L-8, later renamed ''America'' and popularly known as the "Ghost Blimp", was a

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

L-class

airship An airship or dirigible balloon is a type of aerostat or lighter-than-air aircraft that can navigate through the air under its own power. Aerostats gain their lift from a lifting gas that is less dense than the surrounding air. In early ...

whose crew disappeared over the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

on August 16, 1942. At 11:15 a.m., several hours after the airship lifted off from Treasure Island,

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, L-8 reappeared off the shore of Ocean Beach near Fort Funston. L-8 briefly made contact with the ground at Ocean Beach, causing damage to the airship, then drifted over San Francisco and crashed on Bellevue Avenue,

Daly City Daly City () is the second most populous city in San Mateo County, California, United States, with population of 104,901 according to the 2020 census. Located in the San Francisco Bay Area, and immediately south of San Francisco (sharing its ...

. No traces of its crewmen,

Lieutenant A lieutenant ( , ; abbreviated Lt., Lt, LT, Lieut and similar) is a commissioned officer rank in the armed forces of many nations. The meaning of lieutenant differs in different militaries (see comparative military ranks), but it is often sub ...

Ernest DeWitt Cody and Ensign Charles Adams, have ever been found.

Background

The L-class was a series of non-rigid airships ( blimps), produced for the

in 1937, based upon the small commercial airships produced by the

Goodyear Aircraft Company Goodyear Aerospace Corporation (GAC) was the aerospace and defense subsidiary of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. The company was originally operated as a division within Goodyear as the Goodyear Zeppelin Corporation, part of a joint project ...

that were used for advertising

Goodyear tires The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company is an American multinational tire manufacturing company founded in 1898 by Frank Seiberling and based in Akron, Ohio. Goodyear manufactures tires for automobiles, commercial trucks, light trucks, motorcycles, S ...

. After the United States

declared war A declaration of war is a formal act by which one state announces existing or impending war activity against another. The declaration is a performative speech act (or the signing of a document) by an authorized party of a national government, i ...

on Japan in response to

Pearl Harbor Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the Naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the Re ...

, the

Imperial Japanese Navy The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN; Kyūjitai: Shinjitai: ' 'Navy of the Greater Japanese Empire', or ''Nippon Kaigun'', 'Japanese Navy') was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945, when it was dissolved following Japan's surrender ...

sank at least half a dozen

Allied An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...

ships off of the

West Coast West Coast or west coast may refer to: Geography Australia * Western Australia *Regions of South Australia#Weather forecasting, West Coast of South Australia * West Coast, Tasmania **West Coast Range, mountain range in the region Canada * Britis ...

over a period of several months. By August 1942, the Japanese had bombed

Ellwood Oil Field Ellwood Oil Field (also spelled "Elwood") and South Ellwood Offshore Oil Field are a pair of adjacent, partially active oil fields adjoining the city of Goleta, California, about west of Santa Barbara, largely in the Santa Barbara Channel. A r ...

and Fort Stevens in

Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...

. Heightened fears of an invasion had also prompted the Battle of Los Angeles in which a false alarm was raised over what later was determined to be a

weather balloon A weather balloon, also known as sounding balloon, is a balloon (specifically a type of high-altitude balloon) that carries instruments aloft to send back information on atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speed by means of a ...

. One of the responses by the Navy included a takeover of Goodyear's five-airship fleet, operating them out of the Navy's two major lighter-than-air bases in Lakehurst,

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

and Moffett Field in California.Gary Kamiya
"Ghost blimp's enduring mystery: How did crew vanish before Bay Area crash?"
''San Francisco Chronicle'', September 29, 2018. These Goodyear blimps were incorporated into an "L-class" with designations L-4 through L-8. While they were too small for any extensive operational use, the blimps were considered ideal for training missions and coastal antisubmarine patrols. Several months prior to the incident, in April 1942, L-8 delivered vital

B-25 The North American B-25 Mitchell is an American medium bomber that was introduced in 1941 and named in honor of Major General William "Billy" Mitchell, a pioneer of U.S. military aviation. Used by many Allied air forces, the B-25 served in e ...

modification parts to the

aircraft carrier An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and facilities for carrying, arming, deploying, and recovering aircraft. Typically, it is the capital ship of a fleet, as it allows a ...

USS ''Hornet'' (CV-8) after she departed California carrying the

Doolittle Raiders The Doolittle Raid, also known as the Tokyo Raid, was an air raid on 18 April 1942 by the United States on the Japanese capital Tokyo and other places on Honshu during World War II. It was the first American air operation to strike the Japan ...

, ahead of their assault on

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

Incident

At 6:03 a.m., on August 16, 1942, L-8 having been assigned to Airship Patrol Squadron 32 lifted off from Treasure Island,

, on a coastal antisubmarine patrol. Its scheduled route would have taken the airship over the

Farallon Islands The Farallon Islands, or Farallones (from the Spanish ''farallón'' meaning "pillar" or "sea cliff"), are a group of islands and sea stacks in the Gulf of the Farallones, off the coast of San Francisco, California, United States. The island ...

Point Reyes Point Reyes (, meaning "Point of the Kings") is a prominent cape and popular Northern California tourist destination on the Pacific coast. Located in Marin County, it is approximately west-northwest of San Francisco. The term is often applied ...

, and the locality of Montara before circling back towards the

Golden Gate Bridge The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the strait connecting San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. The structure links the U.S. city of San Francisco, California—the northern tip of the San Francisco Pen ...

. Inside the control car were

Ernest DeWitt Cody, aged 27, and his co-pilot, Ensign Charles Adams, aged 35; it was Adams's first flight as a commissioned officer. L-8 was armed with two

depth charge A depth charge is an anti-submarine warfare (ASW) weapon. It is intended to destroy a submarine by being dropped into the water nearby and detonating, subjecting the target to a powerful and destructive Shock factor, hydraulic shock. Most depth ...

s and one .30-caliber

machine gun A machine gun is a fully automatic, rifled autoloading firearm designed for sustained direct fire with rifle cartridges. Other automatic firearms such as automatic shotguns and automatic rifles (including assault rifles and battle rifles) a ...

. At the time of the incident, the airship had made 1,092 previous trips without incident and had recently been inspected. Conditions on the morning of the flight were clear. At 7:38 a.m., L-8's crew radioed to Treasure Island and reported observing an oil slick four miles off the coast of the Farallon Islands. A Liberty ship and a fishing boat in the area both witnessed L-8 descending to within thirty feet of the ocean surface and circling the oil slick. This would constitute the last confirmed sighting of the airship with the crew aboard. Controllers at Treasure Island lost contact with the crew at 8:50 a.m. Shortly after 9:00 a.m., L-8 dumped ballast, ascended, and headed east contrary to its intended course towards Point Reyes, which was to the northwest. At 11:15 a.m., L-8 reappeared off the coast of Ocean Beach and drifted towards the coastline at low elevation. The airship touched down on the beach, where two surf fishermen tried to hold it down by its tie lines. Upon looking inside its control car, the fishermen observed that no crew were inside. As the fishermen were unable to hold the airship down any longer, it rose briefly into the air before running into a hill, causing damage to its

starboard Port and starboard are nautical terms for watercraft and aircraft, referring respectively to the left and right sides of the vessel, when aboard and facing the bow (front). Vessels with bilateral symmetry have left and right halves which are ...

propeller and dislodging one of its depth charges, relieving it of enough weight to gain altitude. An automatic valve inside L-8 was opened and began releasing

helium Helium (from el, ἥλιος, helios, lit=sun) is a chemical element with the symbol He and atomic number 2. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic gas and the first in the noble gas group in the periodic table. ...

gas, causing the airship to take a sagging, ''V''-shaped appearance as it deflated. L-8 drifted inland over the

Olympic Club The Olympic Club is an sports club, athletic club and private social club in San Francisco, San Francisco, California. First named the "San Francisco Olympic Club", it is the oldest sports club, athletic club in the United States. Established o ...

golf course and

Mission Street Mission Street is a north-south arterial thoroughfare in Daly City and San Francisco, California that runs from Daly City's southern border to San Francisco's northeast waterfront. The street and San Francisco's Mission District through which it r ...

, attracting the attention of a large crowd of onlookers who followed its journey. Floating over San Francisco's

Crocker-Amazon Crocker-Amazon is a neighborhood in San Francisco that borders the Excelsior District. Crocker-Amazon covers the area south of Mission Street and Geneva Avenue, extending toward suburban Daly City. The neighborhood is adjacent to Crocker-Amazon ...

neighborhood, the airship lost elevation and began scraping telephone poles and residential houses. L-8 finally crashed in front of a house at 419 Bellevue Avenue,

Investigation

Police and military personnel immediately descended upon the crash site. While the control car doors were found hanging open, and the crash had been so gentle that the crewmen would have walked away unharmed, neither Cody nor Adams were found inside. Searches of the coastline from air, land and sea found no trace of the missing pilots, and the search was abandoned on August 18. Authorities initially theorized that Cody and Adams had bailed out of L-8 over the ocean, but all three

parachute A parachute is a device used to slow the motion of an object through an atmosphere by creating drag or, in a ram-air parachute, aerodynamic lift. A major application is to support people, for recreation or as a safety device for aviators, who ...

s and a rubber life raft were found aboard the control car. Furthermore, the airship's radio and engines were switched on and no distress transmissions had been sent, indicating that the crewmen's disappearance had been abrupt. A board of investigation convened by the Navy could only determine that L-8 had not been shot down, burned, or made contact with the ocean, and that Cody and Adams had not engaged in misconduct. Cody and Adams were declared legally dead in 1943. The official theory was that in order to deploy a smoke marker at the site of the oil slick, one crew member had opened the rear hatch. He then slipped and, dangling from the hatch, shouted for assistance. When the other crew member attempted rescue, they both fell. The sudden loss of weight would have caused the derelict airship to rapidly gain altitude. Outside of official circles, various scenarios were immediately put forward attempting to explain Cody and Adams's disappearances and the circumstances of L-8's mysterious flight. This included speculation that the crewmen had either been captured or

defected In politics, a defector is a person who gives up allegiance to one state in exchange for allegiance to another, changing sides in a way which is considered illegitimate by the first state. More broadly, defection involves abandoning a person, ca ...

to Japan; that their disappearance was the result of a

desertion Desertion is the abandonment of a military duty or post without permission (a pass, liberty or leave) and is done with the intention of not returning. This contrasts with unauthorized absence (UA) or absence without leave (AWOL ), which ar ...

scheme gone awry; or other more outlandish scenarios.

Aftermath

L-8 was quickly repaired and returned to service following the incident. After the war, the airship was sold back to the Goodyear company and renamed ''America'', flying over sporting events as part of Goodyear's blimp fleet until it was retired in 1982. Its control car was then repainted back to its L-8 markings and given to the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola,

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

, where it sits on static display.

References

External links