Posted inAviation Maritime & Naval History World War 2

Our Navy Builds Flat-Top Mastery

By REAR-ADMIRAL E. L. COCHRANE, USN, Chief of the Bureau of Ships

By first punching the foe off balance and now smashing his last holds on the ocean, our aircraft carriers have proved modern speeders of Victory. Here “Buships” chief details how we’ve come from a mere seven to more than a hundred of these sky-sweepers.

Picture of an aircraft carrier from the side, showing rows of airplanes with folded wings on deck and sailors performing their work.

December 7, 1941, the United States had on hand seven full-sized carriers, the Lexington, Saratoga, Ranger, Yorktown, Enterprise, Wasp, and the Hornet, also the small escort carrier, Long Island. Of these the Lexington, Yorktown, Wasp, and Hornet have since been lost. For every one of those veterans lost, however, there has been built and are now at sea, nearly 30 replacements (including the escort carriers transferred to our allies).

In the two and a half years since Pearl Harbor, the number of carriers on hand (excluding the 38 transferred by lendlease to the British) has been increased to 90. totaling more than 1,400,000 tons. During this same period the combatant vessels of our Navy in all categories have more than tripled — going from 345 vessels, totaling 1,382,755 tons, to 1071 units, totaling 3,434,762 tons.

With the outbreak of war and following the heavy carrier losses in 1942. the desperate need for carrier strength in the Pacific and the growing demands for fighter transports pushed six vessels of the aircraft carrier program into top priority. With first call on the nation’s scarce materials and components, the inauguration of shift work, and the seven-day week, actual completions surpassed even the most optimistic forecasts.

Posted inAviation Daily News

Missing U.S. Naval Flyers Found Alive Near Hawaiian Islands

Meagre Details of Rescue of Com. Rodgers and Crew of Four Lost for 11 Days in Pacific

Crippled Plane PN9-One Found Floating in Late Afternoon by Sub R-4—All Safe and Well—Hopped Off Aug 31 in Non-Stop Flight to Honolulu—Last Message Told of Exhausted Gas Supply—Ends Search of Great Array of Craft Over Wide Area of Pacific

Honolulu, Sept. 10—(By the Associated Press) Com. John Rodgers, commander of the missing naval seaplane PN-9 Number One, and his crew of four men, were found alive tonight 15 miles east of Kauai, by the submarine R-4.

Rodgers and his crew left San Francisco in an attempted non-stop flight to Honolulu on August 31. The following afternoon, 32 hours after his seaplane, the PN-9 Number One, hopped off, the plane and crew disappeared about 300 miles from its destination. Last messages from the PN-9 Number One stated that its gasoline supply was about exhausted and a forced landing was expected.

Posted inAviation Daily News

Shenandoah Splits in Sky; 14 Die

Giant Dirigible, Fighting Hurricane, Crashes to Earth, Breaking Into Four Pieces, on Trip That Would Have Brought It Here Today

BODIES OF CRAFT’S VICTIMS STREWN OVER 10-MILE COURSE

Commander Zachary Lansdowne Goes Down With His Ship and Is Found Dead—Several Are Missing and Two Are Injured.

Image of airship Shanandoah, showing length & height measurements (680 feet by 79 feet) and gas capacity (2,100,000 cubic feet)

By United Press

CAMBRIDGE, Ohio, Sept. 3.—Whirled through space, twisted and tossed by the winds until she broke into pieces, the giant naval dirigible Shenandoah hurled fourteen of her crew to their deaths early today near Ava., Ohio, and then fell, a total wreck.

Commander Zachary Lansdowne perished with his ship. In addition to the fourteen dead, two are injured and three of the crew are unaccounted for. The remainder of the crew of forty-two is safe.

Posted inAviation Daily News

French Aviators Shatter Record

Cover 2,546 Miles in Non-Stop Flight of 40 Hours, Still Up.

By the Associated Press.

CHARTRES, France, August 9.—The French aviators, Drouhin and Landry landed at the airdrome here at 2:42 o’clock this morning, after having covered 4,400 kilometers in 45 hours 11 minutes 59 seconds, creating a new world non-stop record both for duration and distance.

By the Associated Press.

ETAMPES, France, August B.—The French aviators Drouhin and Landry, at 10 o’clock tonight, became holders of the world’s record for a non-stop airplane flight, having covered a distance of 4,100 kilometers (2,546.1 miles).

Posted inAviation Daily News Travelers' Tales

World Flight Flagship Wins Place as Smithsonian Exhibit

Douglas World Cruiser "Chicago" (Photo: Smithsonian Air & Space Museum)
Douglas World Cruiser “Chicago”, (A19250008000), on display in the Barron Hilton Pioneers of Flight Gallery, National Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC. (Smithsonian Photo by Eric Long) [_T8A3778] [NASM2020-07130]

The Douglas world cruiser Chicago, flagship of the Army Air Service world flight, which has been sitting in a hangar at McCook Field. Dayton, Ohio, since last November, awaiting final disposition, will be placed in the aircraft building of the Smithsonian Institution in a short time, it was announced today by the War Department.

The decision to bring the Chicago here was made final by Acting Secretary of War Dwight F. Davis, who wrote Dr. Charles D. Walcott, secretary of the institution, yesterday that he had instructed the chief of Air Service “to take the necessary steps to have the Chicago brought to Washington and turned over to you. for the purpose of placing it in the exhibit of the Smithsonian Institution.”

At the Army Air Service it was said the Supply Division already had received instructions to prepare the Chicago for shipment to Washington by rail. The suggestion had been made that Capt. Lowell H. Smith, leader of the flight and pilot of the plane, fly it to Washington, but the Air Service did not wish to take the risk with such a historic and famous plane. Its exposure to all sorts of weather and salt water on the globe flight may have caused a structural weakness in some isolated place, which, it was argued, might fall when the plane was off the ground.

Posted inAviation Daily News

New York — Chicago Air Mail On Dawn-To-Dark Schedule Is Reality

East and Westbound Mails Delivered This Morning by Planes Arriving In Nation’s Largest Cities.

1924 postal service map showing the air mail route across the US, starting in New York City, to Chicago, Cheyenne, and ending in San Francisco.

NEW YORK, July 2.—(Associated Press.)—Dark-to-dawn air mail service between America’s two greatest cities became a reality today. Cleaving the night along a beacon lighted highway the government’s mail planes transferred letters to and from New York and Chicago between the close of one business day and the opening of the next. Two eastbound air couriers, aided by a stiff wind bettered their schedule of 8 hours and 15 minutes—in one case by two hours. The same wind held back the westbound planes. One completed its assignment in a little more than the allotted time. Accidents to the other emphasized the differences the airmen nightly must overcome.