WWII ASW Blimps

[kitplane01]

Did you the forum has never had a thread about Blimp (says my limited searching).

Sky Ships by William Althoff seems to be the best book on the subject. In it he argues

1) The US was very blimp-underprepared for the start of the war
2) The build-up was quite rapid.
3) Pilot training was super-fun. Included ballooning around New England.
4) The biggests costs were hangers, not the blimps themselves.
5) It was a goal to have two crews per blimp.
6) The blimps did good work. Not just ASW, but alo things like search for survivors and go get the practice torpedo fired by our ships in training.
7) The lighter-than-air service was disadvantaged by the fighter-pilot-jock mentality
8) The lighter-than-air service was starting to shrink even before the war ended

Other facts:

Only one ship guarded by a blimp was ever sunk. To a very strong degree if there was a blimp in the sky your ship was safe. (He says the answer is not zero, which you will commonly read. The SS Peresphone, May 25th 1942. See U-boat Archive - U-593 - Persephone)
Yet ...
No u-boat was ever sunk by a blimp. However, there are several partial-kills, depending on how you count blimp-directed-asw-ships-making-kills.

Only one blimp was ever sunk by enemy U-boats. Losses were random accidents with no common theme.

Average sortie time was about 10 hours, despite the fact the blimps had a 30+ hour endurance.

 

[Snautzer01]

Zeppelin Graf Zeppelin and other ridgid airships

1936

ww2aircraft.net

 

[Capt. Vick]

Love those WW2 US Navy blimps.

There is a beautifully restored "gondola" in the New England Air Museum.

There are also a couple of gondolas from the Navy's largest WW2 blimps stored in the desert, but will they be restored?

 

[rob23]

Love those WW2 US Navy blimps.

There is a beautifully restored "gondola" in the New England Air Museum.

There are also a couple of gondolas from the Navy's largest WW2 blimps stored in the desert, but will they be restored?

I have always been fascinated by the L8 mystery. The blimp went out on patrol with two officers aboard, then the blimp grounded itself abandoned. What could have happened?

 

[Capt. Vick]

I could tell you but....

 

[GreenKnight121]

Average sortie time was about 10 hours, despite the fact the blimps had a 30+ hour endurance.

Likely due to the endurance of the flight crew.

 

[WATU]

The Althoff book is the best easily available source. The blimp and U-boat relationship is complex. A blimp attacking a surfaced U-boat would have been an unmissable target for the U-boat AA so few attacks were made. They were too slow to close a diving U-boat to drop depth charges in the first 10/15 seconds to catch it around the 25 ft mark. They operated close to shore so a U-boat spotting one was likely to dive and sneak away before surface vessels or fixed wing aircraft could be homed in.

Altoff does comment on what could have been the optimum weapons and sensors fit for an ASW blimp. MAD, sonobuoys and FIDO. This was achieved but seemingly in a foot-dragging way towards the end of the German war. MAD had a very limited range and post-war analysis of sonobuoys reported that most supposed positive sounds were false. So the trio might not have added much in reality.

I suspect that the blimp crews were mightily frustrated at the lack of urgency in the support they received.

 

[manta22]

Did you the forum has never had a thread about Blimp (says my limited searching).

Sky Ships by William Althoff seems to be the best book on the subject. In it he argues

1) The US was very blimp-underprepared for the start of the war
2) The build-up was quite rapid.
3) Pilot training was super-fun. Included ballooning around New England.
4) The biggests costs were hangers, not the blimps themselves.
5) It was a goal to have two crews per blimp.
6) The blimps did good work. Not just ASW, but alo things like search for survivors and go get the practice torpedo fired by our ships in training.
7) The lighter-than-air service was disadvantaged by the fighter-pilot-jock mentality
8) The lighter-than-air service was starting to shrink even before the war ended

Other facts:

Only one ship guarded by a blimp was ever sunk. To a very strong degree if there was a blimp in the sky your ship was safe. (He says the answer is not zero, which you will commonly read. The SS Peresphone, May 25th 1942. See U-boat Archive - U-593 - Persephone)
Yet ...
No u-boat was ever sunk by a blimp. However, there are several partial-kills, depending on how you count blimp-directed-asw-ships-making-kills.

Only one blimp was ever sunk by enemy U-boats. Losses were random accidents with no common theme.

Average sortie time was about 10 hours, despite the fact the blimps had a 30+ hour endurance.

We lived on Isle of Palms, outside Charleston, SC while my Dad was away 1943-1944 and we frequently saw Navy blimps on patrol over the coast. Sometimes German submarines waited outside the Charleston harbor for victims. After a hurricane my cousin and I found pieces of a steel cable anti-submarine net and a mine that had broken loose and washed up on our beach in front of where we lived. Also when we lived in Myrtle Beach a Coast Guard rider on horseback would ride along the beach after dark to see that no light was showing from the houses.

 

[Maxrobot1]

 

[Maxrobot1]

News photo of the remains of the L-8.

 

[Maxrobot1]

 

[Maxrobot1]

Oh, and I read that blimp Naval Aviators wore the regular two-winged USN Naval Aviator's badge. For a long time I thought the one-winged pin was for blimp aviators.

 

[MikeMeech]

Did you the forum has never had a thread about Blimp (says my limited searching).

Sky Ships by William Althoff seems to be the best book on the subject. In it he argues

1) The US was very blimp-underprepared for the start of the war
2) The build-up was quite rapid.
3) Pilot training was super-fun. Included ballooning around New England.
4) The biggests costs were hangers, not the blimps themselves.
5) It was a goal to have two crews per blimp.
6) The blimps did good work. Not just ASW, but alo things like search for survivors and go get the practice torpedo fired by our ships in training.
7) The lighter-than-air service was disadvantaged by the fighter-pilot-jock mentality
8) The lighter-than-air service was starting to shrink even before the war ended

Other facts:

Only one ship guarded by a blimp was ever sunk. To a very strong degree if there was a blimp in the sky your ship was safe. (He says the answer is not zero, which you will commonly read. The SS Peresphone, May 25th 1942. See U-boat Archive - U-593 - Persephone)
Yet ...
No u-boat was ever sunk by a blimp. However, there are several partial-kills, depending on how you count blimp-directed-asw-ships-making-kills.

Only one blimp was ever sunk by enemy U-boats. Losses were random accidents with no common theme.

Average sortie time was about 10 hours, despite the fact the blimps had a 30+ hour endurance.

Hi
It should be remembered that the USN got operational experience on 'Blimps' during WW1 when they had personnel flying with the RNAS. For example Ensign Barnes USN piloted SSZ.23 on a 25 hour flight on 29/30 May 1918 (This had been sold to the USN), image of SSZ.23 below:

Image of SSZ (SSZ.15) type 'car', for three man crew, below, shows bomb rack and bomb fitted. The 'car' also had W/T and Aldis signal lamp for communication:

Images and information from 'Battlebags, British Airships of the First World War' by Ces Mowthorpe. Another useful book on the subject is 'Military, Naval and Civil Airships since 1783, The History and Development of the Dirigible Airship in Peace and War' by Daniel George Ridley-Kitts, this includes the USN WW2 types. The British did not use them for ASW patrols in WW2, enemy airpower was rather closer in the theatre and they would not perform well in an air fight.

Mike