Word: airship
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Schweppes keeps an eagle eye on its 150 franchised bottlers around the world (61 in the U.S.), sending them the essence and forcing them to airship samples of ingredients and products to England for testing. At the same time, the company carefully oversees advertising and leans toward stylish copy. "We start at the top of the pyramid," says one executive, "because we know the levels underneath will follow the people immediately above...
...over The Great Eyrie and see what they could see. They never made it. As the balloon approached the summit, a peculiar projectile came whooshing up and-splat! The gasbag fell into a crater. When the passengers came to their senses, they found themselves aboard the sort of crazy airship schoolboys have been sketching ever since Jules Verne produced those tomes of fantascience (Master of the World, Robur the Conqueror] that inspired this properly naive and lively little subteen special...
...over the Arctic Circle and around the world, traveling more than a million miles before it was decommissioned in 1937. But after three disasters, when the U.S. Navy's dirigibles Shenandoah, Akron and Macon were wrecked with a total loss of 83 lives, the U.S. abandoned its rigid-airship program. The spectacular explosion of the Hindenburg at Lakehurst in 1937 put a final end to the dream of Zeppelin...
...caught the eye of Fisherman Frank Mikuletzky as it nosed toward the fishing boat Doris May III. Suddenly, Mikuletzky shouted as the ZPG gently folded and dropped "like a sagging banana." Aboard the blimp, Crewman Antonio Contreras, 22, heard a blast, felt the airship nose over, and seconds later was fighting his way free into the water. Only two of his mates survived the unexplained crash with him. One crewman died after being pulled from the sea; 17 others drowned in their double-decked gondola under 15 fathoms. Later, the missing sloop was spotted by planes and a submarine...
...crash brought the argument full circle. Vice Admiral Charles E. Rosendahl, U.S.N. (ret.), a survivor of the Shenandoah crash but still the champion of the big, rigid ships, hastened to accuse the Navy of "questionable wisdom" in building oversized, noncompartmented blimps, suggested that with modern construction methods rigid airships would be far safer. Blimp men were equally quick to defend their ships. Even though he still could not explain the crash. Captain Frederick N. Klein Jr., commanding officer of Fleet Airship Wing One (which includes the three remaining ZPGs, along with some smaller blimps), insisted: "I still think we have...