Akron Aftermath (Cont'd)

P: Practically any course chosen by the late captain of the U. S. S. Akron, other than the one he did choose, might have taken the ship out of danger.

P: The Akron's aerologist (who went down with his ship) had predicted thunderstorms "but had no doubt of the ship's ability to avoid bad weather."

P: The one surviving officer believes the ship was broken by striking the water. The two surviving enlisted men believe she was broken by wind a few moments before she hit the sea.

P: Before casting off for her last flight, the Akron was scheduled for extensive repairs, involving one of the girders which the enlisted men saw snap as she crashed. Nevertheless "she was as sound as when she first arrived in Lakehurst."

P: A vertical current rammed the ship down. . . . Suddenly speeded engines pulled her tail lower. ... A green helmsman at the elevator controls let her nose rise too high, causing a stall. . . . Jammed elevators. . . . Damaged stabilizer. . . . Broken gas cells. . . .

Such was the welter of testimony-- plausible, contradictory, inconclusive--before the Naval Court of Inquiry when it adjourned last week from Lakehurst Naval Air Station to Washington Navy Yard. The court was moved to the Capital because witnesses were required to appear also before the joint Congressional investigating committee which convenes this week.

Man with Beard. Shortly before the court left Lakehurst, in walked a startling little man, forehead bald as a bullet, and sat himself in the witness chair. Piercing blue eyes blazed above a pickled Mephistophelian profile--long, hooked nose and pointed reddish beard. He was Captain Anton Heinen who began testing and flying Zeppelins in Germany in 1910. He flew the Bodensee between Berlin and Friedrichshafen with clocklike regularity and claims to have carried 100,000 passengers without a single casualty in ten years piloting. The U. S. Navy hired him in 1922 to help supervise construction of the Shenandoah and train its first crew. Lieut.-Commander Herbert V. Wiley, Akron survivor, was his pupil. When the Shenandoah broke from her moorings in a 70-mi, gale with 21 men aboard, it was Capt. Heinen who brought her back, damaged but whole. His contract expired in 1924 and he left Navy employ following bitter controversies with high officers over airship practice. Three years ago he formed a company to build and sell "air yachts" (four-passenger blimps) for $10,000 each. The scheme failed. Currently he lives at Lakewood, N. J., frequently breaks into print as an oracle on airship matters. Last week he had a chance to augment his meagre finances by reporting the Lakehurst inquiry for Hearst's International News Service. Yet he said he would donate the proceeds to a fund for the families of Akron victims.

Capt. Heinen was seated in one of the wide-armed Press chairs, painstakingly writing notes of testimony, when the judge advocate called him to the witness stand. Taking the jumbled jigsaw bits of eyewitness testimony, he fitted them against his own background of experience:

P: He agreed with Commander Wiley that a sudden down-current of air forced the Akron's tail into water, and that that broke the ship.

P: The minor breaks and buckling of girders reported from previous flights only testified to the Akron's elasticity, a necessary characteristic of rigid ships.

P: There was no reason why the Akron should not have been taken out in bad weather. "A ship of the size and cruising radius of the Akron could be operated under any conditions." He had taken Zeppelins into worse weather many a time. But--

P: The captain should have avoided the storm centre, and could have done so, in absence of complete data, by one of two methods which have been orthodox Zeppelin practice since early days of airshipping: 1) maneuver the ship down close to the water (say, 300 ft.), ascertain exactly its speed, drift, altitude; slow down the motors and trim the ship carefully; make deliberate weather observations and chart a new course; 2) take the ship high above the storm--perhaps to 12,000 ft.--survey the storm area and escape directly, or ride it out at a safe height.

Capt. Heinen, like the other witnesses who saw where better judgment might have saved 73 lives and the ship, refrained from laying direct blame on Capt. Frank Carey McCord, the Akron's master. They left the impression that theirs were comparatively easy second guesses which Capt. McCord was not permitted after his one disastrously wrong guess; but that the Akron's doom was not inevitable.

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