National Affairs: Trip

Majestically ignoring fate, the Navy dirigible Los Angeles backed away from her mooring mast at Lakehurst, N. J., last week and set out for Detroit over part of the route which the unhappy Shenandoah had attempted in September, 1925.

On board were 44 passengers, including Rear Admiral William Adger Moffett, chief of the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics, Wartime Commandant of the Naval Training Station at Great Lakes, Ill.—a man who had managed thousands of hard-boiled gobs.*

At Pittsburgh the air was dark with soot and night. . . . The glare from steel blast furnaces danced crazily on the dirigible’s 700-foot bottom. . . . Rear Admiral Moffett enjoyed his supper, jested about the radio being out of order. A height of 4,000 feet was reached crossing the Alleghenies. Over Lake Erie the air was bumpy, the thermometer dropped to 39°. The ship dropped closer to the ground, speed was cutto a minimum in the dangerous Ohio area. . . . Pilot Charles E. Rosendahl remembered that he had survived the Shenandoah disaster. Finally searchlights knifed the air, colored rockets playfully zoomed about, flares revealed a giant mooring mast. The Ford airport at Dearborn (suburb of Detroit) had been reached in 16 hours and 30 minutes. Henry Ford, Edsel Ford, Mayor Smith of Detroit, came to greet Rear Admiral Moffett,† Pilot Rosendahl and his crew.

Soon word got about that a storm was brewing in the west, traveling toward Detroit and the east. The Los Angeles hastily turned its nose toward home. Fried chicken for dinner was served as three motors drove the ship at 70 miles per hour above Lake Erie. The return trip was smoother, faster. Lakehurst appeared after 13 hours, 5 minutes. Lieutenant Commander Rosendahl announced: “We had a very pleasant trip.”

*Defined in dictionaries as “a mass or lump, as of mud or meat; a large or goodsized mouthful; a large sum, as of money”; in recent years has become a synonym for “sailor.”

†He did not make the return trip in the Los Angeles, but left for Youngstown, Ohio, to attend the dedication of Lansdowne Field.