Wiley to Macon

"If ever the Navy's great airship, the U. S. S. Macan, should be wrenched apart by a line squall as the Shenandoah was nine years ago or come to a catastrophic end in the sea as the Akron did last year, the officer who on the basis of past performance will have the best chance of survival is round-faced Lieut. Commander Herbert Vincent ("Doc") Wiley. "Doc" Wiley was aboard the Shenandoah when it broke over Ohio. "Doc" Wiley was aboard the Akron when it crashed off the New Jersey coast, the only officer to escape (see cut).

Last week the Navy announced that about June 1 Commander Wiley would take command of the Macon. He is a veteran of five years' service on the sturdy old Los Angeles (now decommissioned). Before the House Naval Affairs Committee investigating the Akron's fate, he told how water rushing into one cabin window washed him out of another, how he swam clear of the ship. When the inquiry was over he was sent to sea as navigating officer on a cruiser. Commander Alger Herman Dresel, who has been the Macon's skipper since it first emerged from the Goodyear-Zeppelin dock, will take command of the Naval Air Station at Sunnyvale, Calif. Onetime commander of both the Los Angeles and Akron, he is the first officer to command three U. S. airships. Among other announced lighter-than-air transfers was that of Commander Charles Ernery Rosendahl from sea duty to take charge of the Naval Air Station at Lakehurst and of the Navy's lighter-than-air training. Shenandoah survivor, onetime Los Angeles commander, first Akron skipper. Commander Rosendahl, 41, is generally considered the Navy's No. 1 lighter-than-air man.

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