Aeronautics: Akron Aftermath

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Commander Wiley, who had himself declared an "interested party'' (technical defendant ) in order to attend private hearings and examine witnesses, was firm in defense of Captain McCord's navigation. The weather forecast, he recalled, was for light wind and fog. When lightning was sighted below Philadelphia Captain McCord changed the course from south to northwest. Said Commander Wiley: "Although my own inclination was to go west, he had as much or more information than I and his judgment was just as good as mine. . . ." Later, however, when the ship was heading east at sea, Captain McCord told him that a helmsman had misunderstood one of his orders. Instead of changing course by fifteen degrees, he had changed by fifty. Sometime thereafter the course was changed to west.

Commander Wiley then testified to a significant change of mind. The amazingly severe "gust" which had wrenched the Akron was not a gust at all, he decided, but the shock of the ship's stern striking the water. (He recalled that the "gust'' had blown no wind through the control car.) No second shock was felt. Hence the important deduction that the Akron had been broken not by wind but by water. However, Metalsmith Erwin still insisted that the ship was still flying tail in air when he saw the girders snap. When the tail hit a few moments later, he said it sounded as if someone had "sat on a penny box of matches."

Public Confidence. Lighter-than-air enthusiasts would have welcomed evidence of sabotage, even of mishandling, to offset public conclusion that an airship is not to be trusted in a storm. For the Akron had been accepted as the answer to the stupendous list of airship casualties which had preceded it.

Meanwhile in Akron, Ohio, a record crowd of 25,000 in a single day flocked to the Goodyear-Zeppelin dock to gape at the Macon, which was to be test-flown this week. It appeared certain that the Navy would accept and operate her. But Goodyear-Zeppelin had small hope of contracts for future ships for a long time to come.

A second subject of inquiry by the Naval Court was the crash of the little Navy blimp J3, which used to nestle under the great ventral fin of the Akron, in the Lakehurst dock, like an egg about to be hatched. The J-3 was sent out into dirty weather with a crew of seven in her open gondola, on the report that Akron survivors had been sighted clinging to bits of wreckage off Barnegat. Thrashed by the gale, she was forced to drop into the pounding surf whence a small amphibian of the New York Police picked two officers, three enlisted men. A Coast Guard amphibian picked up the blimp's commander, Lieut.-Commander David E. Cummins, but he was beyond revival. The body of Machinist's Mate Pasquale Bettio was found later.