RS-1

R51

What happened to the RS-1, largest semirigid dirigible in the world (TIME, Jan. 18), on her third trial flight?

The flight was made in January over Scott Field (Belleville, Ill.). Newspaper reporters, having attended the uneventful christening party the fortnight before, took no notice when Lieutenant O. B. Anderson piloted the ship from her hangar and pointed her nose aloft. They did not hear how, warned by radio of approaching high winds, the RS-1 interrupted a flight of four hours and made for home; how, when she settled earthward and was being dragged indoors with ropes, the northwest wind so increased that she was buffeted about like a dory in breakers, until Lieutenant Anderson ordered the engines started, the ropes cast off, and took the ship aloft to fight for her life with her own strength.

The story came to light last week and the teller made a fearsome tale of it. He was Charles P. Burgess, an associate professor of aeronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was assigned a place in the RS-1's crew of 13 as technical observer. He had also been aboard the late Shenandoah that night in 1924 when she broke loose from her mooring mast at Lakehurst, N. J. (TIME, Jan. 28, 1924), and he described the forced flight of the RS-1 as "far more violent."

Burgess' Account. According to Mr. Burgess, the RS-1, when her ropes had been cast off, was headed into the wind and out of the storm-centre. The radio officer was having his troubles; could not shake the interference of a broadcast prayer-meeting as he tried to report their plight and receive advice. All evening the big ship bored into the wind; at 1:30 a. m. she was 44 miles from home and making no headway. The thermometer was near zero. There was no food or drink save onions left from lunch. All were in terror, for as the great bag shuddered overhead with tumultuous concussions, they heard the sound that froze the hearts of those aboard the Shenandoah just before she crumpled over Ohio--the sound of breaking struts over the control cabin. All were suffering from thirst, hunger and fatigue when, in the wild grey dawn, the hangar was finally reached without catastrophe and with the control cabin hanging by its suspension cables only.

Official Rejoinder. Mr. Burgess' account was promptly deprecated by Lieutenant Colonel John A. Paegelow, commandant of Scott Field. He corroborated that the ship had been forced to stay aloft 19 hours, but denied any "harrowing experience." In particular he pointed out that the terrible sounds allegedly heard in the control cabin must have been figments of imagination; the RS-1 had broken no cabin struts--she had none to break.

The Significance. Airmen were quick to understand why an arduous experience of the RS-1 had been hushed up, if indeed it had been hushed up and not simply regarded at the time as an ordinary trial in line of duty. Since the Shenandoah crash, public confidence in dirigible flying has been so shaken that the progress of commercial aviation is seriously impeded. A dirigible company that was being formed by Captain Anton Heinen, transatlantic pilot of the Shenandoah and her savior the night she was torn loose at Lakehurst, had to be abandoned indefinitely. No similar project will prosper until dirigibles perform new feats. Success for Roald Amundsen's flight from "Rome to Nome" in the Norge would aid materially; as would a polar flight by Germans in a Zeppelin as proposed last fortnight.