U.S. History on CD-ROM/US History on CD-ROM - Bureau Development Inc. 1990.ISO/dp/0069/00697.txt

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$Unique_ID{USH00697}
$Pretitle{71}
$Title{Naval Aviation in World War I
First Lighter-Than-Air Class at Akron}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Van Wyen, Adrian O.}
$Affiliation{Naval Aviation News}
$Subject{first
navy
training
akron
flights
ground
naval
air
goodyear
maxfield}
$Volume{}
$Date{1969}
$Log{}
Book:        Naval Aviation in World War I
Author:      Van Wyen, Adrian O.
Affiliation: Naval Aviation News
Date:        1969

First Lighter-Than-Air Class at Akron

     Like hundreds of young Americans in the spring of 1917, I wanted to fly -
and I wanted to fly Navy.  All I had to back up the desire was less than a
year of college and five years of weekend ballooning as a member of the Flight
Club at Akron, sponsored by Goodyear.  I was working in Chicago at the time
and I haunted the local recruiting office and the Great Lakes Training
Station, seeking a way in.

     In mid-May I received my call.  A letter from Great Lakes, stating that I
was eligible for enrollment as a Seaman 2nd Class, Class 4, for training in
aviation, instructed me to report for a physical.  I reported and I flunked -
underweight!  My only recourse was to request a waiver, but no one knew how
long that would take or if indeed it would be granted.

     One of the circulars accompanying the letter from Great Lakes referred to
work to be done about aircraft (airplanes, seaplanes, balloons and
dirigibles)."  This indicated to me that Goodyear might be involved.  Since
Akron was my home and I was a former Goodyear employee, I got on the phone and
learned that extensive plans were being formulated for Navy lighter-than-air
training at Akron and that Goodyear was indeed involved.  Details would have
to come from the Navy Department, but Navy personnel in Chicago were helpful
to the point of indicating that the program was to get underway on June 1st.
They also suggested that I go to Akron to see the senior naval officer.  They
gave me a letter dated May 26, 1917, addressed to that officer, stating that
waivers on weight had been requested and that I was otherwise qualified.

     On arrival in Akron, an inquiry or two revealed the senior officer name,
Lt. Louis H. Maxfield, and his current headquarters.  An early phone call on a
rainy morning announcing the arrival of his first trainee, who was not even
enrolled in the Navy, was, he told me later, somewhat of a surprise.  Lt.
Maxfield instructed me to meet him next morning at 0830 for a trip to the
"station" located at Fritsche's Lake (later Wingfoot), a few miles southeast
of Akron.  After reminding me not to discuss my un-enrolled status with
anyone, we took off in a pickup truck assigned to the unit by Goodyear.  En
route, we speculated on where the rest of the trainees were and when they
might arrive.

     The station area was a sea of mud.  However, a landing field had been
cleared and leveled, a hangar measuring 400x100x100 feet was almost complete,
shops had been built and equipped, a hydrogen plant was ready for use and
barracks for the students and quarters for the officers were finished.  A
temporary mess hall had been provided in a farm house on the property and work
was being rushed on larger barracks, mess halls and other facilities necessary
to house the station complement of enlisted men when they arrived.  All this
construction on a field of roughly 720 acres was done in an incredibly short
time by contractors working night and day under Goodyear supervision.

     I learned that arrangements as they stood at the time were that Navy
would provide the trainees and Goodyear would do the rest.  This included
furnishing the equipment and supplies, providing instructors for flight
training and for some of the ground school subjects such as elementary physics
and meteorology, and responsibility for the day-to-day operation of the field.
Naval officers would teach navigation, seamanship, signalling, communications
and - Drill!  Later many of these subjects were transferred to special Ground
Schools such as the one at MIT, but for our gang, Wingfoot Lake was it.

     Returning to town, we found that three officers and one trainee had
arrived.  The officers were: Ltjgs. Emory W. Coil and Ralph G. Pennoyer and
Ens. Frederick P. Culbert, all of whom would serve on the staff; the trainee
was Colley Bell.  Next day we moved to the station.  Ens. Culbert drove his
own car, the rest of us piled into the pickup.  I don't know how the officers
worked out the assignment of quarters, but Bell and I had free choice in the
barracks and we picked bunks in the corner, where there was good cross
ventilation, and far away from the stairs and showers.

     Before too long, we were called below - pleasantly enough, this being the
first time - and asked what experience we had in drill.  Our answer was
negative.  Every day from then until the rest of the group arrived, the two of
us marched and counter marched, forward and to the rear; we advanced as
skirmishers, faced right, left and about; and soon could do the grand right
and left by squads with our eyes closed.  We heard many a snicker and guffaw
from the civilians, but our officers appeared to take it seriously, as indeed
we did.  Neither one of us will ever forget Ens. Culbert.

     After only a few days, which seemed like weeks to Bell and me, the main
body of the first class arrived.  As finally constituted there were 12
members, as follows: Colley W. Bell, Arthur D. Brewer, Noel Chadwick, George
Crompton, Merrill P. Delano, Richard C. Gartz, Warner L. Hamlen, Charles G.
Little, Ralph M. Strader, Andrew B. Talbot, William P. Whitehouse and Arthur
S. Williams.  Of the 12, seven were from Harvard.

     After reporting aboard, the scrambling for bunks ended up with all hands
reasonably satisfied.  Compared with some of the quarters in those early days,
we were well off, as many of us were to learn in future assignments.  Class
schedules were now posted, notebooks broken out, and we were ready for the
serious business of learning to fly.

     We started on the ground with classes in Theory of Flight, Meteorology,
Signaling and Radio, Engines, much of which was practical work, and - Drill.
Flight training was in three types of lighter-than-air craft.  We began with
kite balloons which were tethered by a cable to a winch on the ground.  Three
flights were required at between one and two thousand feet, primarily to
accustom us to the sensation of being in the air but also to give us some
experience in reading instruments.  From these, we graduated to free balloons.
These ride the air and wind currents and can be controlled only to the extent
of changing altitude to meet air moving in the general direction of desired
travel.  The balloon rises when ballast is dropped; descends when gas is
valved.  We made three flights as passengers in these balloons and then two
solo flights of about one hour each.  On the latter, the student supervised
inflation, directed the start and, after landing, deflated and packed the
balloon for return to base in a pickup truck.

     One of my darkest moments occurred during my first free hop.  Lt.
Maxfield was the skipper and there were two others in the basket with us.
Lift-off was uneventful.  We sailed along, keeping an eye on the ground crew
following us in the pickup truck.  It carried two students who would exchange
places with us as we made two intermediate landings.  On the first landing I
was to be first out and, in spite of my previous experience in ballooning, all
I could think of was the "step lively" instruction given by the skipper.  I
was out before my replacement had a chance to get aboard and with the load
suddenly lightened the balloon went up, fast, to almost 9,000 feet, before the
skipper could stop the ascent.  I didn't dare look up.  They lost so much gas
stopping that further flight had to be abandoned and I had to face the stony
silence of all of them as we packed up the balloon and loaded it on the truck
for return to the station.

     From balloons we progressed to blimps.  The first we flew were the A
type, slimmer and more pointed than those of later years.  Then we moved on to
the B's, but there were many modifications of both.  The earliest had three
ballonets inside the envelope, the center for hydrogen and those fore and aft
for air.  The air bags were separately connected to a blower engine in the
car.  By blowing air into or exhausting it from these ballonets, the nose or
the tail could be made heavy or light to bring the nose up or down. The volume
of air also provided pressure to compensate for the expansion and contraction
of the hydrogen gas during ascent and descent, thus retaining the shape of the
envelope and the tension on all cables to the car.  In later models the
arrangement of the ballonets was modified and an air scoop set in the prop
wash replaced the blower engine, but the principle of operation remained the
same.  The car was simply a modified Curtiss Jenny fuselage, complete with
OX-5 engine, slung under the bag. Skids with small pneumatic bumper bags
underneath were used instead of wheels.  Three place affairs, the forward seat
was for the mechanic, the after seat for the aide and the center seat for the
pilot.  Progress of the student determined his place.  The course required 18
flights in all.  On the first five, the student served as mechanic with
responsibility for starting the engine and watching over it generally.  On the
next five, he rode in the back seat from which point he operated the blower
motor, if the blimp had one, and began operating the dual controls under
direction of the pilot/instructor, Assuming he was ready, he then took over as
pilot with the instructor in the after seat, and, after a few flights in full
command, he was ready for the final qualification flights.

     Our first muster was something to see.  Uniforms were only things to
dream about and look forward to.  Nothing matched anything; black shoes -
brown shoes, yachting caps - pancake caps, wrap arounds - leather puttees - no
puttees, jodhpurs - slacks; each outfit reflected individual personality.  Not
a few Adam's apples bobbed up and down as our officers looked us over.  Lt.
Maxfield took appropriate action.  Within the week, a naval tailor from
Washington promised an early appearance which he made, complete with tapes,
chalk, measurement pads, swatches and photographs galore - to show how we
would look.  Visions of khakis, greens and dress blues, leather puttees,
shoulder boards and caps with assorted covers were just too much for some of
us.  All evening the phone was kept hot as families, sweethearts, girl friends
and business friends had to be told the good news.  It was mid-July, however,
before the uniforms arrived.  Having them perked up our appearance
considerably; we all stood a little taller and straighter.

     On June 22nd, Lt. Maxfield issued orders involving actual flying of naval
aircraft to all of the group except me.  I was still not enrolled.  But on
that same day, I was notified that my request for waiver had been granted and
I could now be sworn in.  After better than three weeks of hard active duty, I
was finally in the Navy.

     Training went along on schedule.  With preliminary ground school well
underway, we started in kite balloons on June 16, moved to free balloons the
next week and then progressed to blimps about the middle of August.  We
accomplished some things that loom important today but at the time none of us
knew enough to realize it.  We did know what was going on, however - we were
flying like crazy.  This was particularly true after a distinguished looking,
middle-aged gentleman arrived on the station, carefully carrying a glass tube
or bottle some 20 inches tall.  We had no idea what it was but it looked
exactly like today's radio tube in a giant economy size.  It was Dr. Lee
DeForest who, with Lt. James Lavender, was engaged in a research project
associated with ground-to-air communications.  Between training flights, we
took them up or helped handle the lines, day after day.  Sometimes they would
scarcely be clear of the ground before the "land" signal was given and down
they would come again.  It was exhausting work but it gave us what we know now
was an opportunity to participate in a small way in an important development.

     Eventually these experiments were completed and our training continued.
By now we were flying on longer and more frequent flights.  Night flights came
into the picture and, although we had all been up at night in a balloon, a
night flight in an airship was an interesting experience. Finally we began to
qualify.  On September 21, the first eight men successfully passed the final
tests and when the recommendation of our commanding officer was approved by
the Secretary of the Navy on October 5, 1917, they were designated Naval
Aviators (Dirigibles).  The others qualified not too long afterwards.

     By late October, shoulder boards and cap devices could be broken out and
our uniforms were complete.  We were now Ensigns, USNRF, and ready for any
operational task to which the Navy might decide to assign us.

     The detachment of our commanding officer, LCdr. L. H. Maxfield, and Ltjg.
F. P. Culbert on September 27, and the assumption of command by Lt. E. W. Coil
was the beginning of the change.  But for us the real breakup began on October
7 On that day, seven of us destined for immediate assignment overseas were
given leave to await further orders.  They came on November 2.  We were
ordered to France with several stops en route.  It turned out to be quite a
tour.

     On November 9th, we gathered at the Brooklyn Navy Yard - Strader, Talbot,
Whitehouse, Brewer, Little, Delano and Hamlen - and sailed aboard the American
liner St. Louis.  The monotony of the voyage was tempered by the company of
young ladies of the Red Cross, chaperoned by Mrs. J. Borden Harriman, en route
to service in France.  After landing at Liverpool, we "Reported Aboard" to the
American Consul at Liverpool; to Admiral Sims and the Naval Attache at London;
to the Commander, U.S. Naval Aviation Forces, France, and the Naval Attache at
Paris; to the Commandant, Centre d'Aviation Maritime and the U.S. Navy Senior
Officer Present at Rochefort; to the Commandant, Patrouilles Ariennes de la
Loire at St. Nazaire; and to the U.S. Navy Command at Center de Dirigible,
Paimboeuf.

     Although there was little chance of getting lost on this one-week
journey, what with the "tabs" being kept on us, there was at least one bright
spot - and one dark one.  The first was a pleasant reunion with LCdr. Maxfield
at Rochefort which carried on to duty at Paimboeuf under his command.  The
shocker was our first lunch at the Officers Mess at Rochefort where we were
informed that we were to speak only French in the Mess as well as elsewhere on
board, as quickly as we could get a working vocabulary in shape.  The second
was that the entree at our first meal was escargots - snails, by whatever
other name, to me!  Thank goodness there was plenty of vin rouge available.

     Those less fortunate than we were assigned to duty at lighter-than-air
patrol stations along the Atlantic Coast.  Gartz went to Cape May, Bell to
Rockaway, Crompton and Williams to Montauk point, and Chadwick, who would
eventually go to Key West, stayed on at Akron to help train the next class.
It was considerably larger than ours and included many of the enlisted men who
had handled our lines and kept us flying.

     Others who took training with this class while serving on the staff or in
other capacities included L. H. Maxfield, E. W. Coil, F. P. Culbert, R. G.
Pennoyer and W. G. Child, all of whom qualified before leaving, and Ralph
Kiely, Zachary Lansdowne and J. P. Norfleet, who completed their training at
other locations.

     Training continued at Akron through the war period and as more men
acquired the necessary skills, the Navy gradually took over more of the
responsibility for instruction and upkeep.  When graduates of the Ground
School at MIT began arriving, some reduction in the length of the course was
possible by eliminating some of the ground subjects already covered at that
school.

     This was the first airship pilot training program established by the
Navy.  Through the war, Akron remained the main source of LTA pilots, although
some were trained at other stations.  The Company and the many people of
Goodyear, who undertook this program without previous experience in airship
design and with very little background in their operation, deserve credit and
praise for their enterprise, their contribution to the war effort and, above
all, their work in making this the true launching of the Navy's
lighter-than-air program.