L-Class Blimp

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In the mid-1930s, the Goodyear Aircraft Company of Akron, Ohio built a family of small non-rigid airships that the company used for advertising the Goodyear name. This design became the L-Class blimp when the United States Navy found a need for a training blimp.

In 1937 the United States Navy awarded a contract for two different airships, K-Class blimp designated K-2 and a smaller blimp based upon Goodyear’s smaller commercial model airship used for advertising and passenger carrying. The smaller blimp was designated by the Navy as L-1 The L-1 was delivered in April 1938 and operated from the Navy’s lighter-than-air facility at Lakehurst, New Jersey until it was lost in a nighttime mid-air collision with the G-1 on June 8, 1942. In the meantime, the Navy ordered two more L-Class blimps, the L-2 and L-3, on September 25, 1940. These were delivered in 1941.

When the United States entered World War II, the Navy took over the operation of Goodyear’s five commercial blimps. These were the Resolute, Enterprise, Reliance, Rainbow, and Ranger. These airships were given the designations L-4 through L-8 even though their characteristics and performance varied among them. The next four L-Class airships were assembled in the assembly and repair shops at NAS Moffett. These blimps, L-9 through l-12 were completed by April 1943. The last lot of L-Class airships were ordered from Goodyear under a contract of February 24,1943. This was a lot of ten airships designated L-13 through L-22. All the blimps were delivered by the end of 1943.

As training airships these blimps operated mainly from the two major lighter-than-air bases, NAS Lakehurst and NAS Moffett Field on the southern edge of the San Francisco Bay. While too small for any extensive operation use, they were used in some coastal patrolling. In this mode one of these airships, the L-8, was involved in an incident where in the airship came drifting in from the Pacific Ocean over southern San Francisco in 1942 without either of the crewmen onboard.

Following the end of World War II a number of the L-class blimps were returned to Goodyear.

[edit] Specifications (L-4)

[edit] General characteristics

• Crew: Two
• Passengers: Four
• Volume: 3485 cu m (123,000 cu ft)
• Length: 44.8 m (147 ft)
• Width: m ( ft)
• Height: m ( ft)
• Empty: kg ( lb)
• Loaded: kg ( lb)
• Powerplant: Two, Warner R-500 engines, pusher mounted, 108 kW (145 hp)

[edit] Performance

• Maximum speed: 110 km/h (60 kts)
• Endurance: 12 hr @ 75 km/h (40 kts)
• Range: km ( nautical miles)