WesWorld

Thursday, March 29th, 1929
The Battleship Pennsylvania departed Norfolk today bound for Copenhagen and next month’s conference on clarifications to the Cleito Treaty. Secretary of the Navy Adams did not offer specifics on what changes the United States might propose, but said he did not expect much to change as a result of the conference, except for the possible admission of Germany to the treaty. “We’re rather happy with the status-quo right now. There were some poor negotiating decisions made by the Harding administration that we would like to see changed, but I have no illusions that we’ll see much support on those matters.” The delegation is being lead by Secretary of State Hull who is accompanied by Secretary of War Dern, and the Secretary of the Navy.

OOC: The rest of the news from the conference will await its completion.

Monday, April 1st, 1929
Concerns from residents and officials in Norfolk were eased after Navy officials explained that last night’s loud explosion at the Navy Yard was “just a minor accident with an electrical generator providing power to a vessel at dock,” The Navy spokesman went on to say that there were only minor injuries and that activities at the yard were continuing as normal. Police switchboards were jammed after the 2am blast rattled windows for several miles around the base. Reports of a blue-green glow coming from the docks were attributed to experimental searchlight tests. The spokesman refused to comment if the events last night were related to the appearance of a large canvas tent over the forward superstructure of the Battleship Texas which is believed to be moored near the site of the blast as it finishes its modernization.
In other news, an unidentified elderly gentleman with a pronounced eastern European accent was found wandering along the shore of the Elizabeth River by Norfolk police. He appeared to be suffering from shock and minor burns and was muttering incoherently about the whereabouts of his “pigeon”.

Monday, April 8th, 1929
The Navy officially announced that this year’s “Fleet Problem” will begin December 6th instead of during the summer and, besides the United States, will involve forces from Atlantis, Mexico, and Chile. Several other nations have also been invited to send observers. The war games will simulate the defense of the future Mexican Canal from an enemy attack. A State Department official admitted that formal invitations to the war games were to have gone out last winter, but “were lost in the shuffle” during the transition from President Coolidge to President Roosevelt. The majority of the Pacific fleet will depart in late October for a tour of South America prior to joining elements of the Atlantic fleet in the Gulf of Mexico for the Fleet Problem. The event will easily surpass the size of 1927’s Caribbean exercise with Atlantis. A Navy spokesman said that the decision to delay the exercise until the late fall was a result of multiple considerations, including a desire to miss the bulk of the hurricane season, and would also allow several units currently undergoing rebuilding or refit to join the exercise, especially the Battleship Texas, which is nearing the end of an extensive rebuilding effort at Norfolk.

Wednesday, May 8th, 1929
President Roosevelt, in a speech before the Chamber of Commerce in Chicago, has directly called for the repeal of Prohibition and the Eighteenth Amendment. “While a noble effort by citizens truly concerned about the effects of alcohol on society, Prohibition has done little to curb the use of alcohol, and has lead to a dramatic rise in violent crime linked to the production, importation, and distribution of illegal alcohol. This very city has been plagued by rampant violence between gangs smuggling alcohol. The brutal murders last Valentines’ Day are but the latest example of the growing violence that the Eighteenth Amendment has unwittingly brought about. Across this nation our law enforcement personnel are stretched to the limits of their capabilities. The Coast Guard is tasked with preventing sea-borne smuggling of alcohol from overseas, a mission it lacks the resources to complete while still performing its other essential duties. Local, State, and Federal law enforcement are likewise forced to devote precious resources to enforcement of Prohibition at the expense of other vital duties. Repealing the Eighteenth Amendment will eliminate the demand for smuggling alcohol and the violence that is part and parcel to it. The alternative is a nation living in terror of random violence and corruption out of control in the face of the tremendous amounts of illegal funds generated by the smuggling industry.” The speech met with mostly positive reaction, though Eleanor Fizzlebean, head of the Chicago Temperance Alliance, denounced Roosevelt’s speech as a “surrender to the evils of alcohol” and accused “Communists and their liquor industry allies” with causing the violence in “a deliberate attempt to terrorize America back into the vile bosom of booze!”

Sunday, 26th May, 1929
The Union Pacific Railroad was awarded a major contract today by the Filipino Government for the reconstruction, upgrading and expansion of the Filipino rail network. Union Pacific has acquired a majority interest in the Filipino Union Rail Road, with the Government retaining the remaining holdings of the line, which will be renamed Ferrocarril Nacional Filipinas

Friday, June 14th, 1929
In a ceremony in Akron yesterday, Admiral William Moffett, recently reappointed to the head of the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics, drove a ceremonial golden rivet into the first main ring frame of the USS Akron, the Navy’s new giant airship, which is being assembled in the Airdock here. The massive airship, larger than nearly any warship currently in Navy service, is scheduled to be completed in 1931 and will be able to carry several planes in an internal hanger, much like the recently completed Atlantian twin airships. Goodyear-Zeppelin Chief Engineer Karl Arnstein said that “we have learned a great deal during the construction of the Atlantes and Maeotis about how to and how not to build airships. This experience will aid immensely in the Akron project and I feet confident that she will pave the way for more and even bigger airships for the Navy and Commercial interests as well.”

A picture from the event program showing the tremendous size of the new ZRS ships.

In a related note, in a brief interview after the ceremony, Admiral Moffett made mention of his desire to “rationalize” the Navy’s aircraft procurement system and inventory. “Right now we have a half dozen of more fighter models performing similar tasks, but each needing their own supplies of spares and technical expertise to operate. It’s a sloppy system of doing things and we need to change it. We should settle on a couple of designs for each mission, or even designs that can perform multiple missions. Some of our fighters, like the Curtiss and Boeing models, also make excellent dive bombers. That way we can reduce costs and increase efficiency by just having a couple of different designs that need to be supported rather than the current mess we have!”

Congrats on keeping Tesla out of the fiendish grasp of the Philippines.

Umm...is Eleanor Fizzlebean a fictional character or historical? The name intrigues me.

Eleanor is fictional, sort of the stereotypical temperance fanatic you see in the old newsreels from the 20's.

As for Tesla, apparently by the late 20's and early 30's he was beginning to slip off the deep end, ala Howard Hughes. He apparently said his only friend was a pigeon...

That's one BIG zeppelin...

*begins considering plans for Manila Airdock*

Yes that is a big one. Be interesting to see if the technology improves enough to keep them around a little longer...perhaps even to the proposed aircraft carrier airship level.

Hmm, sadly i haven't really done any work on the Iberian airships, but they should be bigger yb now. Also it might be important to fix Akron and Macon's historic design flaws, which lead to their eventual loss.

I guess it all depends on who discovers the flaws first, seeing as Atlantis has two semi sisters Atlantes and Maeotis along with their two Atlantean built sisters Antilia and Meropis.

Thats six chances to get it right.....

no doubt. and the flaws were daft anyway: Goodyear-Zeppelin split of Zeppeling and the design team was a bunch of Zeppelin runaways. They decided to break with some historic design principles liek attaching the fail fins to 4 frames and only used three as can be seen on the pic. this lead them coming of in heavy weather ... (all this with IIRC and AFAIK of course)

The picture of Akron would seem to contradict when shown with a artists impression of the Atlantes..



Atlantes appears to use 4 frames for the tail fins.

Now if GB builds 2 R100s instead of R101 we'll probably see airships for a much longer time.

The biggest problems with the Akron/Macon design, IMO, were in the minds of the people operating them. Akron was lost in a storm in which she had no business being in. The crew relied on their barometric pressure altimeter, which was unreliable in the middle of an intense low pressure system. Apparently they had a German designed "echolot" altimeter which measures the time for a soundwave to echo back to the ship from the surface. They never used it. The weather forecasts they got were incomplete as well and didn't show the full extent of the storm and the fact that they were flying right into the middle of it. Also, since Admiral Moffett was on board with several VIP's, there was apparently added pressure to make the flight. To top it off, there were only a couple life rafts and life vests on board which directly contributed to the huge loss of life. As for Macon, Goodyear and the Navy knew they had a problem months in advance of her loss, and Goodyear had already prepared a reinforcement kit and sent it to Sunnyvale to be installed, but the Navy didn't want to interrupt the Macon's schedule for the several days it would take to install. They wanted to wait until a series of exercises were finished. Funny thing is, when the fin came off it was the structure beneath the fin that failed, not the actual connections between the fin and hull. Then the crew over-corrected by releasing too much ballast, which, along with not shutting her engines off, caused her to shoot way above her pressure height, venting off most of the helium, which then doomed her. Luckily she settled to the surface slowly and all but two crew survived.

My main difference in Wesworld as far as the US airship program are concerned are that the men killed in 1921 in the ZR-2 crash in England instead survived to help train future crews and we didn't have to start from scratch with the Shenandoah. Also, the government was willing to spend a bit more to fund the program so that there was the ability to buy sufficient helium to fly more than one ship at a time and there was somewhat less of a desire to make publicity flights that put the ships at risk inland and didn't allow the crews to train and allow operational doctrines to develop. Historically, the Navy really only started to figure things out by 1935 when the Macon began to show real promise as a scout. She was the only one to really get to operate with the fleet on a regular basis and figure out what was the best way to use the airship, as a platform for aircraft and not as a recon unit in and of itself.

As for the Atlantian airships, they are probably quite similar in structure to the original Akron design. The changes to the tail fin structure occurred after the Graf Zeppelin's round the world flight when it was determined that the crew in the control car needed to see the tail fin during landing operations after some trouble landing in Los Angeles. Now, with R-100 and R-101, both had trouble. R-100 was able to make it across the Atlantic, but with some difficulty and it was planned to stretch her before she began regular service. R-101 is considered by some to actually be a better ship as far as her design, but was not built with much care and was badly overweight and the fabric covering was apparently partially rotten. She crashed after the covering on her forward hull came off, allowing the forward gas bags to deflate. She hit the ground rather gently, but then one of her engines caught fire and she blew up. Had she been better built, with better weight management, she could have been a pretty decent ship, especially if Canadian helium reserves were exploited. They were discovered at about the same time.