"Masts Are Best"

Experience with the Shenandoah's permanent mooring mast at Lakehurst, N. J., has convinced the U. S. Navy of the mast's immense value in anchoring rigid airships. Therefore, another mast is to be erected immediately at Tacoma, to serve as the Navy's Western station. Tests have shown that few men are needed to secure an airship to a mast, hundreds are required to take an airship in or out of a hangar; also that an airship can stay indefinitely at the mast, be refuelled and regassed there, have all but major repairs made when thus anchored in the open air, withstand all winds short of a hurricane.

Hangars will not disappear. They will simply be fewer. The usual procedure in commercial dirigible operation will be to moor at the mast, but to maintain hangars nevertheless as a species of "dry dock," where ships will come at rare intervals for thorough overhauls. Since mooring masts are comparatively cheap, the economy realized will greatly facilitate commercial operation.