Aeronautics: Akron Aftermath

• Share

In the meeting room of the House Naval Affairs Committee stands a screen made from panels of the old U. S. S. Illinois, a table fashioned from the windlass top of the Maine, a glass case containing models of airplanes. Atop the glass case rides an 18-in. model of the U. S. S. Akron. The Akron model was almost buried one day last week by the carelessly strewn hats & overcoats of Committee members who sat in silence around the big horseshoe table. Facing the Committee from a small table at the mouth of the horseshoe stood a stocky, curly-haired young man in an open-necked Navy blouse, with the crossed white anchors of a bos'n's mate on his sleeve. He was Richard Deal, survivor of the crash of the Shenandoah and one of three survivors of the 76 who sailed on the U. S. S. Akron's last voyage. Gesticulating now & then with his bandaged right hand, he read from a sheaf of typewritten papers.

Bos'n's Mate Deal detailed what he saw, heard and did from the moment the Akron cast off from Lakehurst at 7:30 p. m. April 3, bound for the New England coast. He related his last conversation with Rear Admiral William Adger Moffett, the most distinguished victim of the disaster:

"He asked me if I was on watch. I said 'Yes, sir. I have the telephone at this station.' He stopped on the first step leading down the gangway [to the control car] and I said 'Admiral, you must like flying on this ship.' He replied 'I am very fond of it; much more so than the other (meaning HTA,* I assume). ... It is much better than the Shenandoah.' I replied 'Yes, sir' and he then proceeded to the control car."

In the hour before midnight the Akron was being buffeted severely by a thunderstorm. Bos'n's Mate Deal went about his business of taking ballast readings, carrying out ominous orders to shift ballast and fuel forward. At his next bit of testimony the committeemen hitched forward in their chairs:

"It was five minutes past twelve when I laid down on my bunk in the outer keel. I happened to be looking up and noticed the No. 7 cell was swishing quite more than usual. While looking at this cell the ship gave a terrific lurch sideways and longitudinal girders 7 & 8 gave way as well as some of the wires. . . . About five or ten seconds before she crashed the lights went out in the keel. I ... heard a noise aft and then water hit my feet. . . ."

The Committee heard the remainder of Deal's story: how he swam to a floating gas tank to which three other men were clinging; how they struggled to keep the open spout of the tank above water; how all hands shouted in unison to attract the lookout aboard the tanker Phoebus; how Machinist's Mate Rutan weakened and slipped into the sea and Radioman Copeland held on only to die later, while Deal and Metalsmith Moody S. Erwin were rescued. The Committee heard; but their minds dwelt on those snapping girders—an indication that the mighty Akron had buckled in the twisting storm before striking the water. And they thought back to a year ago when two men, E. C. McDonald and W. B. Underwood, onetime construction supervisor and mechanic on the Akron construction job, swore that the ship was deficient; that she contained defective duralumin and hundreds of loose rivets.