It is not difficult to go missing in war. Where people shoot and take prisoner, where companies and divisions are counted, few are interested in the fate of individuals. It is much more difficult to disappear in the deep rear, in full view of hundreds of people. However, this is exactly what happened on the summer morning of August 16, 1942 with the crew of an American airship.
Airships, capable of hovering in place and lowering tracking devices into the water, were used during the war to combat enemy submarines. Moffett Field, the largest lighter-than-air base in California, had an airfield on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. Airships rose from there, patrolling the coast in search of Japanese submarines.
One of them was the L-8, built in 1941, which is part of the 32nd Squadron of the Navy. In case of a meeting with the enemy, he was equipped with a machine gun and two 160-kilogram depth charges.
On August 16, 1942, the L-8 crew received the usual mission: to fly over the ocean and, after describing the giant eight, return to base. The first pilot was Lieutenant Ernest Cody, the second pilot was Warrant Officer Charles Adams. Flight mechanic Riley Hill remained on the ground: he was told that the car was already overloaded.
The airship took off at six in the morning. At 7:50 am, the pilots radioed that they wanted to check a suspicious fuel spot near Farralon Island. Their last words were "Stay in touch."
L-8 circled over the spot for an hour. Sailors from the fishing boat Dicey Gray and the cargo ship Albert Gallatin saw the pilots throw lighting bombs.
Trying to see something, they now and then descended very low above the water. At nine o'clock in the morning, the airship took off and, without contacting, flew back to San Francisco instead of continuing to patrol.
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The incomprehensible silence of the crew alerted the air traffic controllers at Moffett Field. They warned the pilots in the air: if someone sees a naval airship, they must immediately report it to the ground.
At 10:49 am, a Pan Am passenger plane approaching San Francisco spotted an airship. He flew towards the Golden Gate Bridge. Soon, two more planes confirmed they were seeing an airship, and it appeared to be fine on board. At 11:00, the device took off sharply upward at an acute angle and disappeared into the clouds.
Missing
20 minutes later, the airship was spotted over the coastal highway. The seaman on leave took a photo that went around all the newspapers: the engines are not working, there is no one in the gondola, the shell filled with helium is partially deflated. L-8 was rapidly descending, losing gas. Two swimmers tried to stop him on the beach by grabbing the hanging cables, but the airship was too heavy.
L-8, driven by the wind, hit the ground at the golf course. One of the bombs fell off the mounts, but did not explode: the depth charge fuse only becomes operational in the water. Freed from the heavy load, the airship took off again and crashed on Daly City Street, a suburb of San Francisco. The shell became entangled in the wires, and the gondola was almost vertical, damaging the house and two cars.
Local residents and police officers watching the descending airship did not wait for the military. They opened the gondola door, but there was no one there. The firefighters got the idea to look inside the deflated shell. They cut it with axes and released gas, but no one was found.
The military, arriving at the crash site, found that there was still a lot of fuel in the tanks. The lead case with ciphers, which should have been destroyed in any danger, was in place.
Three parachutes, a life raft, a machine gun, pilots' personal weapons, a walkie-talkie, a loudspeaker - everything was in place and worked as it should. One door of the gondola was closed and locked, the other closed but not locked. The people who came to the rescue did not have to hack it.
The investigation has reached a dead end
The commission of inquiry was chaired by Captain Third Rank Francis Connell. The sailors checked the motors: they were in order, except for the propellers bent from impacts on the ground. The buttons on the control panel were in the "on" position, although the motors did not work while drifting over the ground.
If the engines are out of order while the crew was on board, pilots should first request radio assistance. It was functional, but Cody and Adams did not use it. Finally, the crew could speak to any vessel through a powerful loudspeaker. The pilots could jump out with parachutes, but they remained in the gondola. There were not only life jackets, but the military pilots wore them on themselves just in case.
The commission agreed that the crew could not accidentally fall out of the open door. They could hardly, falling, close the door behind them. Just in case, the military thoroughly searched the strip of land over which the airship was drifting, and the entire water area of the bay. The bodies were supposed to stay afloat - the vests worn by the pilots inflated automatically upon contact with water.
But what if they had a fight, one pilot killed the other, threw the corpse out of the cockpit and fled? Could a sniper from a Japanese submarine have shot them? These versions were reviewed and rejected.
Both pilots had impeccable track records, extensive flying experience and were married. Midshipman Adams, 38, served on "flying aircraft carriers," the giant Ekron and Macon airships with aircraft harnesses. In 1937, he received a medal from Hermann Goering for courage in rescuing people from a burning German airship. 27-year-old Cody, a graduate of the Navy Academy, also managed to become famous: in 1942, during the first raid on Tokyo, L-8 delivered a heavy cargo to the aircraft carrier Hornet on time.
“My son-in-law was a calm, balanced person,” said Juanita Haddock, Ernest Cody's mother-in-law. - I believe that in any critical situation he would first think and then act.
Was there a third?
Telephone operator Ida Ruby, who was riding on horseback past the beach, saw an airship drifting from the ocean. She told the military that there were three people on board!
“I spotted an airship above the water,” Miss Ruby said. - He was very low. I could clearly see the letters NAVY (Navy). Then the letters N and A disappeared as the airship caved in in the middle. The wind carried him to the shore. I looked through binoculars and am firmly convinced that I saw three people in the gondola. The craft flew over me, its propellers caught on a small cliff. Then we heard sirens in Daly.
Another eyewitness, 17-year-old Edward Taylor, also said he watched the airship fall through binoculars and saw three people moving in the cockpit.
Perhaps there was a "stowaway" on board that killed the pilots and threw the bodies overboard? The experts considered it impossible. There is no place in the gondola for a person to hide. In the pictures taken while the airship is drifting, the cockpit looks empty.
Hundreds of people, including police, saw the L-8 drop, and they all said that there was no one on board. Captain Francis Connell realized that Ida Ruby and Edward Taylor had been wrong in their wishful thinking.
Melted before our eyes
Investigators concluded that the sudden rise of the airship at 11:00 could only have been caused by the loss of some of the cargo, and the weight loss was not compensated for by the release of excess helium from the envelope. Since the bombs and ballast remained in place, only the bodies of the pilots could be the "cargo". However, the sailors and pilots who saw this maneuver said that they could not miss the fall of two people in bright life jackets.
Having freed itself from the weight of the pilots, the airship had to rise to a critical height. There the emergency valve is automatically activated and helium is released. The fact that L-8 appeared partially deflated over the coast was due precisely to this: the shell remained intact.
What force forced the pilots to violate the order and turn towards the city? Who could have picked them up from the gondola without opening the doors? Why did the motors stop even though the buttons were on? The Commission of Inquiry was unable to answer these questions.
A year later, Ernest Cody and Charles Adams were officially declared dead. The L-8, not seriously damaged, took to the air again, continuing to serve as a training apparatus. After the war, the airship was returned to the company that built it.
Petr DOMINUS