Airships as ships and not craft

At 9:36 AM -0400 5/14/02, laserlight@quixnet.net wrote:
>From:	KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de
>>There have even been various experiments with heavy bombers carrying
>fighters for their own defence. Technically feasible, but of dubious
>tactical value.
>
>Zeppelins with biplane fighters.  I don't know how well they worked,
though.

Well, when they were used in US Navy war games the Macon didn't do so 
hot, however the crew was building doctrine as they went because they 
were the first crew to be to be doing it  (many were Akron veterans). 
The first Airship carrier had been the Akron in 1932 before she was 
lost in a storm.  In one of the exercises with the fleet the Macon 
was "shot down" nine times. The Captain, Lt Cmdr Herbert Wiley, took 
the Macon on an unexpected trip.

	"...[FDR] was vacationing on a trip from Panama to Hawaii 
aboard the Heavy Cruiser Houston, escorted by a second heavy cruiser, 
the New Orleans. With nothing more than newspaper reports to go on, 
the Macon's captain calculated the presidents probably route and 
speed, then plotted an intercept course. He would prove in dramatic 
fashion the value of the big airship as a long distance scout.
	On the morning of July 18, 1934, the Macon departed from 
Moffett Field and headed southwest. Soon she was far out over the 
Pacific, navigating by dead reckoning and sun sightings. Just after 
10:00 AM the next day, Wiley ordered two Sparrowhawks lowered and 
launched, one after the other. If he'd calculated correctly , the 
president's small flotilla should now be in range. Sure enough, not 
long before noon, the two fighters found the two heavy cruisers.
	The last thing anyone on board expected was to see airplanes 
in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, especially given the fact that 
all of the navy's aircraft carriers were known to be in the 
Atlantaic. On the Houston's bridge, where the two aircraft were 
spotted just as the watch was about to change, astonishment turned 
briefly to consternation: the planes appeared to be carrying fat 
bombs beneath their fuselages. But more knowledgeable eyes quickly 
pointed out the telltale skyhooks jutting above the upper wings. The 
"Bombs" were actually auxiliary fuel tanks installed in place of 
unneeded landing gear, a method of increasing the planes' range. "

	Wiley's superiors were non-plussed, but FDR was delighted 
about the whole incident and ended up defending him for his 
initiative. Durring the summer and fall of '34, the Macon spent 404 
hours in the air training it's crew in air operations with its 
sparrow hawks. During that time a rudimentary homing system was added 
that allowed the Macon to change course to avoid weather and still 
allow the scout planes to find her.

	Further exercises had the Macon locating "enemy" ships with 
out herself being sighted. Due to a design problem with one of the 
aft structural rings that supported the tail surfaces, she crashed in 
a storm in 1935, all but two crew were saved out of 83. After this 
third incident of an airship crash the navy washed it's hands of 
rigid airships. Their best use would have been as strategic scouts in 
the days before radar and with radar, before satellites due to their 
great range and speed.