Lieutenant Commander WILEY. The Akron was a ship of about 132 feet in diameter and 785 feet long; gross lift about 200 tons; deadweight 110 tons.

Representative ANDREW. What was the diameter?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. One hundred and thirty-two feet; she had eight engines which were in line, along the keels; each engine 560 horsepower and giving a speed of about 75 miles an hour.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Was each of them housed in a separate engine room?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. The engine was on the inside and the propeller on the outside, driven through a strut of suitable gearing. Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Each one a separate, self-contained engine room?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. Yes, sir; the ship had three keels; one along the top, one on each side along where the engine rooms are placed, in addition to the keels, a strength member for longitudinals, and the main rings shown here, and the intermediate frame.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Do you happen to know how many main rings there were?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. Eleven or twelve.
Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. All right, sir, proceed.

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. A compartment or bay of the ship consisted of the part of the ship between two main rings; this is a distance of about 75 feet, and this compartment was filled with gas. cells. The living quarters were placed along this same corridor, up in this position and in this position, and the airplane hangar was inboard of that same position and occupied a space about 75 by 75 feet. Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Was there an aperture on the bottom for the airplanes to be taken in and out?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. Yes, sir.
Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Go ahead.

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. A large door. The control car hung on this main frame, and everything in the ship was controlled from that control car, except the engines themselves, and the personnel of the control car gave a signal through a system of wiring to the men in the engine room.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Was that control car integrated into the body of the ship?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. Yes, sir; for the movement of the control surfaces you have a steering wheel in the control car; wires came out of the control car, down the corridor and branched off to the control surfaces, this for the elevators and this for the rudder; the controls for this rudder came down this side and for this elevator came down this side, and for this elevator came down the other side. Likewise the controls for one rudder came down one side of the ship, and the controls for the other rudder came down the other side of the ship, so that the system for this rudder, and this rudder, were entirely separate except where they came together at the wheel in the control car.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Though it is elemental, Commander, to us who are laymen, will you explain the functions of the control surfaces?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. First of all you have a fin or stabilizing surface, which gives an aerofoil so that these movable surfaces get better action on the air that flows past them.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. That is horizontal to the axis of the ship? Lieutenant Commander WILEY. Yes, sir; this surface being moved by the wheel of the control car, will have a tendency to move the stern up and down, or the effect of moving the ends up and down so that altitude was changed by the moving of these surfaces.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Will you please show us manually there the movement of the control surface there, the horizontal control surface affects the inclination of the nose of the ship in what manner?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. If the surface were inclined downward, in that manner, naturally it would obtain lift from the air current hitting the bottom side, and would have a tendency to tilt the nose downward.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. That is what is called the down elevator? Lieutenant Commander WILEY. Yes, sir; the wheel was so arranged. if you turn it to the right, the effect was in the direction you turn the wheel; the same way with the rudders, if you turned them right, the ship turned right.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. How is that wheel connected?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. The wheel is directly connected to this surface here.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. As the wheel is actually placed, is it perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the ship?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. The elevator wheel is on the other side of the car, as you face this way; if you wanted to go down you turned it this way.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. It was perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the ship?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. Yes.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. How about the rudder?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. It was this way. [Indicating.] If you want to turn right, you turn your wheel right. The fuel tanks and ballast bags and everything else in the airship were arranged along this corridor; the gas bags were in the top of the gas cell; after the gas left the cell it escaped through the head of the ship. The ballast bags were of two or three kinds. First, at the stern and the bow of the ship you had emergency bags which held 1,000 pounds of water; then along the corridor at different places you had other ballast bags which hold 2,000 or 4,000 pounds of water. The emergency bags in the end of the ship were arranged so that when you pulled the wire in the control car you tripped the bag and it turned wrong side out; the other ballast bags along the corridor had valves in them, and when you pulled a wire it held the valve open, and it ran out as long as you held the valve open.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Excuse me for interrupting; you have to hold that valve open manually for a length of time?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. Yes, sir.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. How long would that length of time be before it emptied?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. It ran about 50 pounds a second. Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. How many pounds in it?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. You might have 2,000 pounds.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. That would take quite a number of seconds?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. Yes, sir.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Whoever was operating the ballast board had to swing onto that?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. It had a little latch on it. Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. It did not interfere with his pulling any others?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. No; you had to operate it manually, but you could latch it open.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Did it automatically latch open?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. No, sir; the latch consisted of a little ball on the wire; you had to pull that back into a groove.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. It would take an unappreciable moment of time to do that?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. That is all, sir; besides the ballast bags along the corridor you had fuel tanks. Your fuel tanks were hooked to a fuel line that ran along the corridor and it could be pumped across the ship or to other fuel tanks in the end of the ship. The first fuel tanks, six, I think, held about 700 pounds each, had big valves in the bottom of them, similar to the valves in the water ballast bags, and those tanks would be emptied in 30 seconds each by pulling the wire in the control room. The tanks in general were a nest of three between one of these little intermediate frames, and the center tank in each nest was suspended by 1-wire slides, so that if you cut that one wire that tank would fall out of the ship; and those were called slip tanks-that is, by cutting that one wire they would slip out of the ship. The other two tanks in the next were securely fastened and could not be gotten rid of so easily, so that that made all of the water ballast available from the control room; fuel tanks available from the control car and the slip tanks were available from the keel; you had to telephone from the keel to get them to drop them.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Roughly, how much ballast did you carry, do you remember?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. On that trip we had about 20,000 pounds, about 10 tons.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. You have no way of knowing how much of that was dropped?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. No, sir. I know approximately how much I dropped, but I don't know how much was dropped after that.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. How much approximately did you drop? Lieutenant Commander WILEY. I dropped about, roughly, 3,500 pounds.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. How long would it take to drop all that ballast?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. One man?

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Under whatever was the discipline and control of the ship. For instance, what I am trying to drive at is, when you hit one of these down gusts, how fast can you drop that ballast so as to get her under way up again against the down current? Lieutenant Commander WILEY. Your emergencies take 2 seconds. They act quickly. Your emergency flows take 30 seconds. Letting

the other water ballast wires run as fast as you can pull them down and latch them, they ought to run out at something like 500 pounds a second, if you could get enough of them open.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Do you want to take a piece of paper and do a little arithmetic, just roughly? Because we can get all that accurate engineering data later.

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. This is not accurate; this is approximate.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. That is understood, sir.

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. That would all figure up; you could do it in 30 seconds, about, but I know you couldn't do it in less than a minute.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. How far do you think you could fall in a minute in one of these down gusts? I think you rated about 14 feet per second in your testimony before the Navy inquiry.

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. Yes, sir; that would be 900 feet. Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. In the course of that 900 feet of fall, the evacuation of ballast would be a progressive affair?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. Yes, sir; another thing, that is that you had already decided you were going to drop everything and didn't think, "Well, I will drop this, and probably won't have to drop any more."

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. And that minute that we contemplate, does that include the cutting away of fuel tanks?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. No, sir.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. How long an operation would that be normally from the time of the decision and giving of the command to its execution?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. That would take several minutes, because word would have to be passed, and a man would have to get the wire cutters which are suspended in the tanks and do it. Even if each man got the order quickly, it would take a minute and a half just for one man to do one thing. By the time he got the order and cut it, and it went through, it would be that long.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. About how much weight would be involved in the fuel tanks that could be cut away at the time of this crash? Lieutenant Commander WILEY. About 700 pounds for each one. I don't know how many there are, but say there are 24, about 20,000 pounds.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. What I am driving at, Commander, is whether the structural and disciplinary provisions for the release of ballast were reasonably adequate in light of whatever information you have about the forces of these down currents and rapidity of descent.

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. Yes, sir.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Whether that is something that can be improved.

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. I doubt if it can be improved much. Here is one thing to be borne in mind in that case. In passing into a disturbance of this kind you would never intentionally approach it from the side where you get your down current first. Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Which side would that be?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. From west to east.
Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. That is just what happened here?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. Yes, sir.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Going from west to east in one of these disturbed areas you get your turbulent down currents?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. You get your down currents first, whereas we passed through several of them from east to west, expecting our up current first, and prepared for it, and expecting our down current second, and prepared for it. It is a different proposition.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. When was the first real turbulence of air you experienced?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. On the first drop.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. That was about what hour?
Lieutenant Commander WILEY. Twelve thirty.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Was its turbulence only manifested in the rapidity of the drop?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. No, there was some other manifestations. A ship never rolls very much, but it did roll some. There is a movement there you associate with turbulent air condition.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. How did its horizontal equilibrium, its longitudinal equilibrium maintain?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. You don't know whether it is out of equilibrium or whether it is due to exterior forces. In this case I thought at first that perhaps the elevator man had lost control temporarily, put his elevator the wrong way.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. At the end of that first rapid descent from 1,600 to 800 feet, was the ship nose down or nose up?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. She was falling with the nose downward, somewhat. That is the reason I pulled the emergency forward to get the nose up.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. What could account for that if it were not a mistake of the elevator man?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. A down current of air. That is the only thing could do it. I don't think a sudden loss of buoyancy could have that effect.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Why would that put the nose down instead of the tail down, because it went into it nose first?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. Nose first.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. When did you give your order "landing stations"?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. I am not able to put that definitely, sir.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Was that on the first trip down?
Lieutenant Commander WILEY. No, sir; it was after that.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. It was after that?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. Yes; but I don't know how long alter, or where I did it. I can't remember.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. How long do you think that first descent of 500 feet took?

Lieutenant Commander WILEY. About 1 minute.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. What would that make in feet per second? Lieutenant Commander WILEY. That would be about 12 feet per second.

Colonel BRECKINRIDGE. Just a little more slowly than the second descent?

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