American Airship Bases and Facilities (American Airship Bases & Facilities)
James R. Shock | 1900-01-01 00:00:00 | Atlantis Productions | 240 | Aviation
Reviews
American Airship Bases & Facilities covers not only all the U.S. Navy facilities, but U.S. Army and private facilities such as the Goodyear airship bases. It also includes measured American facilities abroad, such as those that existed in the Panama Canal Zone, South America and Europe.
This is Mr. Shock's crowning achievement - the result 50 years of seeking out and assembling data on virtually every structure in the U.S. that ever housed a balloon or airship. We are lucky that he is sharing in all this data with us, because it would take another lifetime or two to duplicate his effort, since many of the original sources of information are dispersed or no longer in existence.
AABF is attractively packaged and profusely illustrated with more than 200 half- tone photos, artwork and promotional materials. The book is organized by Navy World War I, Army, Navy rigid, private, and Navy WWII hangars. This allows most of the structures to be presented more or less chronologically by the dates of their construction. Many of the structures and bases are so rare that they are all but unknown to even the die hard LTA historian. All are illustrated with one or more photos of each hangar.
The base histories are informative and each hangar is consistently described, so as to make comparisons easier. Construction methods are noted in some detail. Care is given to documenting the whole life span of each hangar where known, including modifications or moves of whole buildings to different states. For context, there are generous descriptions of airship operations that took place at the bases, making the entries an informative read. The data is up-to-date to late 1995, an even includes coverage of events such as the Weeksville fire and base closures.
There are appendices on mooring mast development, hangar construction, and notes on foreign airship hangars in use. Even hangars proposed but never built receive mention. An index ( a welcome feature ) is not entirely comprehensive, but helps find many entries. Sources of original information are also documented making the work that much more valuable to the scholarly researcher.
One minor complaint is that some of the information on the WWII Navy bases in South America is contemporary to the war, and does not cover the end of some operations. However, the errors or omissions are minor, and this is the best source of hangar data to be found. The appendix on how the wooden WWII hangars were built is almost worth the price of admission itself.
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