US Navy Airships, 1950s
I was in the mood to share some old airplane photos today, but looked in my folder of scans and found today's vintage pictures of US Navy airships. Unusual! The photos are from different batches, and apparently from different locations, though I believe that both are from the 1950s.
Sadly, both slides have no information written on the cardboard mounts; this landscape has sort of a California feeling to me, but it really could be anywhere. Lakehurst, New Jersey? Akron, Ohio? Oxnard? I have no doubt that one of you will know. Anyway, down on that plain are two silvery airships, basking in the sun, I think one of them is about to lay a clutch of golden eggs (they turn silver as they grow).
I was going to say that this next one could be in Florida, but those hills in the distance (as low as they are) made me rethink that theory. Zooming in on the tail of the nearest airship, it appears to bear the marking "ZW-4", perhaps that will tell you something - I looked it up and got bupkis. Anyway, it's always fun to see a blimp, even in picture form!
11 comments:
The airships look oddly impressive, sitting out there (seemingly) in the middle of nowhere. This is definitely Oxnard. I recognize the oxes and the nards... Or maybe it's Hawaii. I'm always getting those two mixed up. The airship on the left is the one about to lay her clutch of golden eggs. You can tell because she's bigger; she is 'with child', or 'with children'. I know, some will say the one on the left looks bigger because it's closer to the camera. I say, HOGWASH! I know a pregnant airship when I see one! It's also interesting how the photographer caught both airships hurling their breakfast out onto the ground at the same time.
I found this ZW-1 Navy blimp patch on eBay:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/404555867996
I didn't find any reference to ZW-4. With those palm trees, I'm thinking Manitoba, Canada; the "palm tree capital of the world". Or was that Hawaii again? Like I said, I get them mixed up.
I agree, Major. It's always fun and exciting to see blimps! Thanks.
The landscape is definitely giving off So Cal vibes. Dry, almost desert conditions....a bit of green + palms....somebody knows. Who doesn't like a blimp? Blimps are fun, and it was always fun to see the Goodyear blimp sailing about in So Cal, or driving by it's little home off the 405 freeway in Carson in So Cal (I think it was Carson...). They started to do little "electrical parade" lightshows: I'm sure inspired by it's neighbor: not far away. Question for Navy peoples: When I think Airforce I think Airplanes. When I think Army: I think land things. When I think Marines: I think a lot of guys screaming at one another. So why does the Navy (boats/ships) seem to ALSO have things in the air, and these blimps? Are the blimps amphibious? Was the Airfare too fancy? Or is it like yesterday's post with Walt's visual weenies? Blimps would definitely draw me in! Speaking of palm trees in Canada: I did see a gaggle of palms lining a Vancouver lake just after a snow storm. I didn't know they would survive in Canada: perhaps not Manitoba, but on the coast (?) Thanks Major for the blimptastic Saturday!
Blimps mature into barrage balloons, I think, or is it zeppelins? Relatable inflatables at any rate.
I have no idea why the Navy has blimps and not the other services, but I was also mystified by the Army’s Navy until the colonel in charge explained it to me. Maybe Chuck can tell us?
We used to see blimps occasionally on the farm, they were based at Lemoore Naval Air Station nearby. I used to wonder why there was a naval base a hundred miles from the sea, but it was the land base for carrier aircraft and only about 10 minutes jet flight from the ocean. A short commute for those pilots and other aircraft were also based there.
Major, I think those palm trees were brought in by the blimps as nesting material since blimps are native to tropical regions, they want to feel comfortable at home.
Thanks for this mysterious post!
JG
Major, here is a link to USN descriptions…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airships_of_the_United_States_Navy#Semi-rigid_airships
The Z designation appears to refer to fabric clad rigid airships (technically not blimps which are non-rigid) but I can’t find the exact designations you noted.
I had no idea airships were so complicated.
JG
Here’s more…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Navy_aircraft_designations_(pre-1962)#Pre-1954_airship_systems
Z stands for Lighter-Than-Air, and W stands for Early Warning, so these vehicles were probably carrying radar or other equipment to look over the horizon for incoming threats.
Apparently LTA aircraft were phased out in the early 60’s, so maybe the blimps I remember were from Goodyear.
Also barrage balloons were a form of “tethered aerostats” which would also make a great band name.
JG
If I remember correctly, airships were the Navy's province because they were operated much more like a ship than an airplane. There's a Captain to direct the operations and multiple Helmsmen to actually fly the ship, along with navigators and assorted crew to dock it.
Definitely not Lakehurst, NJ. I visited there once. It's in the flat middle of the state with no significant mountains nearby.
These are all K-class airships, built from a design originally introduced at the start of WW II. 134 were delivered between 1942 and 1945, with an upgraded batch of 15 delivered in 1954-55.
There isn’t quite enough information in the first slide to tell if these are upgraded WW II ZP2Ks (later redesignated ZPG-2) or ZP3Ks (later ZPG-3s) or then-new manufacture ZPG-4s, but the second photo shows two ZPG-4s.
I am confused by the “ZW-4” on the lower fin of the ZPG-4 in the second photo. ZW-1 was the squadron identifier of Airship Early Warning Squadron One, based at NAS Lakehurst, NJ, and there was an Airship Patrol Squadron Four (ZP-4) based I think at NAS Weeksville, NC, from 1951-57, but there was no ZW-4. I have found two other photos of a ZPG-4 with “ZW-4” on the lower fin, but whether those are all pictures of the same blimp or whether that was a squadron marking of some kind applied to all aircraft of that unit I don’t know.
As far as the locations of the photos, the first one sure looks like California. There were blimps stationed at NAS Santa Ana (later known as MCAS Tustin, no closed) and NAS Moffett Field in Sunnyvale, but the last units departed in 1947. This could be an older color slide than the 1950s, or it could show some sort of temporary deployment to the West Coast.
The second photo looks like it could have been taken in Hawaii, although I suppose Guam is a possibility as well. Blimps can operate from places with no runways, which is an operational advantage.
We had tethered aerostats with remote-controlled cameras at various strategic locations around Baghdad when I was “over there” in 2010-11, which a few of us of a more historical bent jokingly referred to as “barrage balloons” (we also called the ceremonial gate to the compound where we lived, a former Saddam palace, the “Brandenburg Gate;” we were a bunch of “jolly jokers” as Stalag 13’s Sergeant Schultz might have called us). They were pretty useful in providing a long-endurance surveillance platform that didn’t move or run out of fuel.
Bu, there was actually talk after WWII about transferring all Navy & Marine Corps aviation assets to an independent Air Force (similar to what the Brits did in 1918 when the RAF was formed), but wiser (in my opinion, anyway) heads prevailed. Each Service uses its air assets a little differently in accomplishing their core missions and needs their own aviation branch to do that. But I understand the layman’s confusion. Air Force recruiting spiked the year after Top Gun came out.
I have spent most of my adult life explaining to civilians the differences between the Services and their missions (which I find a bit odd at times as nobody ever confuses the Police Department with the Fire Department) and have resigned myself that it’s just one of those things I have to accept. It is a bit much though when somebody exasperatedly asks “How am I supposed to know you’re in the Air Force and not the Army if you are wearing a camouflage uniform?” especially since there was patch on the front of my uniform that clearly said “U.S. AIR FORCE” in bold, capital letters. [sigh]
JG, the Navy used blimps primarily for long-range patrol and anti submarine warfare. The long endurance times were a plus, and blimps cannot be shot down by torpedoes. From the mid-‘50s until 1961, the Navy also used some specialized blimps in the airborne early warning (AEW) role, carrying radars and searching for inbound aircraft. One blimp was able to stay aloft for the same duration as 5 EC-121 AEW Super Constellation missions flown in succession.
US Navy operated airships at Panama Canal Zone:
https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/exploration-and-innovation/airships-dirigibles.html
Wikipedia says "ZW" designates Airborne Early Warning, 1954-1962:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Navy_aircraft_designations_(pre-1962)#ZW:_Airborne_Early_Warning_(1954%E2%80%931962)
second photo maybe Canal Zone?
JB, I would imagine that traveling by airship would be pretty cool, especially if you were someplace scenic. Hawaii? How about gliding above Disneyland? I think I have a slide of a Goodyear blimp above the park. Instead of “with child” or “pregnant”, I prefer to use the high-falutin’ word “gravid”. Manitoba? I love to go there and relax on the white sandy beaches, sipping a tropical drink!
Bu, yes, I am sure somebody will glean more info from these than I did (a low bar). Blimps are cool, though I always wonder how they would fare in relatively high wind situations. When I lived in Huntington Beach I remember seeing blimps from our car, but I was too young to know where we were. I thought it might have been the El Toro Marine base? I’m not sure about why blimps were the purview of the Navy, it probably has to do with the Freemasons. Palms in a Vancouver snow storm, well whadaya know!
JG, I was surprised years ago when speaking to a woman much older than me, she had never heard of barrage balloons. And she’d been alive during WWII. I figured if I knew what they were, she should! I remember SoCal legend Huell Howser doing a feature about the Goodyear Blimp on PBS, I wonder if I can find that on YouTube? You know so much about the nesting habits of blimps, you obviously went to Oxnard University.
JG, I thought that all blimps were fabric-clad?? At least back in the day? I’m sure now they use fancy stuff like carbon fiber (well, maybe not).
JG, interesting that these were “Early Warning” craft.They seem so slow and ungainly in the era of radar, sonar, etc. I suppose that’s why they were phased out, sadly. Remember the “barrage balloons” that were in Tomorrowland when it first opened??
Dean Dinder (!!), ah, that kind of makes sense actually. Plus the crew liked to wear the little Captain’s hats like Thurston Howell III. I didn’t really think that the photos showed Lakehurst NJ, I just knew that that was where the Hindenburg caught fire.
Chuck, oh boy, here we go! It’s CHUCK TIME! Hmmm, mysterious about the ZW-4 designation, I thought for sure that would be a solid clue for folks (but not for me). North Carolina is not a bad guess for the location of that second photo though, when I think about it. I don’t think the first slide goes back as far as 1947, based on the usual clues (slide shape, slide mount, etc). Hawaii! Oh that’s interesting. And Guam, anything is possible. Wow, I’m amazed that “tethered aerostats” were (are?) still being used as recently as the 2010s. Wow, you lived in one of Saddam’s former palaces? Crazy! I think an entirely new branch of the US Military should be formed, called Blimp Corps. They’d have volunteers aplenty! And blimp pilots get the girls, everybody knows that. Funny that you’ve had to spend so much time explaining about the responsibilities of the various Services. Don’t they know that you wear camo to hide from the cloud people?? It’s also odd that these people seem to be not just curious, but exasperated. They need a nap. Blimps might not be vulnerable to torpedoes, but there’s other stuff that a blimp would not like. Arrows, for instance! Thanks Chuck.
LTL, oh interesting! I guess I always imagined Panama as being more mountainous, but it might be flatter in areas closer to the sea.
Major, sorry - I didn’t mean to imply that I lived in the palace. I lived in a pre-fab Containerized Housing Unit (CHU), which was essentially a mobile home in the dimensions of a shipping container. The bathrooms were down the street in another CHU, although my unit did have a window and an air conditioner/heater. Not sure I would have wanted to live in the palace itself - the upper floors were condemned and unstable due to bomb damage from an air raid before we occupied the place - but I did work out there. It was kind of funny to lift weights in a richly—adorned room that looked like a 1950s movie set of some opulent Arab dining room.
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