Three Men on a Rope

In a huge circle about the mooring mast at Camp Kearney, near San Diego, Calif., ten thousand people assembled one morning last week to watch the U. S. S. Akron dock for refueling after a turbulent transcontinental passage. Poking through a gradually lifting fog, the great ship dipped slowly three times, three times was whisked up by rising strata of warm air before the ground crews could grab the spider lines from rings on two dangling cables. The fourth time the crowd cheered as the crew caught hold, started to tug the Akron's tossing silver nose toward the stub mast.

With a loud crack the ring on the starboard cable broke. The Akron rolled to port like a porpoise. As the ship lurched, 100 sailors in the port ground crew dragged with all their might. Some even climbed up the grab lines the better to hold down the bouncing ship.* A sudden blast of air drove the ship up, jerked the crew into the air. Most of them dropped off, sprawled in a heap on the ground. One plunked down 20 ft., fractured his arm. But soaring rapidly the Akron jerked three sailors so high that they dared not let go. Struggling to keep their grip, they lashed about desperately. On the ground women screamed, men wept, officers shouted, sailors ran around wildly. Then Sailor Edfall shot down like a bag of sand, 150 ft. to his death. Two figures still clung to the end of the swinging ropes. One of these soon let go.

"It's the acrobat!" shouted an enlisted man. Kicking and waving his arms as he fell, Sailor Nigel M. Henton, the training station's best gymnast, bounced on the hard-packed earth in a little puff of dust. Ambulances which soon came shrieking up were not needed at all.

The crowd watched the Akron rise to 2,000 ft. with the one man still dangling beneath her. The heat grew oppressive. A yell went up as the lump at the end of the cable showed life. Sailor Charles ("Bud") Cowart had straddled a toggle above the ring at the end of the cable, was taking two bowline hitches about his waist. Several times' Lieut. Commander Rosendahl maneuvered the tossing ship toward earth, but fearing that Sailor Cowart would be bashed to death, soared again. Firemen stretched nets to try to catch him if he fell.

Airplane men have their Caterpillar Club. Airship men who have dangled on ropes might call themselves Spiders. After two hours the lump at the end of the Akron's cable began to rise slowly spider-wise, toward a port in the forward part of the lifeless, floating ship. As the cable shortened Sailor Cowart's oscillations grew more violent. When he disappeared into the port, the crowd murmured with relief but no one cheered.

Aboard the ship Sailor Cowart spurned spirits of ammonia. Said he: "Gimme something to eat." He set off immediately on a curiosity tour of the Akron. After the ship was successfully moored later that evening, Sailor Cowart stubbornly refused to tell his story to reporters, despite the friendly coaxing of Commander Rosendahl. A welterweight boxer out for the All-Navy championship, he said: "I'll have to see my manager before I talk." His manager sold the story to the highest bidder, Hearst's Universal Service, Inc.

Commander Rosendahl said: "I am greatly grieved and shocked. ... It is the first time a fatal accident has occurred in the landing of a navy dirigible. . . . The accident may be ascribed to . . . the weather . . . and the inexperienced ground crew. . . ."

Over the bad lands of West Texas the Akron rode out storms which delayed her a day on her first transcontinental trip, but which demonstrated beyond doubt the ship's structural strength and airworthiness. Numerous alarmed Texans reported the ship laboring in distress. Not realizing that the safest place for a dirigible is the air, amateur ground crews were rushed together. But Commander Rosendahl radioed: "Please inform both San Angelo and Randolph field that no ... landing is intended but their efforts are appreciated very much."

Delays, however, ate into the ship's food & fuel, forced her to dock at Camp Kearney. Before the Akron cruised leisurely on up to Sunnyvale, Calif., 24 of the crew were sent ahead by plane. In maneuvering at Camp Kearney 33% of the helium had been valved. At Sunnyvale the Akron was forced by atmospheric conditions to meander over San Francisco Bay all day before docking.

Three Men on a Spot

Toward a spot on the Atlantic 47 mi. west of Fastnet Light, off the tip of southern Ireland, three men were hurrying last week. They had no rendezvous. It was sheer luck that when Louis T. Reichers set his crippled monoplane down in a sea whipped up by a nasty blow, Captain George Fried of the S. S. Roosevelt, famed for his North Atlantic rescues, was there with his equally famed Chief Officer Harry Manning to send overside in a lifeboat. Chief Officer Manning yanked Pilot Reichers out of his foundering plane, unharmed save for a broken nose, a lacerated face. After they clambered back on board, Captain Fried abandoned the lifeboat, pointed his ship toward Manhattan, wrote a signed dispatch for the Associated Press.

Thus ended an attempt "to determine the practicability of a transatlantic air messenger service, to be backed by Mr. Macfadden." Owned by Publisher Bernarr Macfadden, the black-&-gold Lockheed Altair monoplane carried a 50-lb. payload, an additional gas tank in the rear cockpit where Publisher Macfadden was wont to ride about the U. S. Taking off from Newark Airport late at night, Pilot Reichers roared to Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, in 6 hr. 19 min. As he taxied up the field, the plane's tail skid threw a rock through the fuselage, injuring the stabilizer controls. Quickly repairing the damage, he sped off for Paris via Dublin. When finally forced down by a cracked wing and fuel shortage, Pilot Reichers was within 150 mi. of his scheduled stop, 51 mi. from land.

* Knowing that if a dirigible lifts them off the earth, it may well carry them up 2,000 ft, experienced ground men will drop the lines when pulled up 2 in., will never jump for a better purchase. Waiting at the Sunnyvale hangar, near San Francisco, was a Lakehurst-trained crew, shipped West to handle the Akron.

*In 1928 while attempting to dock the Los Angeles at Lakehurst, a snow squall whipped the ship up 500 ft., jerked eight men with her. All were pulled aboard. But not pulled aboard last year was Mascot Tige, nine-month-old bullpup. Always eager to aid the ground crew of Navy blimp J3, Mascot Tige clamped his teeth in a line as the blimp rose, relaxed his jaws at 400 ft., plummeted to his death (TIME, May 18, 1931).

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