Conway Maritime Press - Warship 44

U-boats withdrew to other areas. Thus,
coastal blimps were not available when
they were most needed. And, of course,
the large airships which could have
provided air cover to convoys in the mid
Atlantic gap had ceased to exist by World
War II.
It is instructive to compare the record of
the airplane as a sub-killer to that of the
airship. For the airplane proceeded from
a role in World War I similar to the
airship's, as a deterrent to submarine
attack, to that of an active and tremendously
effective U-boat killer. British
aircraft made 40 attacks on U-boats in
World War II before, in January 1940, a
RAF Sunderland participated in a
sinking, and it was two more months
before an aircraft sank a sub alone, with
bombs. As Alfred Price wrote in Airuaft
Versus Submarine:'...in the summer of
1939 Coastal Command of the RAF was
equipped with anti-submarine bombs of
doubtful quality, no proper antisubmarine
bomb sight, and most of its
aircraft fitted with unsatisfactory bomb
release gear.' American planes, and
blimps laboured under similar difflculties
dlring Paukenschlag.
However, when airplanes began to kill
subs they became deadly effective,
sinking hundreds in all parts of the
world. The airplane had experienced a
quantum leap in performance: in range,
reliability, weaponry, and speed. Unlike
the BE2C of World War I, attacking at @
mph with 100-pound bombs, the
Liberators and Sunderlands of World
War II could dive upon a surfaced U-boat
with very little warning straddling them
with depth charges as they began to dive.
The point is that the airplane suddenly
emerged as a potent killer of surfaced
submarines, with its speed as a potent
and powerful weapon. However, until tbe
appearance of the acoustic homing
torpedo, sonobuoys, and MAD (tested
initially on blimps) late in the war, it had
practically no attack capacity against
submerged submarines, which is, of
course, the whole objective of today's
Orion P-3s, Viking S-3s, and all modern
ASW.
Conversely, the blimp was hopeless
against surfaced subs without a standoff
weapon, as the loss of K-74 to the U-134's
automatic gunfire showed in July 1943.
(Such a weapon existed by the end ofthe
war in the form of the Bat radiocontrolled
glide bomb, the ancestor of the
Harpoons carried by today's P-3s.) But
the development of the Snorkl.e and the
Type XXI U-boat brought ASW back to
square one.
The U-boat was defeated when radarequipped
escorts denied it its ability to
attack on the surface at night, and
modern patrol planes robbed it of the
ability to move on the surface by day. But
the submarine which could operate continuously
submerged posed an entirelSi
new challenge for postwar ASW, and
gave the blimp a new lease of life. For the
first time in peace, ASW was taken
seriously and the US Navy was willing to
experiment with any ASW weapon or
vehicle that looked promising, from the
anti-submarine cruiser Norfolh to SSKs,
hydrofoils, and drone helicopters.
Suddenly, the airplane lost its
tremendous advantage as a sub-killer
over the blimp. Both were reduced to
using the same weapons and sensors
against the same target, the submerged
sub, (and the same target the British
blimps of World WarI weredealingwith).
The difference was, again, simply thatof
speed versus endurance. The P2V or S2F
could patrol greater areas at a greater
rate of speed: ZSGs and ZPG-2s could
provide continuous escort for days. In
addition, they had the potential forusing
dipping or towed sonar along with
sonobuoys and MAD. They refuelled and
resupplied from carrier decks or by winch
as the K-ships of World War II had done.
In addition, the Navy developed a new
role for blimps during the 1950s, AEW, in
response to the threat of Bears. They
supplemented the Constellation Warning
Stars and Texas Towers, extending our
anti-bomber radar defenses beyond the
DEW line down our coasts. These ships
displayed remarkable all-weather capability,
performing continuous pafuols for
days during heavy storm conditions. The
final development of this type, the ZPG
3W, carried the non-rigid airship to its
ultimate development, being larger than
many rigids, using the envelope as a
radome for the largest airborne antennae
ever carried. However, the replacement of
the bomber threat by the ICBM rendered
these ships superfluous. On the other
hand; the Battle Surveillance Airship
recently proposed would have essentially
the same configuration with a different
role: AEW for naval forces.
Today, the anti-submarine blimp has
disappeared, along with the fleets of
cheap escorts and patrol planes, the
CVEs of World War II and the CVSs of
the 1950s. Yet, today's patrol planes and
surface escorts face a greater threat than
ever from the nuclear sub, requiring the
most advanced sensors and computers.
The numbers of ASW ships and planes
we can field has dwindled with their
growing cost, while the Russian sub-
Tanr,n 1 NoN-RrcrD PRESSURE ArRSHrps
British
Sea Scout-Zero
SSZ-1
British
Coastal C-2
British
North Sea NS-1
USN K14
USN ZPG-2
USN ZPG-3W
Built
1916
1916
r9r7
1943
1955
1958
Volume Length
(cubic feet) (feet)
70,000 r43
170,000 195
360,000 262
425,000 25i.7
1,011,00 343
1,516,300 403
Engines
(number and
horse power)
lx75
2x150
2x260
2x 425
2x800
2 x 1,525
Speed
(mph)
48.4
47
57.6
77
80
90
Remarks
Crew: three. Bombs: 130
pounds. Gross Lift: 4500
irounds. Deadweight: 3156
pourlos.
Gross lift: 5 tons. Deadweight:
3.4 tons.
Max endurance: 101 hours, 50
minutes. Range: 4000 miles.
Crew: 10. Gross lift: 10.85 tons.
Deadweight: 7 tons.
Crew 10-12. First non-rigid to
cross Atlantic.
Non-stop double Atlantic
crossing remains world's record
for unrefueled airbome
endurance.
Largest non-rigid built. Crew:
21. Carried internal 40-foot
radar antenna.
202