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Show THE RICH COUNTY REAPER, RANDOLPH, UTAH U. S. Beginning to Realize Value of 'Blimp Armada' Dirigibles- Found Successful in Warfare; One Man Given Credit for - Anti-Submari- ne s Stepped-U- p Production. By BAUKHAGE Newt Analyst and Commentator. 1343 H Street, N.W., Washington, D. C. Until two navy training blimps bumped into each other some days ago, most people had almost forgotten if they ever knew what those d airships lazy looking, were doing in the war. The dirigible has been unlucky that way its mishaps get into the WNU Service, ; cigar-shape- papers, its achievements are forgotten. But today a prediction made in March of 1941 is being borne out and the blimp is coming into its own as a vital factor in warfare. It was in March a year ago that I wandered into the Press club one afternoon and a friend beckoned me to join him at a table where he was sitting with a bronzed gentleman with a very square jaw and a mouth taut as a halyard and the look of the sea and wind in his eyes. It was Capt. C. E. Rosendahl and he was saying, in less formal language: Believe it or not, as far as the navy is concerned, more fearful than even the swashbuckling airplane are the slinking submarine and the mine . . . our continental coastal sea lanes of nearly 5,000 miles and the approaches to many of our important seaports would be a tempting feasting ground for enemy subs . . . Actually that sentence was quoted from a manuscript that he had just written and had with him in his portfolio. A leading weekly had just refused it because it was considered untimely what nonsense to think that enemy submarines would ever reach our coastal waters! Later, in September of the same year, the article appeared but to most people the subject was still purely academic. It is no longer academic. After one of the most determined and for a long time futile battles in the history of naval achievement, Captain Rosendahl, now in charge of the naactivities, has vys lighter-than-a- ir won his point. He got the 48 blimps he begged for and most of them are in service. Their record has been so good that there is little doubt that congress will approve the building of 72 more and perhaps some of the big ones. The story of Captain Rosendahl is the story of another man in our naval history who wouldnt give up the ship. anti-submari- ne Abiding Faith He started that program when he found himself in mid-ai- r, aboard one-ha- lf of the dirigible Shenandoah, the other half tom loose and hurtling to the earth. He landed his half safely. The accident that shocked the world didnt even jolt Rosen-dah- ls faith. It ismply gave him some tips about strengthening the construction of dirigibles. Later the dirigibles Akron and the Macon were lost, and public sentiment was such that the ideas of dirigibles as practical craft was shelved. There was a renewed interest when the Hinden-fcur- g made its successful flights from Germany but when its hydrogen-filled bag exploded a damper was cast on efforts to build an Amerfleet. Experts ican lighter-than-a- ir knew that what happened to the could never happen to an American dirigible because America had what Germany didnt have helium gas. plenty of But Captain Rosendahl kept everlasting at it Too late to help combat the submarine menace when it struck he had managed at least to start his program. Now it is well under way and he is one of the busiest men in Washington. He wont leave his office for lunch to go farther than the navy cafeteria in the same building. He works Saturdays and Sundays and merely talksjvist-full- y about getting in some golf. I visited him in his sacrosanct doHin-denbu- rg non-explosi- ve main where I hardly dared look at tiie maps on the walls for fear I would sneak a military secret. An observer in an airplane, said Captain Rosendahl, has to go at such speed that if he turns his head for a moment he may miss an object below him. The blimp can hover and carefully observe air bube peribles, oil slicks, and the scope feather in the wake of an enemy submarine. When the blimp approaches a sub it gives it a burst of machine gun fire, drops bombs tell-tal- or depth charges, then throttles down, flies low and keeps the sub under observation until the destroyers or planes which it has summoned appear. In World War I, Allied blimps spotted 49 submarines and dropped bombs on 27. European waters are now covered with too many enemy planes for a blimp to survive. But the absence of enemy planes along our coasts, our un- bounded monopoly of helium gas, our geographical situation make the blimp an ideal weapon for American defense. Blimp Capabilities As a warship, the dirigibles proponents say, it can be an effective aircraft carrier. A rigid airship can carry ten attack bombers and has a range of Its 10,000 miles without planes would not need the heavy landing gear required of planes that land on the ground and therefore their speed could be greatly increased. Furthermore they could be launched at high speed for the airship itself has a top speed of 84 nautical miles per hour. In answer to the charge of vulnerability, the airships friends say that surface are highly vultoo. nerable, (Japan found that out at Midway.) That the airship is vulnerable to only one enemy weapon planes. The surface carrier can be attacked by the guns of other ships and submarines as well as planes. The airship keeps out of range of gun fire. And the loss of an airship carrier would not be as costly in money, replacement time or personnel as a surface carrier. In peacetime, with Americas mohelium gas nopoly of to carry it, the dirigible could do all that the Germans proved could be done with the successful flights of the Hindenburg and more. Captain Rosendahl has a light in his eye when he talks about that. Buy War Bonds rs The first picture to be published in America of the concrete and steel fort which the occupying Germans have built on the French coast at the point where the English channel is narrowest. The Todt battery, as it is called, is manned day and night and is camouflaged. Here Germans who man the guns have been given the alarm signal and are dashing for their posts. Congratulations, Soldiers! x A view of the Attu village church on Attu island, farthest outpost of the Aleutian islands, which, with Kiska island, have been occupied by Japanese invasion forces, thus precipitating the raging battle with U. S. naval and air forces. This move of the Japs is believed a bid for tstepping stone bases in the North Pacific. Shooting Fish IJVWWWMV .WAVJW. non-explosi- ve Amphibious America America is going amphibious. That sounds professorial. It is really just a natural deduction of what happened at Midway. A deduction that I made in the light of a conversation I had before the battle of Midway with a with a lot of salt bitten sailor-ma- n stripes on his sleeve. He was kin of the men who made the Yankee clipper queen of the seas, weatherbeaten as a piece of driftwood, melWilliam L. McFetridge, director of salvage division of the Office of low as old port. Here is the way he sized up the Civilian Defense, Chicago, congratulates members of the Junior Victory war in the Pacific, as he saw it before army salvage corps for their effective work in the rubber collection drive Midway through the calm eyes of called by President Roosevelt. experience, tempered by the proofing of memories before a crackling fire that warmed his snug harbor One-Ma- n and in whose dancing shadows he reread a long life with his face bared wind-tanne- d, Medical Corps on the Move Maj. Alfred Kalberer of Lafayette, Ind., who led the U. S. air squadron which scored 35 bulls-ey- e bomb hits on two Italian battleships in the Mediterranean. He said it was like shooting fish in a barrel. War News Chief against salt spray. As I see it, he said, our navy has nothing to be ashamed of. He had read, he said, the books about naval warfare, most of them. He reeled off the titles I couldnt follow. But, he said, none of them ever talked about airplanes. And there was very little about submarines. And not much about landing parties, when soldiers on the sea, leave their ships under war condi- tions and become land fighters amphibians. This the Japs worked to perfection in their fight on Singapore. The Japs have written several new chapters for the war books. I dont know where they learned what they did. Some of our fellows preached it. Nobody listened. You dont always have to be bigger and stronger than the other but youve got fellow, he said, to know what hes going to do next. As I read the reports and the newspaper accounts, the Japs had eyes that we didnt. They had planes that we didnt. They knew what we were going to do. What we wanted to do. In the battle of the Macassar straits they didnt know, and we licked em. And when the history of this war is written youll find out that there would have been a lot more Macassar straits if the Japs hadnt learned what we were doing before we did it. Youll find that more than once, when they did find out, they ran away. At Midway, we "found out and they had to run away. Dr. Gordon Seagrave, who was in the Harper Memorial hospital at Namkhan, Burma, when the Japanese moved in, is shown with three of his Burmese nurses in an army jeep after Dr. Seagrave had joined up with General Joseph Stilwells Chinese army in Burma. Dr. Seagrave was in the thick of the savage fighting in this campaign, attending to g conditions. During the heat wounded and operating under of the early fighting he worked one stretch with but 90 minutes off, taking care of 150 casualties. The only assistance he had' was from Makio, his head nurse, who handled 20 of the minor cases herself. Operating on a porch his work was illuminated by a burning city. heart-breakin- 24-ho- ur Elmer Davis of New York, who has been appointed chief of tho Office of War Information by Presi-den- t forRoosevelt. The mer school teacher and radio commentator has supreme authority to deal with the press, radio, film industry and all other news sources, either federal or private, and answers only to the President. A committee on war information policy will assist Mr. Davis. - -- . |