Warbird Information Exchange

Some may question whether WW2 era US Navy Airships can be considered Warbirds, some may not, as I understand the definition I think they are, but unfortunately none left working AFAIK, anyway here's some interesting photos and a few with a winged Warbird or two sitting around as well. So I'm not too far off the WIX disclaimer
... Bill I didn't forget about you ...

Part 1






















Avengers with a big balloon behind. Carrier unknown.


AD-6 of Attack Squadron One Hundred Seventy-Five VA-175 from CVA-42 USS F D Roosevelt at Guantanamo Bay Cuba


Navy Grumman F4F-3's of VF-5 parked on the deck of an unidentified carrier


Neat shot of a Spitfire with a big balloon in the background

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“PMURT KCUF”

Part 2


The airship K-69 launches from the deck of the escort carrier Mindoro CVE 120 1950


A K-class airship of Blimp Patrol Squadron ZP14 pictured in flight over the light aircraft carrier Langley CVL27 as she steams in the waters off Norfolk Virginia 1943


A ZPG-2 airship of Airship Squadron ZP3 hovers over the carrier Leyte CVS32 for refueling without a hose but instead using a fuel bag winched to the airship 1955


A K-class airship flies over the aircraft carrier Franklin D Roosevelt CVB42 at Hampton Roads Virginia during a review for President Harry S Truman 1946


A K-class airship flies over a destroyer escort towing a disabled ship from a convoy in the waters southeast of Block Island 1943


A K-class airship from Naval Air Station NAS Lakehurst New Jersey conduct depth charge attacks on a towed target sled off the North Carolina coast 16 April 1942


A K-class airship from Naval Air Station NAS Lakehurst New Jersey conduct depth charge attacks on a towed target sled off the North Carolina coast 16 April 1942


Open house at NAS Oceana 1953


NAS Richmond 1945 after a November Hurricane


View of Naval Air Station NAS Lakehurst New Jersey including the stations giant airship hangar 1950


NAS Tillamook OR 1945


NAS Tillamook OR 1945


NAS Watsonville CA 1945

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“PMURT KCUF”

Part 3


That's one BIG hangar!


Not sure where this is.




Nice photo of Lower Manhattan


Two Airships over Lower Manhattan 1931




Gitmo 1952


Gitmo 1952


Gitmo 1952

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“PMURT KCUF”

one Navy blimp, the L-8 had a long but strange career. Based @ NAS Moffett with ZP-32, it and it's crew of two departed around 0600 on Aug, 16,1942 for a routine anti submarine coastal patrol. @ about 0732 L-8 called in to say it was investigating an oil slick on the surface. That was the last communication with L-8. Later it was observed over a golf course where one of it's two depth charges fell off and landed on the golf course but didn't explode. the now half deflated and sagging blimp continued on and eventually crashed in a city street in downtown Daly City. A fellow living right where the car came to rest ran out to assist the crew only to find the cabin door open and the car vacant. No organized search was done for the two missing crew men. The L-8 was repaired and flew on before being retired by the navy. Her car was refurbished and became the Airship AMERICA flying out of Huston for years. GOODYEAR retired the envelope and put the car in storage at Wingfoot Lake. They've since donated the car to the NMNA in Pensacola where it has been re-restored back to Navy standard and is on display.

I think they rightly deserve to be considered as WARBIRDS since they went in harms way armed with not much offensively and damned little defensively bravely shouldering the air aside @ a blinding 35 MPH hunting a real sea menace, submarines for long, long hours over the oceans in a bag filled with what amounted to dinosaur farts.

At the start of the war, VF5 was in the SARATOGA CV-3

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

Ya' almost stumped me with this one. The carrier is USS Ranger. A big hint was the CXAM radar antenna (the big rectangle at the top of the mast, in this picture parallel with the length of the ship) only 20 ships ever received those, of which only 5 were aircraft carriers. The picture is very similar to another picture taken off North Africa in November 1942, so I'd put my money on it being from around then. Note that in both images the ship has the same set of unique circular speakers just below the radar.


T'aint no DE. They never had super-firing enclosed turrets, or to the best of my knowledge slab-sided funnels either. My best guess would be a pre-war destroyer. Find me a better resolution image, and I might be able to tell you more.

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Warbird Philosophy Webmaster

That's Brunswick, GA, otherwise known as Glynco. That base is now the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (commonly known as FLTEC, pronounced flet-see). I was there in the late 1990's for training and some of the buildings in the picture were still there. The blimp hangers are long gone. The blimp mooring circles are now part of the vehicle pursuit driving track. It was the Glynco Naval Air Station.

This link has some interesting information about Glynco and you can see vintage pictures of the base.

http://www.airfields-freeman.com/GA/Airfields_GA_SE.htm#glynco

That's Glynco too.

I'm thinking that it looks like one of the pre-war destroyer leaders, either Porter or Somers class. The rear mast is the giveaway. They were equipped with single-purpose 5" inch guns in dual mounts, which made them quite vulnerable in the Pacific, but well equipped for Atlantic duty where the odds of air attack were quite remote.

Gitmo, 1952 a nice blend of aircraft and I would imagine pretty good duty station ............................

Those are spectacular pictures!
Question about this one: The blimp attacking a towed sled. It's already blowing up and the blimp ain't there, yet. The depth charge dropped from a blimp not in the picture?

By the way, that towed sled is too close to the tow ship for my tastes.

This looks like a single funnel destroyer. Didn't the Porter and Somers class have two?

Sorry but that's the best I have. Great detective work though.


US Navy Airship Akron OH




Moffet Field in Mountain View CA


NAS Moffett Field 1942

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“PMURT KCUF”

Eh, that's okay. I just have to try harder.


It does appear to be a single funnel destroyer to me as well. As far as which classes had how many stacks, you are half correct: the Porters had 2, but the Somers had only 1. The Gridleys were the first class to feature only 1 stack. I think I can safely say the destroyer in the photo is from the Gridley, Bagley, Somers, Benham or Sims classes. It appears as though the "Z" mount on the destroyer is enclosed. I tried to look into finding a matching camouflage scheme but so far I've had no luck.

By the way, I'm finding a lot of this information off Wikipedia. On my own I can tell you what era a destroyer is from, but beyond that I need help. Everything in my first post I was initially able to remember off the top of my head. This post I needed a lot more outside help for. I just didn't want to give the impression that I was insanely good at this.

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Tri-State Warbird Museum Collections Manager & Museum Attendant

Warbird Philosophy Webmaster

The destroyer towing a ship is of the Somers Class of 1934-35. This was the only class of single stackers with a visable aft mast. If you copy and paste

http://destroyerhistory.org/goldplater/usssomers/

You will see a Somers class destroyer with the same paint scheme on its port side

Good job, I don't think I would have caught the aft mast information.

Here's the thing though, the camouflage on the destroyer in the blimp picture is not the exact same as the camouflage in the picture on the page you linked to, although they are very similar. To compare:




The picture in the middle displays an upward curve at the end of the otherwise straight diagonal line separating the two different paint colors on the bow of the destroyer, while the one on top does not. The diagram on the bottom also displays a curve, but in its case, it runs the whole length of the color separation and is shallower (less steep). The one other difference I would like to point to is the paint on the stack. Both the top picture and the bottom diagram show a section of black paint on the fore half of the stack extending from the base to 1/2 to 2/3 of the way up. The middle picture does not show this.

One interesting note is that the top picture shows a slab-sided stack, while the middle picture shows a round one.

I think at this point we need an expert on USN camouflage to go any further. I'm probably taking further than it needs to go anyway, because we have nailed down the identification of the ship as close as we reasonably can. I would venture to guess that the differences in paint scheme can be chalked up to variations on the part of the painter, but as I am not an expert as mentioned prior, this is just a guess.

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Tri-State Warbird Museum Collections Manager & Museum Attendant

Warbird Philosophy Webmaster