Lieutenant Commander ROSENDAHL. Yes, sir; as I said in answer to an earlier question of Senator Kean's, I think that might well be followed out.

Representative HOPE. That is all.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Commander, what is the title of Captain Shoemaker?

Lieutenant Commander ROSENDAHL. He is now the commanding officer of the naval air station at Sunnyvale.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. What was it at the time of which you are speaking?

Lieutenant Commander ROSENDAHL. He was the commander, rigid airship training and experimental squadron. He also had duties as commanding officer of the station; they were independent administrative billets, but occupied by the same officer.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. This squadron consisted of one ship?

Lieutenant Commander ROSENDAHL. Yes, sir; originally it was the Los Angeles. When the Los Angeles was decommissioned the Akron joined that squadron.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. If the Macon had been put into commission he would have been in command of those two ships, as squadron commander of those two ships?

Lieutenant Commander ROSENDAHL. I think not, for the reason the Macon is to be assigned as a unit of the fleet, whereas the training and experimental squadron was not recognized as a unit of the fleet. Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. So he commanded a squadron consisting of one ship?

Lieutenant Commander ROSENDAHL. That is true, sir.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Did he have any technical control over that ship?

Lieutenant Commander ROSENDAHL. Yes; in a sense, just as any commander can, of course, exercise his authority in connection with the operations of his squadron.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. But he could not come on that ship and command it, could he?

Lieutenant Commander ROSENDAHL. The actual command of the ship devolved solely upon the commanding officer of the ship.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Then he could not go aboard that ship and command it?

Lieutenant Commander ROSENDAHL. Only that he could direct changes of course or change of mission, but he would not exercise any authority on the internal operation of the ship itself.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. He could go aboard that ship and direct. a change of course?

Lieutenant Commander ROSENDAHL. Yes; the ship is a unit of his squadron; being squadron commander, of course, he exercises such control over his squadron.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. And he had the power to go aboard the ship and direct a change of course?

Lieutenant Commander RoSENDAHL. Yes; or a change of mission. Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Well, may not one of the most vital decisions to be made concerning an airship be a change of course, as shown in the crash of the Akron?

Lieutenant Commander ROSENDAHL. Right.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Now, this officer, as I understand it, did not have the flying experience that would normally justify his being put in command of an airship?

Lieutenant Commander ROSENDAHL. There exist no definite criteria as to the qualifications for the command of rigid airships; theoretically any officer who has the relative rank and has completed the prescribed course and obtained his designation as a naval aviator, airship, is eligible for command of a rigid airship.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. But there are a number of other officers in the service with very much more experience in the command of airships than Captain Shoemaker, are there not?

Lieutenant Commander ROSENDAHL. Not many more, but there some more experienced; he was the senior man in the organization and naturally the senior billet fell to him.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Can you conceive that Captain Shoemaker would have been given command of an airship if that were the only airship we had?

Lieutenant Commander ROSENDAHL. I happen to know that it was not the intention that officers with the rank of captain would be placed in the actual command of ships; they were taken into the organization primarily for administrative billets at the main bases and in any larger units of airships that we might have had in the future.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Is it not highly improbable that an officer of his experience would have been given the command of the Akron? Lieutenant Commander ROSENDAHL. I think it is.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Then is it not anomalous that he should be put in a position where he has the authority to change the course of the ship?

Lieutenant Commander ROSENDAHL. Not exactly, for the reason that he is the administrative commander of the unit to which the airship belongs, and he, as such, of course can control the movements of his squadron. The chances are that there would never arise an occasion where he would step in and overrule the commanding officer.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Of course, to the layman it sounds like tweedledum and tweedledee, that you have a squadron consisting of one ship and it has a normal technical commander, it is difficult to see what is the use of that sort of an office.

Lieutenant Commander RoSENDAHL. The creation of the rigid airship training and experimental squadron goes back to the time when I was detached from the command of the Los Angeles. We then formed a policy to begin seriously the training of additional commanding officers, and in order that I and other experienced personnel might stay actively associated with experimental project and the training, we created, or the Department created this training and experimental squadron that enabled the commander of that squadron to exercise his influence over the training and experimental project, from his experience. It so happens I was the first commander of rigid training and experimental squadron.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Did you have then both command duties as to the station and also as to the squadron?

Lieutenant Commander ROSENDAHL. I believe that my orders at that time assigned me to additional duty on the station, as is sometimes done, but my primary duties were command of the squadron.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. I have no further questions.

Senator KEAN. How long has Captain Shoemaker been on shore? Lieutenant Commander ROSENDAHL. As far as I know, since he came to Lakehurst as a student naval aviator, (airship).

Senator KEAN. Well, in the regular course of the Navy does he not have to go to sea?

Lieutenant Commander ROSENDAHL. Yes, sir.

Senator KEAN. When would that time come?

Lieutenant Commander ROSENDAHL. I saw the publication of his order to command the cruiser Marblehead several weeks ago, but since I have arrived in Washington I have heard that those orders have been canceled, and that he is to be retained in command of the naval air station at Sunnyvale for another year.

Senator KEAN. That is all.

Representative HARTER. Commander, is it your judgment that the Navy should acquire a modern, up-to-date airship, which should be used for the purpose of training?

Lieutenant Commander ROSENDAHL. I think the replacement of the Akron is one of two very important steps, and the second one is the acquisition of a suitable training ship, devoted largely to that purpose.

Representative HARTER. Would it be your opinion that when men are being trained for command in lesser positions on board airships under one who is already in command of a ship, that those who are being trained should be given opportunity at times to take a course under the direction of a recognized skipper, but that they should be given an opportunity to pilot the ship and to do the several things that are necessary in the navigating of that ship?

Lieutenant Commander ROSENDAHL. I think that is certainly a necessity. If we had a ship recognized solely as a training ship, it would be practicable to do that very thing, because the mission of that ship would be training and it would be so recognized. Also on such a ship could be constructed the equivalent of what we have in airplanes in dual control; that is, that it would be possible to design a ship and equip her so that students could actually make landings and take-offs but have ship personnel there to take over the situation instantly in case they were getting into trouble. That is not an entirely practicable thing to do in a ship if it is not designed as a training ship.

Representative HARTER. And that would be highly beneficial in training personnel, would it not, Mr. Commander?

Lieutenant Commander RoSENDAHL. I think it is as important in lighter-than-air as it is in heavier-than-air where we maintain a considerable number of training craft solely for that purpose.

Representative HARTER. I have no further questions.

Senator KEAN. Commander, this is mere curiosity, although it has been brought out in the record: Would it be possible to coat the ship with metal so that she could land on the water?

Lieutenant Commander ROSENDAHL. Your question must be answered in two ways. It of course would be possible to put metal on various parts of the structure, and as a matter of fact, we do have metal in a few places, such as on the control car, there is some metal, and on the lower fin there is some metal. However, that is not the deciding element in whether a ship can land on the water or

not, as has been demonstrated by the Graf Zeppelin landing in the polar region, and on the Bodensee, and by earlier airships who made a number of landings on water and did not have a large amount of metal incorporated in their structure, I mean in the covering of the

structure.

Representative ANDREW. When they landed on the water that was at a mooring mast, was it not; they did not actually just land? Lieutenant Commander ROSENDAHL. No, sir; do you mean the Graf Zeppelin?

Representative ANDREW. Yes.

Lieutenant Commander ROSENDAHL. No, she made a free landing; she was not attached to a mast.

Representative ANDREW. Do you mean by a landing she let some of the crew or passengers down in a basket, or do you mean she actually touched the water?

Lieutenant Commander ROSENDAHL. She simply descended to the surface; did not make fast to anything.

Representative ANDREW. Did the ship itself touch the water or did she let the people down in a basket?

Lieutenant Commander ROSENDAHL. The ship itself rode on the surface; you see, there are huge bags under the cars and under the fin that we call "buffer bags" that contain air, inflated bags within a bamboo structure covered by canvas. Those bags have a considerable amount of flotation themselves when they are immersed in

water.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Thank you very much, Commander; you were going to give us some figures. Will you give them to us when they are prepared?

Lieutenant Commander RoSENDAHL. I will submit them as soon as they are prepared.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. I will call Commander Fulton.

Representative DELANEY. I was wondering whether the committee saw in this morning's New York Times under date of June 5:

That the Hydrographic Office of the United States assisted in preparing the two routes taken by James Mattern in his flight across the Atlantic.

So there are some things done by the Hydrographic Office which do not come out all of the time; here is an instance of its effectiveness in times when it is most needed.

TESTIMONY OF COMDR. GARLAND FULTON-Resumed

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. For the information of the committee, Mr. S. V. Trent desired to be called here as a witness and to have his expenses paid by the committee; we were not in funds to pay his expenses here from Pasadena, Calif.

Representative DELANEY. And the same may be said of a gentleman whose name I do not recall now, but which may be secured from the record, proposed by Mr. Beech of New York, who suggested that this man who is supposed to be an expert on the building of Zeppelins would come from Europe and be glad to testify before us, provided we paid his expenses over here. Of course, we did not have the funds to do that, but nevertheless we took cognizance of his willingness to testify.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. A member of the committee who was cognizant of the fact that Mr. Trent sent a number of communications to various Departments of the Government, requested that those communications be analyzed and commented upon. Commander Fulton, have you seen those communications?

Commander FULTON. I have seen a number of communications from Mr. S. V. Trent. I do not know that I have seen the particular ones that you mentioned. I brought to the committee room, however, at the request of the chairman, a recent communication from Mr. Trent.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Succinctly, what was the tenor of his communications?

Commander FULTON. The correspondence in the Navy Department with Mr. Trent goes back a great many years, and during that time Mr. Trent has proposed at one time or another a certain type of airship design which he claimed possesses advantages over the Zeppelin type of airship. His design has been considered. It was considered in two design competitions, one in 1927, the other in 1928. His design has been found by competent authorities to have no merit and to be based on unsound methods of design.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Could you tell us very shortly what his design idea is?

Commander FULTON. Yes, sir; he calls it the American cellular dirigible, I believe. He proposes a design made up of a multiplicity of tubes and multiplicity of compartments, the elements going to make up the structure being tubes.

Representative ANDREW. Of metal?

Commander FULTON. Yes, sir; his methods of taking into account the aerodynamic forces that might come on the airship, and his method of carrying through a stress analysis show that Mr. Trent, no matter how competent he may be in other fields of engineering, has not a correct appreciation of the principles underlying airship design. He has at one time or another complained that in stating the lift of an airship such as the Akron the Navy Department is in error because it has not taken into account the weight of the helium itself. I think that was explained in previous testimony that I gave before this committee and need not be gone into again.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Is there any comment that you care to make on the testimony of Mr. Link from the standpoint of the Navy Department?

Commander FULTON. As I understood Mr. Link's testimony he has two complaints: One that the lift of the Akron is not as great as these data here; perhaps, to state it differently, the useful load is not as great as originally contemplated in the design. The matter of overweight has been gone into and it need not be repeated, and that obviously reduces the useful load, but as I also pointed out in my previous testimony the total lift of 403,000 pounds, as given, is an attempt to strike an average figure; that under certain conditions it would be greater and under other conditions it may be less. I also pointed out it was based on a percentage fullness of only 95 percent instead of 100 percent.

In other words, the actual volume of the Akron is not 6,500,000 cubic feet; it is a little over 6,800,000. We tried to reserve a certain margin for the commander of the ship to work on, and in stating