By the spring of 1915, with the war in Europe well into its first year, it became more and more apparent that the airship’s role in the war would be an ever- increasing one. Its use and desirability, both for reconnaissance and bombing, had already been amply demonstrated in Europe by the German Zeppelin raids on England that had started in January. As early as 1908, German airships had made flights of over 12 hours’ duration, but by mid- 1915 the United States still did not have one single dirigible.
The Navy Department finally decided to change all that. It drew up airship specifications and put out bids that were due on 20 April 1915. The contract was awarded on 21 May to the Connecticut Aircraft Company of New Haven, the lowest bidder with a price of $45,636.25 for a dirigible to be delivered and inflated at Pensacola, Florida.
At this point in the narrative, however, it is necessary to go back more than a year and across an ocean to a cold February morning in 1914 in Berlin, Germany.
Frank B. Gilbreth, who achieved fame years later as the author of Cheaper by the Dozen, was commissioned in 1913 to install a system of scientific management at the Auergesellschaft in Berlin. To assist him, Gilbreth recruited two young Americans just out of college; they arrived in Germany in January 1914. One morning in February the two, James F. Boyle and Bert Stronck, were invited by a German balloon club to take a free-balloon trip from Bitterfeld, a suburb of Berlin, to Schwedt, near the Polish border. At its conclusion, Boyle and Stronck each received a huge lapel button that pictured a balloon and a suitable inscription. For Boyle, it was an event that would influence the rest of his life.
Returning to his home in New Haven, Connecticut, in August 1914, Boyle learned that a new airship company, the Connecticut Aircraft Company, was just starting up there. It consisted solely of a prominent New Haven lawyer named Samuel Moorehouse, as president and Financial hacker, and a general manager, Ed Mullikan. Neither Mullikan nor Moorehouse had ever seen an airship of any hind.
Boyle recalls his job interview vividly. Mullikan was in the office at the time and asked, “What can I do for you?” Boyle answered, “I want a job.”
Mullikan asked, “What kind of a job do you want?” Boyle said, “I want to be an engineer with your company.”
Mullikan asked, “Do you know anything about balloons?’ ’
Boyle showed him his Bitterfeld balloon club button. Mullikan was impressed. “Do you know anything about kite balloons?”
Boyle answered, “Sure, that’s how I got the button.” Mullikan was satisfied. “Okay, son, you’re not only an engineer, you’re our chief engineer. In fact, you’re the only engineer we’ve got.”
At this time Mullikan and Moorehouse had already obtained a contract to build a kite balloon for the Army. Someone would have to build it. Naturally, the job fell to the chief engineer. Boyle immediately took a train to New York City and buried himself in the public library for three hays, reading everything available on balloons, most of which was in German. The one thing in his favor was that he had actually seen a kite balloon in Germany. He then Sported in with more or less a set of plans, and the manufacturing end of the company at last commenced.
Things started moving at a fairly efficient rate. A factory was set up on Haven Street and hiring started. Unbelievably, two Germans were found who had worked on balloons in Germany. With them as a nucleus, tables were set up and women brought in to do the sewing. The huge envelope slowly took shape, and three months later the completed balloon was taken to an indoor ice-skating rink >n New Haven where it was inflated and rigged. The balloon was then sent to Fort Omaha, Nebraska, to be tested by the Army.
This kite balloon was a German Drachen (dragon) type, shaped like a big sausage, round on each end and cylindrical in the middle. Its underslung belly had a big mouth, similar to a kangaroo’s pouch, into which the wind blew and was then squeezed out through a second, smaller, hole In the top. This kept the balloon pointed into the wind and steady in the air—at least, that’s what the library books said it would do. Sent aloft, however, this unruly dragon immediately swooped down on its cable and draped itself over an officers’ quarters on the post.
Boyle and the other representatives of the company rescued the monster and took it to a loft at the Omaha Tent and Awning Company for repairs. The balloon was 80 feet x 20 feet and contained hundreds of yards of fabric. In that little 30-foot-square loft at Omaha they were knee deep in kite balloon. After an all-day search they finally located all the tears, repaired them, and brought the balloon back to be reinflated. To everyone’s complete surprise, it flew.
But the hardest thing to make a balloon do is not fly, the lusty beast always trying to shake itself loose from its cable. But nobody in the Army at that time knew much about balloons, and it was easy to sell this one for approximately $15,000.
Connecticut Aircraft now turned its attention to the airship proposal from the Navy. The engineering staff, such as it was, set to work. The specifications for the Dirigible Navy One (DN1) called for an airship that could: 1) carry a crew of eight (actually, a weight of 1,450 lbs.) at a speed of 35 mph for two hours; 2) be able to climb to 3,000 feet; and 3) rise from and alight upon the water. Realizing that he was well over his head in designing a machine of this type, Boyle enlisted the aid of his old friend Donald Douglas, then doing graduate work at MIT, and Jerome Hun- saker, who was in MIT’s department of marine engineering. Mullikan also found Hans Otto Stagel, an Austrian who had built the Stagel-Mannsbart airship and was primarily responsible for designing the DN1 envelope.
The length of the airship was 175 feet, the height 50 feet, and the beam 35 feet. It carried a full load of 2,440 pounds. The original power plant was two 40-horsepower Curtiss engines mounted transversely, with a common radiator and fuel and oil supply. Each drove a large four- bladed propeller; eventually they were replaced by an eight-cylinder 140-horsepower Sturdevant. The envelope was made from U.S. Rubber Company-designed fabric— diagonally double-bias ply that was yellow to prevent light deterioration. It worked out well except for minor leakage, no one at the time being aware of the method of coating the inside with melted paraffin.
Since the Navy wanted an airship that could take off and alight upon the water and had planned a floating hangar at Pensacola, Florida, to house it, the gondola would have to be something entirely new. The British at the time used the fuselage from their B-type two-seater observation planes for their blimps, and although small, these apparently served them adequately. But they would not do at all for a water-based airship. The gondola was actually a boat hull, built at Neponset, Massachusetts, by Fred Lawley, a local boat builder.
Connecticut had contracted to have the DN1 ready in six months, but it took a year and a half before it was completed. Jim Boyle remembers:
“It’s a little uncertain as to why it took so long to build DN1, and we were probably too optimistic in promising six months delivery. We had originally designed a nice, simple, unpretentious airship that should have behaved reasonably well, but all the additions and modifications that started coming down from the Navy Department really complicated everything. At the last minute some smart aleck came up with the idea of swiveling propellers—and that really did the trick. A swiveling propeller can be turned from the vertical driving position to the horizontal lifting one and theoretically could be used to slow down and reverse. All this at a time when we really weren’t sure the thing would even fly! We put in the swiveling propellers, but they forced us to be overtime and overweight. Worst of all, they had a habit of swiveling at the wrong time, so we soon spiked them. I could never understand why we ever agreed to them to begin with.
“The hull was assembled and completed at the Navy yard in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It was the middle of winter, the shipyard was wide open, and I remember working at the drawing board with gloves on. In the next alley in the same open shed was a submarine under construction. I’ve often thought that this prenatal influence was the cause of DN1’s tendency to submerge.”
The Navy finished the floating hangar at Pensacola, and DN1 was shipped down, assembled, and placed in it. Boyle recalls:
“Because of the excess weight brought on by the extra equipment the Navy kept adding, the hangar was the only thing that kept it from sinking. On the day of the trial we hauled it out of the floating hangar with Jimmy Shade, a Navy CPO, in the gondola, which was boat shaped and watertight. But as soon as it was out of the hangar and on its own, it started to settle. As it settled lower and lower, water came over the gunwales and rose higher and higher. Finally, standing on his toes and up to his chin in water, Jimmy yelled, 'All aboard for the first submerged flight of the DN1,’ and disappeared.
“DN1 was rescued and revived, and changes were made to lighten it. Then our company pilot, Hans Stagel, who had operated his own airship in Austria, took DN1 way offshore and made a run. We had to make 35 mph to qualify, and we could only do 30. So Hans went way out near the horizon and pointed it downhill and we made it. Then he did some fancy maneuvers that drew applause from the spectators on shore. He would fly along, dip down to the water, and rise again. When he came in he told me those were not for show; he had to dip down to scoop up pails of water to dash them on the transmission because a bronze bearing had overheated, melted, and the metal was running out like a river!”
Despite its shortcomings, DN1 was accepted by the Navy, and Connecticut Aircraft moved on to other things. The subsequent career of DN1 is hazy. Navy personnel took it out on a few more flights, but it was apparent that, compared with contemporary European design, DN1 was a dinosaur. After being damaged, it was eventually dismantled.
By mid-1917, the United States was in the war, and Connecticut obtained numerous contracts for spherical and kite balloons. As Boyle recounts:
“In France the kites were kept behind the lines, where they were inflated, then walked up to the front, sent up on their cables, and promptly shot down. The demand for kite balloons skyrocketed. It was a good business to be in—we never could build them as fast as they were being destroyed.
“By now we had learned something about controlling leakage by coating the inside of the bag with paraffin. But when I think of the way we used to do it, I am amazed that we weren’t blown up. We would turn the envelope inside out, spread a vast area out flat, and brush on melted paraffin with ordinary push brooms- We melted the paraffin in a steam still—a metal drum in which we had a steam coil. We dissolved the melted paraffin in hot benzol; what a deadly mix! We sprinkled the hot benzol/paraffin solution on the balloon with garden sprinkling cans, and we spread it quickly before it congealed. The benzol evaporated, leaving the paraffin, which penetrated the pores of the rubber. Somehow we never caught fire.”
One of the things balloon observers had to learn was how to use the parachute. Those in France were packed m a cone attached securely to the basket and were pulled out when the observers jumped. In training here, the chute was not packed but was spread out full length and fastened to the balloon rigging by a breakable cord. According to Boyle:
“We would send the balloon up to 1,500 feet with one or two trainees and an instructor. They would stand up on the edge of the basket facing inside, then would fall out backwards. Occasionally, one of them would freeze onto the basket ropes—nothing could convince him to let go. Lieutenant Boitoniere, the instructor, would put his foot on the lad’s stomach, and with a mighty heave, off he’d go. Fortunately, that spread chute worked every time.
“At Pensacola we tested a new type of Italian- designed kite balloon, the Avorio Prassone (AP), comparing it to a French Cacquot, which we had built and was the one used to train the parachutists. Charlie Witmer, a Navy observer, rode the Cacquot, and Charlie Bausch, also Navy, had the Avorio. The towing tests were arranged in the Gulf, each balloon tethered by its cable to an Eagle boat, the World War I torpedo boats built by Ford. We towed those damn kites all over the Gulf. The AP rode steady, while the Cacquot hunted all over the sky like a crazy thing. After two hours of this, we hauled the Cacquot in. Charlie Witmer was as sick as anyone could possibly be. When we brought down the AP, Charlie Bausch wasn’t even in it. By some error he hadn’t even attended the test at all! Nobody rode the AP, and the whole test flopped.
“We had some weird experiences at Pensacola. Once, a group of sailors was walking a balloon across the clearing when suddenly, a gust of wind caught them unawares and wrenched the balloon away. Several men hung on to the ground ropes momentarily but dropped off. Jimmy Shade was in the basket, and the balloon headed for the stratosphere. It rose a few thousand feet and started out over the Gulf. Then a peculiar air current brought it back inshore, but Jimmy had climbed up onto the load ring and, in his excitement, had pulled the rip cord. There are two lines coming down from a balloon: the valve line, which you operate for maneuvering the balloon up and down, and the rip cord, which deflates the balloon. You never touch that one until you are about to land and the skipper yells ‘rip.’ The rip cord was dyed red as a further precaution and had knots in it so as to be recognized at night. When Jimmy pulled the rip cord, the gas went out and the balloon folded up like an accordion.
“Fortunately, the balloon still had been enclosed in the net when it got away, and when it deflated, the net made it spread out like a parachute. It would parachute and float, then fold up and plummet like a stone, then go through the whole cycle again, all the time working its way back to shore. On one of its parachute cycles it set Jimmy down right on the beach. All he wanted was a cigarette. He was none the worse for wear, but he never again mistook a rip cord for a valve line!
“We had a blimp at Pensacola that we called the Pink Lady. Some chemical reaction took place in the rubber coating which made a pinkish substance bloom out of the surface. Jimmy Shade used to pilot the Pink Lady. He was having trouble with his wife at the time, and one day he flew the Pink Lady over his house and dropped a sand ballast bag on it. The 30-pound bag missed his house but went through the roof of the house next door! Jimmy was busted for that one, but he was one tough cookie who would try anything.”
Despite DN1, Connecticut eventually got contracts from the Navy for a series of blimps.
“For some reason we started off with the B model—I don’t remember an A. We took the first B to Cape May, New Jersey, where they had a hangar. We didn’t know much about right- and left-hand fabric in those days. When we inflated the envelope, the bottom rudder was up 45°, and so were all the other tail surfaces. What to do? We took off all the fins, relocated them so that they were up and down, and put them back on. It must have been good for the ship because it was really fast—it screwed itself through the air. We learned about right- and left-hand bias from it. If we put right bias next to left all the time, one twisted to the right, the other to the left, and we ended up with a straight balloon.
“We skipped some letters and ended up with an H ship, which was quite small. There is no Navy record for this one for a very good reason. We sent it to the Navy field at Far Rockaway fortesting. Charlie Bausch was the pilot. On the maiden flight, the ship had been taken out of the hangar, was all gassed up, and was being transported across the open field with the engines warming up. No one was aboard yet. A sudden gust of wind ripped it from the hands of the crew, and it took off out to sea and was never seen again.”
World War I soon ended, and the troops came home.
“We sold New York City on the idea of putting up four spherical balloons in Madison Square for the big parade. We inflated them with deadly hydrogen right on 21st Street. The police shut off traffic on Fifth Avenue and Broadway so we could inflate the balloons and get them up to 100 feet. It was a ticklish job, with all the hydrogen flowing and people all around smoking—just another piece of luck that there was no explosion. Everything went well during the parade of the returning troops, but the next day a storm wrecked the whole outfit. We cleared away the debris and celebrated by attempting to have a drink in every saloon between Madison Square and Times Square. We never made it; there were just too many.”
During the 1920s and 1930s, World War II, and afterward, Boyle worked as an engineer and consultant for various aircraft firms, eventually founding Air Cruisers Inc. in Monmouth County, New Jersey, which designed and manufactured flotation gear for the Navy.
“When Don Douglas [founder of Douglas Aircraft Co., now McDonnell Douglas Corp.] announced that he was going to California to build airplanes and asked some of us to go with him, we all laughed and said he was crazy—there was no future in it and he would probably be scalped by Indians. Over the years I have often thought about what we believed way back then and what I’d be doing now if I had gone.”