
sacrifice. Even in death the Shenandoah had helped aviation take a long step forward. It is true that
the United States government gave up on the rigid dirigible after the crash of the American-built
Akron in the Atlantic off Barnegat Light in April of 1933 and that of the Macon, her sister ship, in
the Pacific off Point Sur, California, two years later. And when the Hindenburg, Germany's great
commercial airship, burned horribly at Lakehurst in 1937, the day of the great ''rigids" seemed to be
over. But United States experience with the Shenandoah and other dirigibles contributed
significantly to our success with the smaller, nonrigid blimp. Ridiculed as the "rubber cow" and the
"poopy-bag," the blimp nevertheless played an important role in World War II- blimps helped drive
enemy submarines from the Strait of Gibraltor, patrolled the United States coast line for lurking
U-boats, and helped clear mines from the waters south of France in preparation for D-Day. Today
blimps are an important component of our early-warning defense net and of our antisubmarine
forces.
The men who flew the graceful rigids and lived to remember, however, are still loyal to them.
Commander Rosenthal, now a retired admiral, still argues strenuously that they deserve another
trial. As recently as 1954, he and Paul Litchfield, chairman of the board of the Goodyear Tire and
Rubber Company, which built the Akron and the Macon, were fighting for rigid dirigibles both for
commercial and naval uses and as flying laboratories for testing an atomic aircraft engine. In
Germany, the last commander of the Hindenburg, Captain Max Pruss, and other airship advocates
are proposing new passenger and cargo dirigibles, using helium in place of hydrogen, to provide an
intermediate service between the slower surface liners and the faster airplane.
Yet memories of such epic disasters as that of the Shenandoah are not easily forgotten. The
romantic dirigible, outmoded almost in its infancy by the fantastic onrush of aerial invention, was
even in its own time a craft dogged by ill luck.
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John Toland, a free-lance writer who lives in Red Bank, New Jersey, is the author of Ships in the
Sky: The Story of the Great Dirigibles.
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