LOSS OF SHENANDOAH.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 210, 5 September 1925, Page 9

LOSS OF SHENANDOAH.

GREAT AIRSHIP BURSTS. FEARFUL SPECTACLE IN OHIO. NEW YORK, September 4. The largest section, 450 ft in length, of the Shenandoah, the United States navy dirigible which was struck by lightning and wrecked, killing 14 men, fell in a field a mile from Ava. The control compartment, in which the commander and the navigators were riding, was 50ft away. The third section, which was 150 ft long, drifted through the air like a runaway balloon for 12 mile 3 with eight men aboard. All these escaped injury. An eye-witness says that early in the morning he saw the airship, nose up, spinning on its tail. On two occasions she steadied down on the keel. Then the latter gave way, and the huge craft be-1 came absolutely unmanageable. The control cabin next shot off, dropping from the wreck like a plummet. The big bag then sagged in the middle, and a minute later the airship burst, though without flame or explosion. The forward half of the wrecked ship plunged to earth. The rear portion drifted for miles, sagging all the time rlown toward the earth. The control cabin was crushed when it struck the ground, and every man in it was instantly killed. It was here that 13 bodies were found 800 yds from the point where the main section grounded. Most of the men in this section were unhurt. During the earlier gyrations of tho ship the figures of men and furniture could be seen falling into space. Lieutenant-Commander Ranking, a survivor of the Shenandoah disaster, says:— "I had just gone on watch. The skip was making no headway. We had already been blown 90 miles out of our course when a cyclone hit us and shot us up another 400 ft. "There were two violent plunges, and amid the crash of lightning and thunder, and tlie noise of rending steel, such as you could never imagine, she broke in the middle. The forward end shot into

the air like an aeroplane soaring from, the earth. ' "The struts of the control cabin I snapped, and the cabin dipped like a hunk of lead." ' Colonel Hall (Army Observer on the | Shenandoah) said: "The disaster was in ! no way attributable to defect in the ship. ' Meteorological advices would have saved them." j When the ZR2 was burned at Hull five years ago, Commander Littel was killed. His widow emis-rated to America and '■ married Lewis Hancock, who was killed on board the Shenandoah.— ("Sun.") AIRSHIP'S BIRTH PANGS. COMMANDER BURNEY'S HOPE. SOME AFT ANALOGIES. (Received 2 p.m.) LONDON, September 4. Commander Burney asserts that the Shenandoah disaster has not shaken his faith in airships. The Shenandoah was ten years old in design; almost the same as R33. He did not think such long ships were sufficiently strong to enable them to weather abnormal conditions. He was most confident that scientists before long would succeed in designing a large, perfectly safe airship. It was realised that the present ships were not strong enough, and care would be taken that the Empire airway service ships would be twice the present strength. It must be remembered that, like all things, the airship must have its birth Jiangs. All aeroplanes once crashed owing to the wings breaking in midair. The first naval destroyers broke their backs in the North Sea.—(A. and N.Z.) THEORY OF EXPERTS. DISMEMBERMENT OF CABINS. (Received 1 p.m.) CALDWELL (Ohio), September 4. In the opinion of the Naval Board of Inquiry which visited the wreckage, the air rushing into the holes torn in the I Shenandoah by twisting off the radio and control cabins caused the buckling and breaking up of the ship.— (A. and] M.Z. Cable.) |