Army & Navy: Answers on the Atlantic

The U.S. had not yet found the right answer to the big question: Whose ocean is the Atlantic? Nazi submarines still poked in past the screening patrol of warships and airplanes, still ripped great mortal holes in precious U.S. merchant hulls.

Some new answers were on the way. The initials were K2, PC and PT. With enough of these the U.S. could absolutely dominate all of the nearby Atlantic, and the main Atlantic Fleet could concentrate on the farther reaches. Kas are blimps, nonrigid airships, capable of patrolling an area of 2,000 square miles of ocean every twelve hours. When the U.S. gets enough blimps nosing out of bases up & down the Atlantic Coast, no submarine will dare venture in daylight within blimp-range along the entire coast. The U.S. Navy, never a small operator, planned a total of 48 blimps as a starter—six to a squadron, based on both coasts—and the production program was humping.

Congress and the Navy Department had lost months of precious time in seeing the clear advantages of blimps on patrol: visibility of five miles in all directions, ability to see as far as 70 feet below the surface in clear water, to hover over such tiny clues as oil smears, a phosphorescent glow at night, air bubbles, or the telltale “feather” of the submarine’s wake.

Captain Charles Emery Rosendahl, inveterate lighter-than-air enthusiast, had long since won recognition and appropriations for middle-sized blimps. Last week he was happy: blimps have been “contacting the enemy,” and the third Eastern blimp base was opened, at Elizabeth City, N.C.

The first blimp squadron has been operating since January from the first base: Lakehurst, N.J. A second base, at South Weymouth, Mass., is open. Operating squadrons will not base at either South Weymouth or Elizabeth City for a few weeks, until a stock of new blimps float in. The West Coast blimp squadron bases at Sunnyvale. Calif. Two more bases are to be constructed soon (Florida, Southern California); one more is contemplated in the Puget Sound area of Washington.

K-2s are 250 feet long, are stuffed with 416,000 cubic feet of helium, cruise up to 2,000 miles at 55 m.p.h. Crew totals eight; armament includes machine guns, light cannon, bombs, depth charges. They are less vulnerable than laymen think, since helium is noninflammable. Airplane attack from above would be more or less ineffectual, unless their fire practically sawed off a section of the airship: some blimps can romp home despite a goodly number of bullet holes, despite losing as much as one-third of their gas volume. Such holes are easily patched, even in flight. And if the airplane swings up from below, the attack is met by heavy guns. Sure blimp-killers are anti-aircraft guns, but blimps have no business in such areas.

Some day the U.S. Navy might start building huge rigid Zeppelin types again, heavily armed, capable of transporting as many as 1,000 parachutists, tons of bombs, and bearing within them bombing and scouting airplanes available instantly for offensive or defensive duty. The Germans have at least two large rigid airships—the Graf Zeppelin and the LZ-130, and some experts believe they constitute Hitler’s boasted “secret weapon” for the invasion of England.

PCs are patrol boats, the 110-foot (wood) and 170-foot (steel) sub chasers which are now building in profusion in U.S. small boatyards. They are being made on the shores of the Great Lakes, along the New England coast and even in landlocked inland States. Their production rate is a satisfactory military secret.

PCs, say Navy men, are worthy descendants of the “Cinderella” boats of World War I, the sub chasers who were not invited to the ball, but who proved to be the belles when they arrived. (Of the 456 sub chasers built in the U.S. in the last war, not a single one was sunk by enemy submarines, whereas the Cinderellas had the highest record of sub sinkings of any surface craft.)

Modern PCs have greater speed and maneuverability than World War I Cinderellas, have a rapid-fire gunpower that no sub can match in a surface duel.

Congress authorized 36 of the 170-footers in 1940, at a cost of $44,294,400; twelve of the 110-footers at a cost of $4,740,000. The first 110-foot PC was tested in June 1941.

PTs are also seagoing patrol craft, but their range is short, and their prime function is to break up fleet attacks on bases such as the Panama Canal. The Navy last week permitted pictures to be printed of a fleet of 77-foot shallow-draft mosquito boats maneuvering off the Canal, slamming over the water at So m.p.h., armed with 50-caliber anti-aircraft guns and bearing in their powerful little bodies a pack of torpedoes. No submarine cares to surface in an area where the little motor torpedo boats operate on the alert, because a PT can run down any craft afloat, and is 100% effective at the close ranges in which it operates.

These three naval additions, now operating in minuscule quantities, are being poured out in numbers. Crews were ready, from trained ground crews awaiting blimps at the new bases to more than 1,000 Navy men eager for assignment to the PTs, and the green Atlantic was ready, teeming with Hitler’s summer pack of submarines.