WRECKED AIRSHIP
A SURVIVOR’S ACCOUNT. CAUGHT IN SHARP GUST. (United Press Assn. —Telegraph Copyright.) Washington, April 6. A sudden and very sharp gust of wind—more severe than any he had ever experienced—was given by Lieu-tenant-Commander Wiley, of the Akron, on Thursday in an official report to the Navy as the apparent cause of the disaster. In a statement to the Secretary of the Navy, Mr Claude A. Swanson, in W'hich two other survivors collaborated, Lieut.-Commander Wiley said the gust struck the ship as it was fighting a storm off the New Jersey coast at 12.30 a.m. on Tuesday. “I noted immediately that the lower rudder control rope had carried away and reported it to the captain,” he said. Deal, the boatswain’s mate, reported that as he lay in his bunk on the right side of the ship he saw two girders above the corridor of the ship bend and buckle and noted as he ran forward that the control lines in that vicinity of the ship appeared to be slack, but not broken. • It is difficult to synchronize accurately these observations in the control car, but apparently the damage to the girders occurred after a severe gust struck the ship and after the ship had begun its last descent, practically out of control, and which terminated by the ship striking the water with consequent major structural damage. Lieut.-Commander Wiley said he was submerged in the control car by water coming in at the window and was then carried out through the -window. He sought to reach the airship by swimming as it was silhouetted in the lightning flashes. The airship, however, was drifting away rapidly. “At about 500 yards,” he said, “I could see the ship entirely on the water broken in two or three places and submerged about one-third of her diameter, with the bow for a length of about 200 feet inclined in the air at an angle of about 30 degrees. I saw several men in the water and heard their cries. None was close to me.”
Wiley clung to a piece of timber and was hauled on board the Phoebus after being in the water from 30 minutes to an hour.
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Bibliographic details
Southland Times, Issue 21986, 8 April 1933, Page 5
Word Count
365WRECKED AIRSHIP Southland Times, Issue 21986, 8 April 1933, Page 5
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