The airship service suffered its first casualty in 1942 when Lt. Trotter, gallant and resourceful pilot of balloons and ships, was killed in a collision, in which Lt. Comdr. Rounds also lost his life.
The Goodyear fleet passed out of existence with the war. The ships being the same size as the Navy training ships, it was a simple matter to change them over, paint the new name on their broad sides.
Facilities for ship construction became useful also in the new war. An airship hangar is unlike any other structure in the world. It must be broad and high and free of supporting girders. There were two large airship docks at Akron, half a dozen smaller ones over the country. At hand, too, was equipment for helium purification and storage, along with radio and weather gear, mobile mooring masts and other specialized equipment which only lighter-than-air uses. There was the balloon room, too, with a wealth of experience dating back to the first World War, and which with new jobs like building barrage balloons, rubber rafts and assault boats grew to large dimension.
Wingfoot Lake was more than doubled in size, and the large airship dock, occupied at first by heavier-than-air production, had to be changed back later for airship assembly, to meet the Navy's mounting demands for ships. The bases at Washington and Los Angeles were converted to other aeronautic uses; the two-ship dock at Chicago and the one at New York were torn down and moved to Akron to provide additional space for ship assembly.
And so the fact that the company had maintained an airship fleet for a number of years had the result that in emergency when the Navy needed ships and men to fly them, Goodyear was ready. All of which was not foreseen when Mrs. Litchfield pulled a cord to release a flock of pigeons and christen the pioneer ship Pilgrim, at a pasture-airport outside Akron in 1925.
[Illustration: Airship and escort warship]
Mention airships and most people will immediately raise the question of vulnerability.
Large, slow moving, a tempting target, airships could be shot out of the sky by ship or shore guns, or by hostile airplane fire, it is argued, almost as easily as a dinner guest touching his cigaret to a toy balloon.