Airships

A fleet of protective airships hovering over America's borders -- an idea recently floated by the Pentagon -- brings back memories of the role played by pioneers of lighter-than-air craft at the turn of the century. One of those daring young men was Augustus Roy Knabenshue, who piloted one of America's first airships, the California Arrow, and went on to found one of the first dirigible passenger services, from Pasadena to Los Angeles, in 1912.

It has been 65 years since the ill-fated Hindenburg burst into flames and deflated the chances that lighter-than-air ships would become anything more than a curious footnote in aviation history. Except for the limited use of the Goodyear blimp as a flying billboard, dozens of efforts to revive the glory of dirigibles have fallen flat. But now, Pentagon officials believe that airships could play a crucial role in protecting the United States from attack.

The security crackdown after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has caused a lot of inconveniences: longer lines at airports, slower mail service and fewer entrances open at public buildings. It also forced the Goodyear blimp Eagle to leave home, threatening the big airship's appearance at today's Veterans Day parade in Long Beach. Thanks to some congressional pressure, however, that problem has been solved.

Airport delays and extra costs for security are prompting businesses to ship goods by highway or even hand-carry them on airplanes, resulting in dramatic losses at many companies that move freight to airports. At airports nationwide, including Los Angeles International, some merchandise slated to be shipped on passenger flights now is sitting for at least 24 hours, compared with two to four hours before the terrorist attacks.

A German company started regular zeppelin commercial flights Wednesday for the first time since the Hindenburg disaster ended dirigible travel more than six decades ago. In a one-hour trip, the Zeppelin NT Bodensee, which can carry 19 passengers, flew over Lake Constance on the Swiss border from the southern German town of Friedrichshafen on the lake. Unlike the Hindenburg, which was filled with dangerous hydrogen, the new model uses nonflammable helium.

A Goodyear blimp was blown into a pole and ripped in half as it tried to land, sending the cockpit carrying a pilot and six passengers skidding along the ground. No one was injured. The blimp had just touched the ground at Northeast Philadelphia Airport with about 10 people tugging on mooring ropes from the nose when a gust of wind blew the airship about 20 feet, lifting one of the men off the ground. The pilot started the engines and tried to avoid the 40-foot-high red mooring mast.

Those building a new generation of dirigibles in this birthplace of the zeppelin have just one thing to say to the millions worldwide whose enduring image of airship travel is singed by the fiery crash of the Hindenburg: Get over it. That was in 1937--in the infancy of aviation--and a tragic consequence of the German airship's owners' having inflated it with flammable hydrogen instead of harmless helium.

Several times a year, would-be inventors stride into the Federal Aviation Administration's Long Beach office with some naive plan to build an aircraft. FAA engineer Maureen Moreland typically whips out an 1,100-page volume of regulations and answers a few questions. That's usually enough to send budding Wright Brothers back to their garage workshops, never to be seen again.

A Goodyear blimp crashed into a wooded area behind a home Thursday night near the company's air dock, slightly injuring both people aboard, a company spokesman said. A pilot and a technician for the blimp's night sign suffered minor cuts but no serious injuries, Goodyear spokesman Keith Price said. They were treated at a local hospital and released. No one on the ground was hurt. It was unclear why the blimp went down. The airship started to deflate and descend slowly about 6 p.m., Price said.

His was a war spent floating off the Southern California coast, watching and waiting for an ominous blip on the radar screen that, thankfully, never came. As World War II raged an ocean away, Willard Brown was one of about 50 blimp pilots stationed at the former Santa Ana Naval Air Station, now named the Tustin Marine Corps Air Facility. Armed with powerful machine guns and underwater explosives, their mission was to patrol the coast in search of enemy submarines.