LTA

In Washington, at Akron, in California, in New Jersey and in Friedrichshafen last week there was news of "LTA." the airman's abbreviation for lighter-than-air.

"Conjecture," As airship enthusiasts feared, and as critics predicted, the Naval Court of Inquiry into the Akron disaster, held at Washington Navy Yard, adjourned last week on a note of inconclusiveness. The court had yet to make its official finding, but the summation by Judge Advocate Lieut.-Commander Ralph G. Pennoyer was popularly regarded as prophetic. Said he: "If any action taken can in the light of hindsight be termed 'errors of judgment.' clearly they were without negligence or culpability. This disaster is part of the price which must inevitably be paid in the development of any new and hazardous art. ... In spite of all the testimony the court has heard it would appear that the cause must ever remain in the realm of conjecture." Meanwhile the joint Congressional committee of investigation went to Akron to begin hearings. Sunnyvale, Forty miles south of San Francisco in the orchard land of the Santa Clara Valley, hard by Herbert Hoover's Palo Alto, is a field of pure gold with a silver mound in the centre. The gold is a carpet of California poppies. The silver is the shimmering aluminum paint of an airship dock, second in size only to the Goodyear-Zeppelin dock at Akron. The whole is Sunnyvale, newly completed Naval airship base for the Pacific Coast. Last week Sunnyvale was preening itself to become the home of all Navy LTA. since the Navy had announced that the station at Lakehurst would be decommissioned "in the near future." With the Akron gone, the Los Angeles in dead storage, the Macon already assigned to Sunnyvale, the Navy could not afford to maintain the eastern base. Besides the sugarloaf dock at Sunnyvale, a huge landscaped oval encompasses some 40 lesser structures: a helium repurification plant, a 2,000,000-cu. ft. helium tank (like a city gas tank), two other tanks each holding 2,000,000 cu. ft. under pressure; a locomotive shed, ice-making plant, quarters for married officers, "BOQ"' (bachelor officers' quarters), enlisted men's barracks, recreation building, all in Spanish architecture. Most remarkable is the dock which measures about three city blocks long, one block wide and 18 stories high. Like the Goodyear-Zeppelin dock its ends are closed by enormous orange-peel doors. Each "peel" weighs 400 tons, is moved by a 250-h. p. motor. An inclined elevator leads from the "deck" (floor) to the roof. Out of each end of the dock for nearly a half-mile run two standard-gauge railroad tracks terminating in two mooring circles, 4,000 ft. around. A mobile telescopic mooring mast, which can extend from a height of 77 ft. to 160 ft. will haul the airship along the tracks. A null "stern beam." built something like a flat car, anchors the ship's stern. Sunnyvale is a San Franciscan triumph over San Diego which fought bitterly for the air base. Businessmen of San Francisco and neighboring towns raised $470,000 to buy the 1,000-acre Sunnyvale tract, gave the land to the Government. Total Government investment in the station will be about $4,500,000.

As San Francisco exulted last week, a town in New Jersey mourned. That town was Lakewood (pop. 5,000). Jewish winter resort, known for good Jersey applejack, for the beer at its Elks Club, for John D. Rockefeller's estate there (which he seldom uses). Lakewood was "town" for the Lakehurst Naval Air Station five miles away. It thrived on the station's $500,000 annual payroll, and on the visitations of newshawks and sightseers, all of which are now lost to Sunnyvale. Lakewood hoped that the evil day might be deferred by luring the Macon to Lakehurst for inspection by Congressional committeemen. It might then be many weeks before summer thunderstorms over the Southwest would permit the Macon to cross the continent. However, canny Captain Alger Herman Dresel of the Macon was equally intent on getting his ship direct from Akron to the Pacific without delay.

TC-13, Three miles from Akron is Wingfoot Lake, home base of Goodyear's fleet of baby blimps. There last week a silver bubble floated in the sky. small enough to be an egg of the mammoth Macon, yet bigger than any nonrigid airship heretofore built in the U. S. The bubble was the TC-13, just built by Goodyear for the Army, and being test-flown prior to her maiden flight to her station at Langley Field. Va. The TC-13 is 200 ft. long. Beneath her belly she carries a 40-ft. control car equipped with four folding bunks, and a galley containing an electric stove and electric coffee urn. A crew of six could be accommodated for a four or five-day patrol flight. There are two 375-h.p. engines for propulsion, three auxiliary engines for operation of equipment. One of the three generates current for the radio when the ship is resting on land or water. (The control car is shaped like a boat.) Another engine operates a blower to force air into the envelope and help maintain its shape. The third drives a windlass for lowering and raising a sub-cloud car. The sub-cloud car, streamlined and camouflaged to blend into an overcast sky, can be lowered 1,000 ft. below the ship for observation and photography. A telephone wire runs through the core of the suspension cable. Contract speed of the TC-13 was not made public, is supposed to be about 65 m. p. h.

Sixth Season-- As she has done every year since 1928, the sturdy Graf Zeppelin cast off last week from Friedrichshafen with a load of passengers, headed over the Atlantic. She was bound via Spain for Rio de Janeiro, on a monthly schedule to be maintained until August when service may be stepped up to twice-a-month. Fares are down 20% to $470.

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