Word: blimps
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...port convoy-a thing which is impossible for coastal shipping at a time when the U.S. Navy is busy convoying to Australia, to Iceland, to the Middle East. But the U.S. Navy has begun to develop a substitute which may prove to be a lifeline-saver: convoy by blimp...
Fortnight ago Rear Admiral John Wills Greenslade, commissioning Moffett Field in California as a base for blimp patrols on the West Coast, said: "To date on both coasts no convoy has been successfully attacked while under lighter-than-air convoy." He might have said more...
...with airline luxury-three bunks, chrome chairs, cookstove. There is a reason for these comforts. Effective watch is a terrible strain, especially when the lookout must scan not only the surface, but underwater-for U-boats have a habit of lying motionless on the continental shelf in daytime. Consequently blimp observers can stand watch only a little over an hour at a time, are encouraged to doze during the off watches. Any comfort they can be given is not wasted...
Piloting a blimp requires great skill. Both pilot and copilot work hard. They have an instrument panel much like that of an airplane to watch, also numerous pressure gauges and valves which control altitude. Steering, especially on windy days, is work for two men: the chief pilot works the elevators, the copilot the rudder. The number of blimps now in service is secret. It is not yet large, but within a few months it is expected to be. If it is, the U.S. will have what amounts to a two-ocean Navy sooner than it expected...
...Blimp-built Hermann Göring, who used to boast about how fast his Luftwaffe was going to flatten England, was walking on his heels last week. Increasingly it appeared that the bully boys of his Air Force were in no position to tangle with the R.A.F. on its vast sweeps across the Channel. While the Luftwaffe husbanded its strength, the R.A.F. slugged Nazi bases from Le Havre on up to the Baltic. They also reached 700 miles to Pilsen, Bohemia, where they bombed the huge Skoda works...