The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

dFi apun clear of her anchorage. In a second the bow had tlited and the dove downward. "Let go the water ballast," Cap tain Helnen cried. Buiting the action to the word, _.Aa~veached ~above his head: with mmz'mmubm Paliaht 'puils--tiitte woodenclevate pulls--little wooden levars arranged in closse rows below thes reot of the pllot car, -- LA®utenant Commander Plersce, who had beon standing by the horizontal ateering wheal, aprang upon the same min wlon, as A14 LAentenant Kinoald, The .Arese of them simuitaneously mam~m~umm bags and dumped 5.000 There were twenty--one méon--on the great dirigible at 6:52 o'clock that memorable night when it yielded to the burst of & seventy-- Ave mile gale and tore loose from They were Lieutenant Comman-- der Maunrice G. Pierce, navigating G. Mayes, Radio Gunner J. L. Rob-- ertson, Captain Anton Heinen, fa ing mast. It Joomed before them, a tall, spectral shape in the gloont. A wild cery of consternation dom+ mm.mmm'ml The Shenandoah had vanizghed! In the officers' mess, the post meteorologist had just remarked encouragingly that, while it was blowing a sixty--five mile an hour gale, indications pointed to an éar-- ly end to the storm. As though to contradict him, the wind wailéed suddenly wilder and above its howling came a great creaking, a tearing and then a crash, as though metal had "been twisted in shrill protest and had given away.. ---- . "The ship!" «se . Oficers and enlisted men dashed from the mess halls, regardless of the driving rain or of the damp, eivilian consulting engineer and trainer for the crew; Dr. C. P. Bur-- gess of the Bureau of Aeronautics, unulhlfi-ndmxuym four enlisted men of the Army, --. _ Where They Served This was the disposition of the eamergency crew At the very mo-- ment of the disaster.. Lieutenant wheels. Lisutenant Mayes was in-- slde the hull on inspection; Ave Nary men were on «station in the engine cars--one to each--and the remainder of the crew were along the cat's--walk, the narrow foot-- path traversing the bag above the keel from stem to stern. . Not a man in the pilot car feared strain. nen, Lieutenant Commander Deem, Lieutenant Kincaid, Dr. Burgess, Radio Gunner Robertson and two Navy enlisted men were in the pi-- lot car, the two latter manning the the her nose pointed into the gale, but Aloft, beyond the outline of the mooring mast, the glow from the Shenandoah's pifiot car gave as surance that, straining though she was at her tether, all was "well within the big dirigible. -- Exrcept for an emergency crew on board the airship, the station was at supper. The tcpic in the mess halls was the seven--day test of the Shenandoah at the mooring mast. Four of the seven days had been passed successfully, but this, apparently moorsed Armly to the tall steel mast. Let Go Water Ballast Then it happened, The wind velocity increased to a fury, and the ship gave a twisting wreach, The cra¢tkling roar which aroused the meses halls was far more clam-- erous as heard in the pllot car, A Cloud banks in endless procession scudded with the gale, fleeing in tumbled haste past the long cigar--shaped hull. 'Then' the early darkness . of & | ------------------------------------+---- winter evening was succeéeded by | pounds of water to merge with the an inky blagkness which presaged |pouring rain. a night of tempest. Here and there| At the same moment Lieutenant through the opacity lights strug--| Commander Deem telegraphed to gled, feeble as candles, from the|the engine rooms, "Full speed." windows of the b?ndlm of the & . T';. Motors Respond Lakebhurst naval air station. Envina Car No 1 is furtheat aft YY _ remembered! sb s s -- All day long the storm winds had charged northward over the 'Jer:z pine belt to howl around the ufinnt mooring mast and w themselyes in fruitless assa against the blunt bow of the Navy dirigible Shenandoah. _ _ _ . . * Pn..--vpil WEDNESDAY evening, January 16, 1924--one to be remembered|! Es «_ dous lurch and the dirigible The Ship Vanishes How Twe'y--one Men Foiled Death and Destruction Told in the Story of the Epic Night Flight of the o s Great Navy Dirigible. « Queen of the Storm Winds , who is radically wrong fore and aft. it was Lieutenant Mayes who brought word of the seriousness of the dam-- ter ballast saved them from a crash. Lighted of so much weight, the dirigible rose several hundred feet, staggering and vibrating as she did so, and turning the while until her back was to the wind. bow still pointed downward at a nasty angle, the vertical control wheel seemed. to have no~effect upon the upper rudder, and a guaty wind came down the hatchway lead-- Ing to the interior of the bag, blow-- ing. with such velocity ds to tear loose sheet after sheet of metsoro-- Jogical report on the side wall of the Shenandosazh broke loose. In the first downward lurch, he clung to the guide ropes running elbow high on either side of the cat's walk. Then, as the water ballast was released and the ship began to ascend, he started out to ascertain the extent of the injuries. E The Cat's-- walk One must see the interior of the Shenandoah to fully appreciate his task,.-- The cat'e--walk--aptly nam ed--iIs but elight inches wide, the thinnest of boards stretching away for hundreds of feet. It runs about three feet above the keel for its entire length. On either side of it, at distances of approximately thir-- ty 4wo feet, the Auralnminum metal beams of the great structure curre away 'and upwards. Between 'the beams and their longitudinal cross-- plece is a network of wire--lacing under which is spread the outer cloth cover of the bag. A man slipping from the cat's--walk might be sustained in this netting. Most likely, however, he would plunge through to his death, ' Above ~the cat's--walk, almost 'within reach of the hand, are the bottoms of the twenty balloonettes holding the helium gas, Spaced How near they were to destruc-- tion upon the tops of the pines in that first bhalf--minute of wild fiight no man will ever know. The nose dive must have taken them peril-- ously close to the storm--tossed Jer-- sey forest and to have entangled one of the cars in the branches of a single tree would have meant the end of the Shenandoah., _ _ At the same moment Lieutenant Commander Deem telegraphed: to the engine rooms, "Full speed." . ---- The Motors Respond Engine Car No. 1 is furthest aft, directly beneath the keel; Nos, 2, 8, 4 and 5 are staggered to port and starboard amidship, and No. 6 --a&n emergency engine which was not in use--is in the rear of the pilot car. _Two men constitute each engine crew. There was but one man in each car, however, to do the work that night. It speaks volumes for their training and re-- sourcefulness to state that all five had .their motors started almost before the last word of the order had clicked to their ears, along the walk are the gasoline tanks, the water ballast bags and the crew's hammocks, the formet in pairs on efther side and so close that it is necessary to squsets be-- tween them. 'The whole passage is a long tonfel With triangular sides, the cat's--walk being a centre--board in the base, Amidships, relieft is aforded by a twontyd4oot square platform--the lving quarters--aft is a Avefoot square plattorm con-- ¥heels for the rudders, and for-- ward a platform about ten feet across holds the windlass and the landing cable, Flashlights Only Light There is 'not a single, solitary light along this 880 fesot of aight Inch wide walk, nor on the plat-- forms, Not an electric wira can be found within the bag. Nor is Infammable, but bhydrogen gas is, and the time may come when by drogen gas will be used in the wires could ignite the gas bagse or the outer cloth casing. ©Thess same l:ron prohibit -- naturaily the use of oll lights, gasoline lights The inspection officer, as has * is Badly Damaged | 'The prompt dumping of the wa-- in the cloth saheathing, and through this hole had raced the storm wind to whip away the cloth on the other side by an attack from with-- In, and, oatching the upper vertical rudder from this vuinerable posi tion, unhinged it from its satruts and rendered it ussless,. The rays Of his fashlight showed it to be ::'xnndhyounymun- r. _ _ CORkadel & Herbert _ @Kkeystons View Co. _ @Laysntone Viaw to. -- @Reyscoms View UJ _ _.© _ wasautl & mersuss . Pm hok [ . W Wthibe wous s Radlo Qunner, J. T. Robertson Captain Anton Melnen -- Lt. Com,. Maurics Q. Plerte ° ~Lt. Com»®WJ. M, Deem Lt. E. H. Kineata ' FIVE OF THE OFFICERS IN WHOoSGK CAPABLE HANDS ARE8TED THE FATE OF THE SHENANDOAH AFTER THE sSTORM MAD TORN HER FROM HER MOORING MAST , R margia of saafety was lhrea OX posed kas bags. Lisutenant Mayes continued his rapid Inspection,. What Mappened Forward Not"only had the bow cap been ripped away, but the steel center pin had wone with it, tearing the axial cable which passes through the heart of the twonty gas bags water bailast bags, hanging from struts along the walk,.were unfast ened and moved to emergency po-- sitions almost benesath the rudders, Cast Away Gas Tamks Kyan all this, however, was not sufficient to right the dirigible. Lieutenant Commander Plerce and Captain Helnen held a brieft con-- #uitation. --Bomething would have to be cast away, SBhould it be the Ridea With the Wind MMymfll'lfi and nothing more had to be 'cast .'I'.TIO'MICM" riding on an aven keel, although atill with her back to the wind, be-- Ing swopt along with the gale do spite all that her engines could do. of,, It probably landed in the messmatas sahook hands enviously with the heroes of the wild ride, and Captain McCrary and Com-- mander Weyerbacher, the construc-- tor, m'vl up into the bag and, by the their Aashlights, made nnllml&nuoloflbom for an Aimmediate report to Wash-- ington,. An hour later the 39