Bill of Health

After hearing arguments by naval officers including famed Lieut.-Commander Rosendahl; editors including Arthur Brisbane and Joseph Medill Patterson; heavier-than-air experts including Col. Lindbergh and Brigadier-General William ("Billy") Mitchell, the joint Congressional committee on the Akron disaster last week gave a bill-of-health to the Navy's airship-- program, saw in it "further potential utility to be developed only by experience." Prime recommendations:

P:A new airship should be built to replace the Akron and a new training ship should also be built.

P:The Los Angeles, the Navy's only training airship, now in dead storage, should be recommissioned.

P:Lakehurst Naval Air Station, instead of being decommissioned, should be the Navy's airship training centre.

P: Airships should be assured "continuity of personnel." Only a highly trained officer who already had commanded a training ship should be given command of a regular airship. (This was prompted by the Navy's present routine of sending airship officers to sea; and by the fact that the late Captain McCord had never commanded an airship prior to the Akron. On the day the committee's report was published the Navy Department ordered Lieut.-Commander Herbert V. Wiley, Akron survivor, to sea.)

P:The Weather Bureau should issue daily four general weather maps instead of two. (The Committee blamed the Akron crash on "navigation of the ship into storm conditions." Commander Rosendahl had testified that he was sure Captain McCord could not have had full weather data, otherwise what he did would indicate, unthinkably, ''wholesale disregard of information.")

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