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Naval
Air Station,
Richmond
Home
of the 25 ships of ZP-21
(Patrol,
Airship Squadron 21 and Airship Wing 2)
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Welcome
Aboard!
This
page IS NOT an official U.S. Navy site.
This page is maintained
by
volunteers and "Friends of Naval Air Station - Richmond"
If you would like to
visit the U.S. Navy OFFICIAL page, click
here.
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World's Largest Blimp Base
In
1942, as World War II heated up and the United States became move
involved, the U.S. government ordered a massive buildup in military
facilities.
One of these facilities was Naval Air Station, Richmond. Commissioned
September 15, 1942 the Navy started construction of a major airship or
"LTA" air
station took its name from the "Richmond Lumber Company"
which had built a saw mill on the property around the turn of
the century, to harvest and process the large stands of "Dade county
pine", a type of pine tree noted for its high sap content which makes
it almost totally impervious to insect and termite infestation and is
so hard after drying and aging, that it is often worked with metal
working tools.
NAS Richmond became the world’s largest blimp base.
Located on about 2,500 acres of land (1,012 hectares) in the then near
wilderness, 20 miles (30.6 km) southwest of the city of Miami,
Florida's central business district. The Navy started construction of a
major airship or "LTA" air
station.
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Aircrews
handling the
L.T.A. crafts near
Hangar #2
CLICK HERE for
movie footage
of how NAS life was back then.
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The
need for the NAS Richmond facility came from the Nazi U-boat threat
to Allied merchant marine. To provide anti-submarine patrol, rescue,
escort and utility services in this
area, Blimp Patrol Squadron ZP-21 arrived in October 1942.
The base grew quickly, using native timber and millions of board-feet
of lumber shipped in from the Pacific-Northwest. Three large airship
hangars and all of an active navy base's support buildings and barracks
were soon completed. Over $13,000,000 was expended in the creation of
the fully independent base
which boasted three 16.5 story hangars over 1,000 feet in length.
The only recorded contact between a blimp and a submarine occurred on
July 18, 1943 when Navy airship K-74 encountered Nazi U-134 in the
Florida Straits. Shot down by anti-aircraft fire from the U-boat, the
blimp sunk with loss of one life.
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About The Hangars
The three airship hangars to be built at NAS Richmond were designed by
naval engineer Arsham Amirikian,
who designed a total of 15, nearly identical hangars for bases along
both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
Each of the three hangars were 157 feet (47,9 m) high to the bottom of
the truss arch, 257 feet (78,3 m) wide to the inside of the truss span,
and 297 feet (90,5 m) wide on the outside. Each hangar was 1088 feet
(404,8 m) long and covered an area of about 7 acres (2,8 hectares). The
doors at each end of each hangar were composed of 6 panels, rolling on
steel railroad tracks imbedded in the concrete apron. Each door panel
was 120 feet (36,6 m) high and 3.5 feet (1,2 m) thick and are
considered the largest single door panels ever designed and built.
The hangars were built of structural grade wooden timbers (mostly
Douglas fir) to conserve steel needed for the war effort. By using
wood, each hangar saved over 4,000 tons (3,880 metric tons) of much
needed steel which went to building tanks, airplanes, etc. All
fabrication was done in shops. Mill order lists, shop drawings,
template work, and pre-cutting was accomplished and the finished pieces
of the "hanger kit" were sent to treatment plants to be made fire
resistant.
The hangar trusses were of a revolutionary type of construction. Each
hangar consisted of 51, timber, hingeless, arch trusses on 20 foot (6,1
m) centers. To build the trusses, a traveling scaffold was constructed
on top of 18 standard railroad flat cars. 3 cars on each of 6 rails
running the length of each hangar. The scaffold consisted of a large,
step-tabled platform, with the difference between platform elevations
corresponding to the lengths of the trusses which could be easily
handled. The scaffold was roughly the size of a 14 story building 120'
by 190' (36,6 m by 57,9 m).
The first 80 '(24,4 m) section of trusses were assembled on the ground
and lifted into place. Next, 40' (12,2 m) sections for each side, were
assembled on the first level of the platform and hoisted into place
with booms and tackle mounted on the scaffold. Likewise, the next two
sections were assembled in the same way. Finally, the crown or center
piece was assembled on the top of the platform and hoisted into place
with gin-pole derricks. In the early stages of construction, workers
built 1.5 arch bays per day. With experience, the number climbed to
2.75 per day!
Each hangar required:
2,719,000
board feet of lumber (252.603,4 square meters) A board foot
is a unit of lumber measure, one foot square and one inch thick.
79.5 tons (72,1 metric tons) of bolts and washers.
30.5 tons (27,6 metric tons) of miscellaneous ring connectors.
33 tons (29,9 metric tons) of miscellaneous structural steel.
Each scaffold was constructed of 375,000 board feet (34.838,64 square
meters) of lumber and 30 tons (27,1 metric tons) of steel.
Rafters were added after all of the trusses were in place. The entire
surface was then covered with tongue and groove sheathing from the
outside. The roof covering covered an area of approximately 10 acres
(4,1 hectares). After the sheathing was in place, a composition roofing
paper was applied over a tacked, felt slip sheet. Men installing the
roofing were suspended from staging platforms, working from bottom to
top.
The huge doors at each end of the hangars were built from structural
steel members and covered in fire resistant plywood. The doors "tucked"
into the enormous concrete towers (one of which is still on the Gold
Coast Railroad/NAS Richmond property). The doors rolled on carriages
supported by steel rails on the bottom and steel door tracks on top.
The upper track was supported by a box beam girder spanning the door
opening.
Of course, the last question everyone asks... each hangar cost
approximately $2,500,000.00 in 1942 dollars. If you had built these
hangars, in 2002, each one would cost $27,684,049.00. Just
imagine the cost of building these hangars today!
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A major hurricane on September 14th and 15th of 1945 resulted in the
destruction of the three “hurricane proof” blimp
hangars and the resultant
loss of twenty-five blimps and 365 fixed wing aircraft parked in the
hangars.
Click
here
for first hand account of that storm.
NAS
Richmond ceased operations
in November 1945 with portions of the
facility becoming
Miami
University, Miami Metrozoo, and assorted
private and government applications.
The
only remaining
base-related
building is, Building 25, the Headquarters Building.
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Building
25 (1942) |
Building
25 (1962) |
Building
25 (1996) |
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In
late 1995, the decision was made to create an exhibit detailing the
history and important role the base played during World War II. On 16
September, 1995, over 200 people assembled on the apron of what was
Hangar 1, Naval Air Station, Richmond, to honor and commemorate the
50th anniversary of World War II. Colors were presented by Navy Sea
Cadets. The invocation was by Mr. Ken Fox, former machinist mate, who
was stationed at NAS Richmond. Ms. Maggi Cook read the Dade Heritage
Trust resolution of support. Ms. Connie Greer presented a plaque,
accepted for the veterans by LCDR. James Sinquefield (retired), former
WWII blimp pilot. A speech by NAS Curator YN1 Anthony Attwood, USNR,
was followed by a tour of the base by NAS Curators, Cesar Becerra and
Alan Crockwell.
The
groundbreaking was at the
NAS boiler room. Handling the "Gold
Shovel", were CDR Paul Reiman, USN, Commanding Officer, Navy Recruiting
District, Mrs. Robertson, wife of W.W. II blimp skipper, Allan
McElhiney, NAS Fort Lauderdale Curator, and Cole Crockwell, son of Alan
Crockwell and future Navy Historian.
Also
on hand were LCDR Tomas
Zapata, USCG, LCDR Paul Gilson, Navy
League, MSCM Bob Browdy, USN (Retired), LT Steve Lorcher, USN, Alex
Durr, Association of Naval Aviation, and a host of other good folks!
The
Grand Opening of the Naval
Air Station, Richmond exhibit occurred
14 September, 1996.
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Save
the Blimp Base
From this Naval
air
station
airships hunted U-boats
in the Florida Keys.
By
John Sotham
Air
& Space Magazine,
September 01, 2001
Just outside
the fences of Miami's Metrozoo - a
740-acre park where
sleek monorails glide above a faux African plain-sits a handsome
two-story wooden building surrounded by tall grass. A few boards hang
askew from its clapboard exterior, and the roof above its portico is
held up temporarily with steel girders. To get here, we've threaded our
cars through a forest of spindly pine trees to this reclaimed clearing,
a journey that evokes an exciting sense of discovering something
forgotten. Just outside the building's entrance, Navy Petty Officer
John Smith yanks the cord on a portable generator, which coughs to
life. A few lights flick on, and we head down a creaky hallway and
enter a large storage room, where a slide projector sits on a table and
overturned paint buckets serve as seats. It's hot in here.
We're inside what was once the headquarters of Naval Air Station
Richmond, a blimp base hastily constructed in the early months of World
War II. As the slide projector clatters, Naval Reserve Chief Yeoman
Anthony Atwood narrates and two former crewmen, who launched on blimps
near here, stand by to lend their voices to the story. The crewmen,
Ford Ross and James Sinquefield, have joined a small band of
enthusiasts organized by Atwood who want to restore the headquarters
building and convert it into a museum.
As Atwood talks, his hands make shadows on the sepia-tinted photos
flashing on the wall. "Richmond was eventually home to 25 K-series
blimps, three hangars, and 3,000 men," he says. "The hangars were 16
stories tall, built of Douglas fir brought in by train. The blimps
protected ship convoys in the Florida Straits, and [Richmond] was the
headquarters for the fight against Nazi U-boats operating in the
Caribbean."
Ford interrupts: "That's not a K-type blimp, Anthony, that's an M-type."
Atwood rolls his eyes. "Okay, okay, as I was saying...," he says.
The story proceeds, and the enthusiasm brims. Atwood, Ross, and
Sinquefield tell me that except for this building, the only other
above-ground remnant of the base is one of the massive hangars' corner
pillars, which stands about 300 yards away. But other clues to the
site's past are around, if you look carefully. Directly outside the
building under the relentless sub-tropical undergrowth, Atwood's
volunteers found a four-foot-wide Marine Corps emblem the Marines had
placed next to NAS Richmond's flagpole. And the old ramp is in plain
view-it's now part of the parking lot at the zoo. Families who've come
for a nature experience exit their minivans where ground crew released
the mooring lines that sent the lumbering blimps on their lonely
patrols for German U-boats.
Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, enemy submarines began
bringing the war close to the U.S. mainland. In late 1941, a Japanese
submarine shelled a highway outside Santa Barbara, California, and on
the Atlantic coast, U-boats would sink 574 U.S. and Allied merchant
ships in 1942. When the war began, the U.S. Navy had only 10 blimps
capable of coastal anti-submarine patrols. Soon more than 200 would
join the fleet.
Most of them were K-type airships, powered by two Pratt &
Whitney
R-1340 Wasp engines, which gave them a top speed of 77 mph. Their
envelopes were three-ply cotton bags impregnated with rubber or
synthetic neoprene. The interior was coated with paraffin to make it
leakproof. Most of the K-ships were 252 feet long and held as much as
456,000 cubic feet of helium. But when deflated, the five-ton envelope
could fit into a shipping box 12 feet long, six feet high, and six feet
wide.
Fleet Airship Wing Two was formed at newly built NAS Richmond to cover
the Caribbean. On July 18, 1943, K-74 and K-32 lifted off their
concrete pads and rose over south Florida for a routine patrol. K-74
was headed for the upper keys, while K-32 was to fly farther out to
sea, turn south toward Key West, and finally head north again. Later
that evening, both airships would be in position to keep watch over a
tanker and freighter scheduled to pass from the Gulf of Mexico through
the Florida Straits to the open Atlantic.
Blimp patrols were mind-numbingly boring, lasting as long as 12 hours.
Armed with a single .50-caliber machine gun and four depth bombs
hanging from racks beneath their control cars, the craft were hardly
intended for heavy combat. Their crews were ordered to monitor the
positions of friendly ship traffic and report any sightings of U-boats,
which could then be attacked by warships, if any were in the area, or
by fighters from Naval Air Station Key West.
K-74's skipper, Lieutenant Nelson Grills, commanded a crew of nine:
co-pilot Jay Jandrowitz, navigator Darnley Eversley, mechanic J.L.
Schmidt, bombardier Isadore Stessel, radiomen Robert Bourne, J.M.
Giddings, and John Rice, gunner G. Eckert, and seaman J.W. Kowalski. As
the craft took up its station over the straits, U-boat U-134 was
running on the surface and recharging its batteries, its crew on deck
enjoying the fresh night air. The blimp's crewmen first saw two blips
on their radar, clearly the merchant ships they were monitoring. Then,
near midnight, they saw a third blip. They moved forward to
investigate. And there it was: a German submarine, on the surface and
headed in the direction of the two merchant ships. There was no time to
marshall aircraft to intercept the sub. Grills descended to 250 feet
and opened the throttles to bring the blimp to its maximum speed.
"We were in a tough spot...," Grills told Anthony Atwood in 1997. "We
decided that the best we could do was see if we'd draw fire. We felt
that saving those ships was worth the blimp."
The German crew saw K-74 and opened up from the conning tower with a
20-mm cannon. Grills' crew returned fire. As the blimp passed over the
submarine, the sub's deck gun shot up its envelope and damaged its
engines, which caught fire. According to Atwood, the crew released
their depth bombs, but as the airship's aft section passed by the
submarine, K-74 took more fire and began to lose altitude. Within
minutes, it settled into the waves and U-134 slipped away into the
night.
The crewmen scrambled out of the control car's hatches and inflated
their life preservers, but their raft floated away before they could
board it. Within minutes, one of the merchant vessels K-74 had been
monitoring cruised past, oblivious to the recent battle. Its sailors
didn't see the blimp's crewmen in the water, clinging to each other to
stay together. Radioman Bourne had managed to send a message to
Richmond before the blimp went down, and by morning, a rescue aircraft
spotted the men and directed a rescue ship to pick them up. But Isadore
Stessel had become separated from the rest, and as he waved to the
aircraft, he was attacked and killed by a shark. Grills had become
separated too. It wasn't until later that evening, after spending close
to 20 hours in the water and fending off another shark, that he was
finally spotted by K-32 and rescued.
Grills and his crew were initially under a cloud of disapproval for
attacking the sub against orders and for the loss of the blimp. But
after the squadron commander interviewed the crew, Grills, and later
the rest of the crew, received the Purple Heart. It wasn't until
1961-after analysis of German records revealed that K-74 had damaged
U-134-that Grills received the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Still, vindication for one member of the crew was slower in coming. It
took 40 years for the Navy to give a commendation medal to Isadore
Stessel's family. "It was a bunch of 19- to 20-year-old kids in a blimp
risking their lives," says Saul Stessel, Isadore's cousin. "They did
damage that sub-the radio contacts give evidence that the blimp hurt
them and they could not submerge. It was [later] attacked by a Navy
Avenger [torpedo bomber], and it got as far as Spain until it was
attacked by a [Royal Navy] Liberator and sunk."
The shootdown of K-74 is the only recorded combat loss of a blimp
during the more than 500,000 hours of patrols flown worldwide during
the war.
The sawgrass is whipping through the open windows of a Hummer, the
civilian version of the burly military Humvee. Alan Crockwell, an
amateur historian who volunteers his time to a growing effort to
preserve Richmond's headquarters building, guides the vehicle to a flat
table of asphalt surrounded by pine trees. We've parked where one of
Richmond's three blimp hangars once stood-massive 1,086-foot-long
structures made of wood beams and hung with sliding iron doors, whose
graceful roofs arced to 183 feet.
As the war drew to a close, the base's K-series blimps were joined by
new M-series ships that the Navy tested here. But in September 1945,
scarcely two months after the war was over, the base was called upon
once again to face down an enemy lurking at sea-a hurricane tracing a
lazy path through the Caribbean. At the time, hurricane prediction was
a shaky science at best-all that was known was that the storm would
likely strike the state, but it was unknown where it would come ashore.
Military aircraft-Grumman F6F Hellcats, Corsairs, and P-51 Mustangs,
among others-were flown from nearby bases and from the deck of the USS
Guadalcanal to the refuge offered by NAS Richmond's sturdy and
cavernous blimp hangars.
The storm came ashore on the mangrove-entwined coast of south Florida,
cut a swath across southern Dade County, and tore through Richmond NAS.
The hangars, which stood close together and were stuffed with blimps
and hundreds of fighters and bombers, withstood the winds. But one of
them caught fire, perhaps from a short circuit. Witnesses reported
seeing the winds drive flames horizontal, and eventually all three
hangars were ablaze, lighting the night sky with burning wood,
aircraft, and fuel. When the rain stopped, only the smaller buildings
and the hangars' concrete corner pillars were standing.
Crockwell kneels and picks up a few oddly shaped glass beads from the
asphalt pad. Others are melted irregularly into the surface,
interspersed with a few metal fragments.
"You can really get a sense of how hot the fire was," says Crockwell.
"These beads are all that's left of the windows. We find a lot of other
fragments of glass and metal around-pieces of aircraft and airships."
Crockwell motions to the overgrowth next to the pad. "One of the
legends of the place is that after the war was over, they dug big pits
and pushed the aircraft parts into them," he says. "It's enticing to
think that somewhere out here there may be pits full of World War II
aircraft parts. Some of the oral accounts tell us that after the fire,
you could buy a P-51 for $50."
As the Navy cleared the wreckage of the base, a demolition team
dynamited the concrete pillars. One refused to fall. Now one of the
highest structures in southern Dade County, it's bristling with
antennas and is the central relaying station for the area's 911
service. Blimps never returned permanently after the storm, but the
base's helium plant continued to supply Navy airships for years.
Richmond's other buildings served a variety of uses, such as providing
classroom space for servicemen going to school under the G.I. Bill, and
later as space for Naval and Marine Corps Reserve units. The end came
in 1992, when hurricane Andrew leveled all except the headquarters and
that single, stubborn pillar.
Today, Anthony Atwood and his volunteers hope to give the HQ building
its final assignment, as the official all-service military museum and
memorial of south Florida. Atwood, a former Navy recruiter on temporary
recall at a reserve station, has made the salvation of Richmond's
headquarters building and the memory of the blimps and crews that flew
here his own crusade, and intends the story of NAS Richmond to be the
subject of his master's thesis for an advanced degree in history.
The year before the city of Miami's centennial in 1996, Atwood says,
"there was a lot of community consciousness raising, and being a
community-activist-type person, I [wanted to organize] a commemorative
event at the site of the old blimp base." To honor U.S. servicemen,
Atwood put together a ceremony that attracted 300 people and raised an
American flag where NAS Richmond's flagpole once stood.
Bolstered by the turnout, Atwood and a core of volunteers set up a
display about the base at the nearby Goldcoast Railroad Museum. As the
group began to publicize its efforts, members placed on display in the
headquarters building artifacts they found nearby, including aluminum
fragments from the blimps and structural parts of the hangars. More
volunteers came forward, some of whom had been blimp crewmen or had
served at the base as civilians, and gradually the idea of restoring
the HQ building took hold.
"I'd like to see this as a federal institution-an ongoing museum for
young and old alike," Atwood says. "We hope to see a veterans'
memorial, nature trails behind the building, and a replica of the
Vietnam [memorial in Washington, D.C.] wall."
Before restoration, however, a few problems with the building's
location must be solved. Although the Army Corps of Engineers owns both
the building and the land around it, nearby land is owned by the
University of Miami, which has its own plans for expansion, and access
to the old base is limited. The solution is to raise the building by
hydraulic jacks and truck it about 350 yards to a plot of federal land
accessible from the neighboring Metrozoo's main entrance road. Atwood
has enlisted the help of several Florida politicians, including U.S.
Senator Bob Graham and Representatives Carrie Meek and E. Clay Shaw
Jr., to steer the project through the competing priorities of a major
university, federal agencies, and one of the largest zoological parks
in the nation. Mayor Paul Novack of Surfside, a town just north of
Miami, has been a key ally. "In this place, the museum would be a
natural buffer between the zoo and [nearby] development," Novack says.
"And when the building is moved, the land behind it will be restored to
a natural state."
"It's just the right thing to do," says Atwood, whose father hit the
beach on D-Day during World War II and who has the conviction-and
salesmanship-of a military recruiter. Even though negotiations have
been long and complicated, they have resulted in what he calls "a
strange coalition of environmentalists and military people slightly to
the right of Attila the Hun."
Once the officials have inked the deal and the structure is moved to
its new home and restored, NAS Richmond's headquarters
building-survivor of war and at least five hurricanes-will return to
service, reminding its visitors that long before exotic animals roamed
nearby, blimps prowled the skies.
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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Read
about the
"Burning
of NAS Richmond"
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Read
the story of the ONLY U.S. Navy
airship ever lost to enemy fire.
THE
BATTLE OF THE
BLIMP AND THE SUB.
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If
you would like to visit another site
with loads of information about
Blimps
and Airships, click here!
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ADDITIONAL PHOTOS
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| Naval
Air Station Richmond Marker |
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| Hangars 1
& 2 (1942) |
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| Aerial View |
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| Movable Blimp
Moaring |
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| Engine
Maintainence |
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| Propeller
Assembly |
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| The
machine
shop is vital
to the Air
Station |
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Size
comparison of the
Gold Coast Railroad Museum
next to one Blimp Hangar |
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Homepage
of the
Naval Airship Association.
Join the
"Friends of Richmond Naval Air Station"
Membership
Form
The NAS
Richmond crew is: James Sinquefield, LCDR, USN (retired), our
"Pilot"; YN1 Anthony Attwood, USNR, our "Navigator"; Cesar Becerra, our
"Sparks"; Alan Crockwell, our "Gunner"; and Gold Coast Museum Director,
Connie Greer, our "Ground Controller".
The Friends of NAS Richmond is an informal, non-profit association of
aviation buffs, veterans, patriotic, community minded citizens,
servicemen and women dedicated to preserving for future generations,
the rich military heritage of historic South Florida.
If anyone has additional photos or
information on NAS
Richmond please
contact ravento@gcrm.org
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