Biggest Dirigible

ARMY & NAVY

Football enthusiasts of 1930, watching a game in (for instance) the Harvard Stadium may perhaps be distracted from the contest by the appearance, out of the sky, of a huge sausage-shaped bag moving along at better than 50 knots. Should the sausage descend close enough, the whole Stadium would be darkened by its shadow, for two football fields laid end to end would not equal its 720 feet of length. Should it approach on a mission of destruction, it could open fire with a battery of artillery. And should a defending airplane squadron seek to rise over it and destroy it with bombs, the dirigible would send out five full-sized planes, carried underneath the bag and launched from built-in runways. Having left the Stadium, the ship could then travel to any European capital and return without having to refuel. It could bring back its five planes, also, for it is so built that planes not only can be launched from it but also land in it.

Such, briefly, are the features of the new Navy dirigible designed by the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. of Akron and awarded first prize ($50,000) in the Airship Competition Board's contest for the best dirigible design. The Board, headed by Rear Admiral William A. Moffett, has recommended that the contract for constructing the ship be also given to the Goodyear company, and Secretary of the Navy Wilbur has approved the recommendation. Should the Goodyear company build the ship, it cannot collect the $50,000 for the design, a stipulation of the contest being that if the company submitting the winning design also should be given the job of building the ship, it could not collect the prize-money. Inasmuch as the dirigible will cost in the neighborhood of $4,500,000, the $50,000 becomes a small detail and the Goodyear company will, in all probability, go ahead with the construction job which will take some three years for completion.

With its volume of 6,500,000-cubic feet of gas, the new dirigible will be more than twice the size of the Los Angeles. At 50 knots it. will have a cruising range of 12,500 miles; it can make up to 70 knots (80 miles an hour) though at the higher speed its cruising range is, of course, shortened. Larger than any British or German dirigible now planned, it will carry a crew of 45 men. Details as to the number and size of its guns and as to how its airplane convoy can return to it after a flight have not been revealed. It will be the largest dirigible in the world--until someone builds a bigger one.