An Excursion

A dirigible is often considered to be a fair-weather craft, and—as such—unsuitable for continuous commercial operation. The second excursion of the Shenandoah since her accident (TIME, Jan. 28) would seem to be a flat contradiction of this viewpoint.

Leaving the mooring mast at Lakehurst, N. J., about 7:15 one morning, the Shenandoah sailed over Trenton and Newark and high above the Hudson River ferries. Hailed by radio at Troy and at Schenectady, where the great broadcasting station of the General Electric Co. sent up weather reports requested by Commander Zachary Lansdowne, the Shenandoah reached Albany at noon.

Albany was celebrating the tercentenary of the first historic landing of the Dutch; Commander Lansdowne delivered a graceful message from President Coolidge to Governor Smith, then piloted his ship swiftly further up state. From the roofs of their office buildings, the excited citizens of Rochester and Buffalo greeted the vessel with shrill shoutings. To make the voyage still more memorable, Commander Lansdowne descended to an altitude of only 1,200 feet above Niagara Falls. The crew maintained they felt the spray, and for the first time the gigantic waterfall had a dirigible passing over it.

A few minutes over Canadian soil; then the Shenandoah encountered (without difficulty) a heavy fog drifting over Buffalo from Lake Erie. Over Canaseraga, N. Y., the dirigible ran into a thunderstorm, and great flashes of lightning lit up the huge and gleaming bulk at frequent intervals. The dirigible dodged the thunderstorm with ease, though she had to leave her course over the Erie Railway and to retrace her route to the North for a while.

As if in further premeditated test of the vessel’s powers, another heavy fog was encountered on the way back over Trenton. The ship lost her bearings for a short time, sailed out some four miles to sea, but recovered her course shortly afterwards and reached Lakehurst in the early morning, having made a round trip of 1,000 miles in something under 24 hours.

At Lakehurst a further difficulty arose. So much fuel had been burnt on the journey that the ship was very light. The ballast recovery apparatus installed on one engine compensated only in small part for the loss of fuel weight, and in three attempts at mooring, the drag ropes swung high above the ground crew. Finally Commander Lansdowne had to reconcile himself to “valving” the helium and allowing some 20,000 feet of the precious gas to escape at an estimated cost of $4,000.

The crew was large enough to work in two shifts, and though the Commander himself had but one hour’s sleep, every one else arrived in perfect condition, with the ship working admirably right up to the end of the journey.

What could disprove the notion of the Shenandoah being a fair-weather craft more happily than this? A moonless night, a heavy thunderstorm, two sessions of heavy fog—none of these seemed to have bothered the ship very much. The difficulty in landing “light” will certainly disappear when the ballast recovery apparatus has been attached to every engine.