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Early in the evening on 18 July 1943, K-74 of Blimp Squadron 21 (ZP-21) took off from the Naval Air Station in Richmond, Florida, on a routine antisubmarine patrol mission. Lieutenant Nelson G. Grills, U. S. Naval Reserve, command pilot of the ten-man crew, expected nothing out of the ordinary. Visibility was excellent, and no submarines, friendly or enemy, had been reported in the patrol area.
The 250-foot-long K-74, one of the 400,000- cubic-foot ZPK class of Goodyear-built nonrigid airships, was unmasted. Although nominally lighter- than-air craft, K-ships were usually flown “heavy”—made to carry as much as 3,000 pounds more weight than their helium alone could lift. To get airborne in this condition required a takeoff run like an airplane’s. Briefly the ground crew on the handling lines held the bow into the wind. Grills pushed the throttles open and the engines, 550 horsepower each, came to life. K-74 began to roll ahead on the oleo-strut-supported wheel beneath the gondola. The men on the lines dropped away, ducking quickly to either side to escape the whirring three-blade propellers bearing down on them.
At 1909, K-74 was aloft and headed for Patrol Area One off the southernmost tip of Florida. An almost full moon shone as the mission droned on for more than four hours without incident. Then, at 2340, a tiny blip of light began to glimmer on the greenish eye of the radar operator’s scope. Range was 8 miles. A contact report was radioed to base— position was 23°59’ North, 80o49’ West—and battle stations were manned as Grills headed full speed for the unidentified source. Minutes later, a half mile to port, she was sighted.
There was no mistaking what she was: a U-boat, running surfaced, making 15-18 knots on a course of 220°. Her low-lying profile was silhouetted againstthe moonlit water, her conning tower and deck gun standing out conspicuously. To keep the submarine in sight, K-74 circled to the right at 55 knots, butlost the boat and had to make another, larger circle to pick her up again. At 2350, K-74 began its attack run. At 250 feet, it headed straight for the enemy, trying to cross at an angle of 30° so the bombs could straddle the submarine’s hull.
Current doctrine required that an airship finding an enemy submarine on the surface should stay upwind of her and guide airplanes and surface ships to deliver the attack. The blimp was to attack theU-boat Only if she submerged. K-74's pilot knew this, but he also knew that the U-boat was headed in the direction of a nearby tanker and freighter. So, to protect those ships, he decided to risk his own.
So far, Kapitiinleutnant Hans-Giinther Brosin, commanding officer of U-134, which was headed forthe shipping lanes off Havana, had given no indication that he knew the blimp was there. But as the range narrowed, he suddenly turned sharply to present the boat’s stern to the attacker. Seconds later, with perhaps 250 yards still separating them, Brosin opened fire.
A spray of bullets shot skyward in a V-shaped fanfrom the aft end of U-134’s conning tower. The airship’s turret, housing the .50 caliber machine gunover the heads of the pilot and copilot, was hit. K-74 fired back, emptying 100 rounds, but the gunner was unable to bring his weapon to bear as the U-boat passed underneath. K-74 drove ahead in the face this antiaircraft fire. As it closed, a bright flash and loud explosion indicated that Brosin’s deck gun had gone into action; but if any shells hit the ship, they failed to explode. Grills and his crew passed directly over the submarine. K-74 carried two depth bombs "'the 50-foot settings on outboard racks. With the ”'boat almost directly below—“so close,” Grills said later, "that I could have spit on her deck”—the bombs were ordered dropped. The bombardier pulled the releases, but the Mark XVIls hung up and the attack miscarried. K-74 overflew and passed beyond its target, denied any chance for a second attempt.
Meanwhile, U-134’s firepower had begun to make its effects felt. K-74’s starboard engine was hit and burst into flames, but an aviation machinist’s mate Slickly extinguished the fire. The airship no longer responded to rudder or elevator. Control became impossible as the envelope was holed and pressure Stopped. The blimp climbed to 1,000 feet in a steep nose-up attitude, then slowly fell, tail-first, into the sea. In an effort to slow or halt the descent, 1,400 pounds of gasoline were dumped overboard, but to no avail. K-74 hit the water, its port engine still running, its starboard propeller windmilling. Its crew had no idea where the U-boat was or what she was doing. Brosin had ceased firing, and the steep angle at which the blimp had been flying had caused its stern to blot out all view of the enemy. Water rapidly filled the after end of the gondola as K-74 settled into the Atlantic. All hands abandoned and got clear of the airship, none of them injured. Grills escaped through the elevatorman’s window. All expected the airship to sink and, remembering that its depth bombs were still hanging on its racks, were not anxious to be too close when it did.
K-74, however, was in no hurry to go down, so Grills decided to return to the gondola for a last look around. He swam back and reentered the same way he had left, to find the deck covered with water and the gondola aft of the mechanic's station completely submerged. He had already dumped everything classified overboard; there was nothing more he could accomplish now. He left the car again via the elevatorman’s window and made his way around to the starboard side of the misshapen, semi-deflated aluminum bag of three-ply rubberized cotton fabric. He looked for his men but in the darkness could not see them. For several hours he stayed with the wreck, hanging onto its fins for support. Then, believing that the others had given him up for lost and set off for land with K-74's rubber life raft, he struck out on his own to swim to the Florida keys—a distance of about 40 miles.
Actually, the men were still with the ship, but keeping a respectful distance from it, out of concern that the U-boat might return. As the night dragged on with no further sign of the enemy, four of the nine swam back to K-74 to make use of its buoyancy, while others stayed some distance away, out of sight. The life raft was lost when the men abandoned ship; inflatable life vests were all they had to help keep them afloat.
Shortly after dawn, Brosin came cautiously alongside the wreckage, and apparently pulled some of it aboard U-134 to photograph it. How he could have done this without being seen by K-74’s survivors is a mystery, and for the remainder of the war, no one at Atlantic Fleet airship headquarters had any inkling that this had happened. Not until copies of pictures, purportedly of U-134 with part of K-34 on board, were sent from Germany to the U. S. Naval Institute and published in the Proceedings (January 1958, p. 96), did it become known that a Navy blimp might have been boarded. Brosin and his command were sunk a month later, homeward bound off Cape Finisterre, by planes of Britain’s Coastal Command. The pictures survived because they had been transferred to another submarine that rendezvoused with U-134 and reached port safely. The radio message sent by Brosin following his encounter with Grills reported shooting down an airship and suffering damage to his diving tanks during the exchange of gunfire. U-134’s radio log, as recorded in Germany, made no mention of Brosin’s examination of the wreckage.
About 0745 on 19 July, a Grumman J4F amphibian, carrying the commander of Blimp Squadron 21, reached the scene. Two groups of survivors seen in the water, waving and splashing to attract attention. Only the tip of K-74’s tail remained above water. Because the sea was too rough for a landing, the plane headed for the destroyer Dahlgren (DD-187) about 15 miles away, and called her in to make the rescue. ,
The J4F was off summoning the Dahlgren when K-74 sank at 0815, after staying afloat eight hours. When she went under, she left behind a crescent-shaped oil slick about 100 feet long, which acted as a landmark for the J4F to find the survivors again. The survivors no longer numbered nine, however; Isadore Stessel, aviation machinist’s mate second class, waslost in the water only minutes from rescue, the only U. S. Navy airshipman ever to die as the result ofenemy action. Grills was picked up by the submarine chaser SC-657 at 1930, having made six miles in his long swim for the Keys. He was hospitalized, suffering from exposure and fatigue.
The loss of K-74 sparked a spirited debate in anti-submarine warfare circles. By attacking a surfaced U-boat, Grills had sidestepped doctrine and deserved, according to some, to be court-martialed. Others pointed out that he was trying to protect nearby shipping and was, in fact, showing the ext measure of aggressiveness which unit commanders had been calling for. Instead of a court-martial, they said, he should receive a commendation. Grills got neither. Transferred to the staff of Commander, Airships Atlantic, he served as gunnery officer with the responsibility of developing improved tactics an ordnance for the ten operational blimp squadrons that were then part of the Atlantic Fleet.
With respect to the outcome of the battle ofthe Atlantic, the brief encounter between K-ship and the U-boat that July night amounted to little morethanan “incident in the Florida straits.” Even so, never before had such an engagement been fought, although- blimps had been pitted against U-boats in both World Wars I and II. During these wars and in between, airshipmen and submariners had questionedwhat might happen if a surface battle took place tween their respective types. Nelson Grills in K-74 and Hans-Gfinther Brosin in U-134 provided the answer in the finest of naval traditions—by courageouslv fighting their ships.