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Goodyear and the Mystery of the Ghost Blimp · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
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Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much
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Speaker 1: for tuning into today's episode of gost Blam Coast to Coast.
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Speaker 1: Coast to Coast. We're changing the show. It's just all
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Speaker 1: go s blimp content all night. We're also it's also
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Speaker 1: a night show. This this episode is going until dawn.
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Speaker 1: I'm cool with that as long as we're done in
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Speaker 1: time for my haircut at six thirty. You get your
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Speaker 1: hair cut at six thirty in the morning that we
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Speaker 1: are set my friend and I admire your industrious nous.
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Speaker 1: Uh no, no, no, it'said. We're not gonna go all
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Speaker 1: night and this with this is just this is weird.
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Speaker 1: I really like the phrase ghost blimp. But this is
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Speaker 1: honestly a little bit of a mystery, isn't it. It
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Speaker 1: is indeed a mystery, a history mystery, as we like
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Speaker 1: to say, because it rhymes and it's a thing people
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Speaker 1: say in the history podcast space. Um. But yeah, ghost blimp,
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Speaker 1: it's about what it sounds like. You know, we think
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Speaker 1: of ghost ships, uh, not an invisible, ghostly apparition of
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Speaker 1: a ship. It's a ship that's found adrift with nobody
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Speaker 1: aboard uh. And that is exactly the case with today's story,
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Speaker 1: the Enduring Mystery of the L eight Ghost Blimp. On
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Speaker 1: August six, nineteen forty two, a very unusual thing happened
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Speaker 1: in California. In Daily City, California, a suburb near San Francisco,
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Speaker 1: around eleven thirty in the morning, UM, a blimp was
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Speaker 1: cited kind of descending from the sky and heading for
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Speaker 1: the streets, uh for Bellevue Avenue in particular. It was
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Speaker 1: reported that it was sagging in the middle and was
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Speaker 1: described by a fireman UH for the San Francisco Chronicle
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Speaker 1: as it looking like a quote big broken wiener um
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Speaker 1: imagining they mean like a sausage. But you know you
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Speaker 1: can do with that image what you will. Yeah, yeah Uh.
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Speaker 1: He gave that account in nine, several decades after the event,
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Speaker 1: so he had been thinking about this this shape a lot,
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Speaker 1: and for better or worse, he described it as a
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Speaker 1: broken weener. We also don't know how many broken wieners
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Speaker 1: the guy had seen his life. I think we'll will
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Speaker 1: fast this week, but with the help of our super producer,
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Speaker 1: Casey Pegram, we're going to explore what exactly happened here
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Speaker 1: so this errant ghost blimp kind of drifts on top
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Speaker 1: of rooftop for a second, but then the wind pushes it.
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Speaker 1: It drifts further away. It gets tangled up in some
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Speaker 1: power lines. It goes through the wires, it sends you know,
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Speaker 1: arcs of electricity shoot through the air, and then it
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Speaker 1: comes to rest on the ground. The engine smash into
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Speaker 1: the pavement. There's gasoline pouring into the street. This is
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Speaker 1: not a Hindenburg situation, a little lower on the disaster scale,
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Speaker 1: but still not a pretty picture, right. And again, of course,
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Speaker 1: given the time frame, people would be aware of the
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Speaker 1: Hindenburg and they would be aware of the danger of
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Speaker 1: this stuff catching flame. So there's chaos. People are running
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Speaker 1: to check out this scene because rubber neckers are an
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Speaker 1: historical uh ubiquity, and police and fire crews came there
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Speaker 1: and they were holding folks back, and they were running
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Speaker 1: into what's called the gondola of the blimp, and the
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Speaker 1: gondolas where they carry all the you know, the pilots
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Speaker 1: and the passengers, and they wanted to rescue the crew,
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Speaker 1: but there was no one there. I feel like we
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Speaker 1: need a spooky theorem and kind of thing. I'd love
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Speaker 1: an x files vibe like an X files vibe as
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Speaker 1: close as we can get to not getting sued. This
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Speaker 1: is actually the kind of topic we probably I'm surprised
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Speaker 1: we haven't come across on stuff they don't want you
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Speaker 1: to know, because this really is has been red meat
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Speaker 1: for conspiracy theorists as to what happened to the crew
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Speaker 1: of the L eight Ghost blimp. Yes, almost a locked
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Speaker 1: room kind of mysteries, So casey if you want to
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Speaker 1: keep that creepy music going. Uh. The parachutes were all
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Speaker 1: in their normal spots. A messed with the cap of
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Speaker 1: one of the pilots was still on the instrument panel.
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Speaker 1: The blimp was in perfect order, everything including the radio.
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Speaker 1: There was still a bomb attached to the blimp, and
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Speaker 1: naval officials will later tell everyone there was never any
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Speaker 1: danger because it would only detonate in water. There was
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Speaker 1: also a suitcase full of intel or full of you know,
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Speaker 1: I guess, uh, classified type papers that was locked away
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Speaker 1: in a safe Uh. Photographer nearby gets a photo of
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Speaker 1: the crash and the blimp doesn't look like it's a
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Speaker 1: great condition. It's gas bag is deflated. That is the
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Speaker 1: correct term, gas bag. It's it's deflated it's falling apart,
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Speaker 1: and newspapers across the country and then later the world
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Speaker 1: grabbed this photograph and you see all these stories coming
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Speaker 1: out about the mystery surrounding this blimp crash. People search
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Speaker 1: for this missing crew. They search on the land, they
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Speaker 1: searched by air, they searched the sea, and they are
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Speaker 1: completely clueless. Hashtag no Alicia Silverstone. But they're wondering where
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Speaker 1: was the missing crew? What happened? First off? Why why
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Speaker 1: is there a limp with a weapon crashing over this
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Speaker 1: suburb of San Francisco in the beginning? What drove us
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Speaker 1: the blimps? Yeah, it's funny. We just did an episode
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Speaker 1: about futurism, and honestly, airships are kind of a futurists
6:13
Speaker 1: the kind of thing in my opinion at least, and
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Speaker 1: a lot of like things like Sky Captain in the
6:18
Speaker 1: World of Tomorrow, right, or a lot of these kind
6:21
Speaker 1: of neo futurists, sci fi dystopian kind of situations. You'll
6:25
Speaker 1: see airships featured very prominently a lot of anime. For example,
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Speaker 1: You'll you'll have airships as sort of like a you know,
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Speaker 1: thing that endures as a means of transportation and as
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Speaker 1: a means of deploying weaponry. Um, so let's start from
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Speaker 1: the beginning, back when Pearl Harbor was attacked, which is
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Speaker 1: like a big freaking deal to say the least, that
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Speaker 1: triggered the war with Japan. It was an issue that
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Speaker 1: the Navy was facing that they needed the ability to
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Speaker 1: patrol more effectively the West coast um and there was
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Speaker 1: a lot of threat from Japanese submarine attacks. So they
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Speaker 1: kind of started looking, uh for another means of doing
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Speaker 1: these patrols outside of you know, ships and warships and
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Speaker 1: even their own submarines, because Japanese submarines were very effective,
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Speaker 1: and they decided to look back in time to a
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Speaker 1: bygone era where blimps and zeppelins and airships were much
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Speaker 1: more of a common thing. Yeah, it's true. Only nine
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Speaker 1: months after the US entered World War two, these Japanese
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Speaker 1: subs had already sank at least six Allied vessels off
7:40
Speaker 1: the West coast. They even shelled oil drilling facilities. I mean,
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Speaker 1: they were nothing to mess with, and they need the
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Speaker 1: US Uncle SAM needed monitoring capability. So they got these
7:52
Speaker 1: blimps fancy name for airships. Why do we like them?
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Speaker 1: Because they're capable of hovering in place, they could lower
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Speaker 1: devices for serve Alan's uh. And a lot of the
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Speaker 1: work on this technology starts is based in a place
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Speaker 1: called Moffett Field. It's the largest lighter than air based
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Speaker 1: in California. At the time, they had an airfield on
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Speaker 1: Treasure Island right there in San Francisco Bay. I gotta
8:18
Speaker 1: tell you, I don't know if you guys remember the
8:19
Speaker 1: show Fringe. Uh, no big spoilers, but they have a
8:23
Speaker 1: great alternate reality wherein you know, the Hindenburg never burned
8:28
Speaker 1: and people weren't such jerks about blimps, and I just
8:33
Speaker 1: got it's my dream to go in one. I got
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Speaker 1: really close one time. I got really close to getting
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Speaker 1: into Goodyear blimp. I think I mentioned earlier Ben There's
8:40
Speaker 1: still time, my friend, There's still time. And it makes
8:43
Speaker 1: me think of one of the earliest episodes of Ridiculous
8:46
Speaker 1: History that we did talking about how blimps were once
8:49
Speaker 1: constructed using uh, the gutty membranes that encase sausages. Yes,
8:55
Speaker 1: that's correct, that's correct. Our show has Loki had a
8:59
Speaker 1: love affair with for a very long time. Uh. It's
9:02
Speaker 1: good that we acknowledge that. Get it out in the open.
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Speaker 1: So uh, from this place, from Treasure Island, blimps are
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Speaker 1: dispatched to patrol the coast and they're searching for Japanese subs.
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Speaker 1: That's like the number one thing they're doing. One of
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Speaker 1: these blimps is the L eight airship and it's part
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Speaker 1: of what's called Airship Patrol Squadron thirty two. Uh. This
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Speaker 1: was originally a good Year blimp and it was used
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Speaker 1: for advertising until the Navy thought, oh man, these subs
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Speaker 1: are killing us literally. Uh. The Navy went to good
9:36
Speaker 1: Year and bought the blimp from them and then shipped
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Speaker 1: it out to the West coast. Uh, and it's it's
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Speaker 1: pretty cool. Presumably did a little retro fitting. You know.
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Speaker 1: I imagine that the original Goodyear version of it didn't
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Speaker 1: have like depth charges or whatever attached to it. Right. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: Well one would hope, one would hope. You know. Uh,
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Speaker 1: they did do some extensive work too. They assembled a
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Speaker 1: they you know, commissioned it. They added some things to it.
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Speaker 1: It's a hundred and fifty feet long. It's held aloft
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Speaker 1: by a huge envelope of helium three thousand cubic feet,
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Speaker 1: and it's powered by two pretty good engines. They're a
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Speaker 1: hundred horsepower. Uh, it had it had a good reputation
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Speaker 1: during before the Navy got it. It had flown more
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Speaker 1: than one thousand times, and all it needed was maintenance
10:30
Speaker 1: and repair was really dependable, gotta say, really quickly, really cool,
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Speaker 1: kind of Badassuh. Name of the engines was the Warner
10:38
Speaker 1: Super scar Up Type five. Yeah, that's that's correct. And
10:43
Speaker 1: like any other military vehicle, this thing is inspected on
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Speaker 1: a regular basis. So before the crew gets on board
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Speaker 1: for this trip, this mystery trip, about four days before
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Speaker 1: they embark, the lad is examined and it's found to
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Speaker 1: be in fine working condition. So it's it's should this
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Speaker 1: should be a routine surveillance thing. I guess we should
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Speaker 1: talk about the crew, right. We've got a crew of
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Speaker 1: two people in this blip. So in August two, the
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Speaker 1: two man crew of the L eight UM was on
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Speaker 1: a maneuver, a very routine maneuver in fact, um to
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Speaker 1: conduct what was referred to as a raid along the
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Speaker 1: coast of California and then returning to that base. Uh
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Speaker 1: if I'm a mistaken, which was on Treasure Island, Ben, Yes, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: that's that's where they're deploying from exactly so. Um. The
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Speaker 1: first pilot was a gentleman by the name of Lieutenant
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Speaker 1: Ernest Cody, and the second pilot a gentleman by the
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Speaker 1: name of Ensign Charles Adams Ben. I don't know what
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Speaker 1: an ensign is. This is a new one for me. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: It's the sixteenth rank in the U. S. Navy, So
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Speaker 1: it's above a Let's see, if I remember correctly, it's
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Speaker 1: directly below a lieutenant junior. Great, got it. Sixteen. That's
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Speaker 1: a lot how many. I didn't realize there were that
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Speaker 1: many ranks. It's just one, okay, yeah, a lot of ranks.
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Speaker 1: I'd love to learn more about those. But um, they
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Speaker 1: were both so so again up there, they they had
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Speaker 1: some experience. These were not green pilots. UM. Lieutenant Ernest
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Speaker 1: DeWitt Cody was twenty seven years old was quite experienced. UM.
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Speaker 1: As the pilot of the l A, this was his
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Speaker 1: regular gig. He'd had a bit of a moment in
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Speaker 1: the press spotlight before when he was a part of
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Speaker 1: a raid called the Doolittle Raid that made the news,
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Speaker 1: where sixteen B twenty five bombers were launched from a
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Speaker 1: aircraft carrier to strike Tokyo. The story there is. On
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Speaker 1: April four of nineteen two, Cody deployed from San Francisco
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Speaker 1: in the l A to meet up with the aircraft carrier,
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Speaker 1: the USS Hornet, which was loaded down with those bombers.
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Speaker 1: UM and the Hornet had left the port two days before,
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Speaker 1: and the l A was going to deliver a crate
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Speaker 1: containing three hundred pounds of spare parts for those bombers. Yeah,
13:10
Speaker 1: so they they helped make the Dolittle rate possible. So
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Speaker 1: they got a good shout out in the domestic media.
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Speaker 1: And aside from like these types of maybe reconnaissance missions
13:22
Speaker 1: or what you have maybe consider as um kind of
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Speaker 1: monitoring the coast, I imagine that these blimps were probably
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Speaker 1: pretty useful for doing uh supply drops as well. Right sure, yeah,
13:39
Speaker 1: you know what, I want to stop for a second
13:42
Speaker 1: for for one tangent, which is going to be important.
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Speaker 1: This le answering questions some of our fellow listeners may
13:47
Speaker 1: have already had. What is the difference between a zeppelin
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Speaker 1: and a blimp? The difference is very simple. They're both airships,
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Speaker 1: but a zeppelin has a rigid structure. A blimp is
13:59
Speaker 1: more like a shape balloon that has an engine and
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Speaker 1: a passenger compartment. The Zeppelin is named after the inventor
14:08
Speaker 1: with the awesome name of Ferdinand van Zeppelin. He he
14:13
Speaker 1: is the one who wanted to devise a steerable dirigible
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Speaker 1: or balloon. So that's the difference is the metal skeleton.
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Speaker 1: These guys are in a blimp to be clear. Uh.
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Speaker 1: And the other guy that we mentioned the ensign there,
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Speaker 1: he is thirty eight years old at this time. He
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Speaker 1: has also experienced He's a twenty year veteran of airships.
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Speaker 1: He was physically there at the crash of the Hindenburg
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Speaker 1: and seven. He's one of the people who rushed in
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Speaker 1: fearlessly to pull out survivors. And he obviously has some
14:46
Speaker 1: stones because he clearly did not let that like sour
14:49
Speaker 1: his love of of blimping, which is the official name
14:52
Speaker 1: for piloting a blimp. Yeah, none of these Neither of
14:55
Speaker 1: these guys were chumps. There were no chumps in the squad,
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Speaker 1: so they would have had a crew of three people.
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Speaker 1: But weather conditions wet fog specifically hampered their plan. The
15:08
Speaker 1: blimp had a soft surface, so this wet fog weighed
15:11
Speaker 1: it down significantly. And their third guy, the mechanic had
15:16
Speaker 1: to stay on the ground, so it was just these
15:18
Speaker 1: two dudes. They were scheduled to fly to the Fairy
15:22
Speaker 1: Lawn Islands, thirty miles west of San Francisco. From there
15:25
Speaker 1: they were going to go north to Point Rais and
15:28
Speaker 1: then south to Montera Beach and then returned to Treasure Island,
15:31
Speaker 1: so just kind of a loop around of patrol. And
15:35
Speaker 1: they thought this would take about four hours, meaning that
15:39
Speaker 1: the team should be back on base sometime between ten
15:43
Speaker 1: and ten thirty in the morning. And as a routine thing,
15:46
Speaker 1: no plot twist, just looking around. It started off completely
15:50
Speaker 1: normal at what was normal as six oh three am,
15:55
Speaker 1: but then am they spied something suspicious on the placid
16:00
Speaker 1: surface of the Atlantic. Uh. It was a stain, a
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Speaker 1: very suspicious stain, potentially an oil slick near the fair
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Speaker 1: Aln Islands. And Cody said over the radio, uh, and
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Speaker 1: investigating suspicious oil slick stand by, Well, that can't be good. Uh.
16:19
Speaker 1: So they had to investigate this because it could be
16:24
Speaker 1: clear evidence of an enemy submarine and that's why they
16:28
Speaker 1: dropped two lights they called them float lights Mark four
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Speaker 1: float lights and started to explore the area, circling it
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Speaker 1: for an hour. Would these have been flare type situations
16:38
Speaker 1: been like that that would be waterproof and would allow
16:40
Speaker 1: them to kind of see the surface of the water
16:42
Speaker 1: more clearly. What do you think? That's kind of what
16:45
Speaker 1: I think? Okay, uh so, yeah, it's well, it's it's
16:50
Speaker 1: interesting because they also dropped smoke flares. Oh see, I
16:55
Speaker 1: saw a video about this and and I was a
16:56
Speaker 1: little confused because they kept saying float lights and I
16:59
Speaker 1: wasn't sure what they meant. For some reason, I thought
17:00
Speaker 1: it was some sort of like a dinghy, you know,
17:03
Speaker 1: like a like a booty type situation. But I wonder
17:06
Speaker 1: they wouldn't have had, like I guess that would have
17:08
Speaker 1: they have had battery operated waterproof lights at that point. Like,
17:12
Speaker 1: I'm just wondering what generated the lights in addition to
17:15
Speaker 1: having to drop the flares. Well, this may be something
17:19
Speaker 1: some of our veteran friends in the audience can clear
17:22
Speaker 1: up for us, because in the Daily Telegraph float lights
17:28
Speaker 1: are described as smoke flares to mark the spot where
17:31
Speaker 1: the oil sleek is, but in other descriptions, such as
17:36
Speaker 1: war history online dot com, they're described almost as if
17:41
Speaker 1: they're two different things. So for now, let's just say
17:43
Speaker 1: that they alerted the nearby fishing trawlers got it, the
17:48
Speaker 1: Daisy Gray, and then another ship, the Albert Gallatin. And
17:51
Speaker 1: then at that point the crew of the Albert Gallatin,
17:55
Speaker 1: which is just to be clear, was not a civilian
17:57
Speaker 1: ship like the Daisy Gray, which was a vessel. They
18:01
Speaker 1: sounded the alarms and prepared to lend a hand in
18:04
Speaker 1: terms of like their weaponry. They you know, ready the guns. Yeah,
18:09
Speaker 1: the Gallatin was a what's called a liberty ship. It's
18:13
Speaker 1: a kind of cargo ship that was built during World
18:16
Speaker 1: War Two. So they had weaponry aboard this one. And
18:21
Speaker 1: they were able to observe the blimp because it was
18:24
Speaker 1: circling at a really really low elevation, only two d
18:28
Speaker 1: three feet from the surface or six for everyone outside
18:33
Speaker 1: of Namibia and the United States. Uh. The first mate
18:37
Speaker 1: on this fishing trawler can clearly see two men in
18:41
Speaker 1: the gondola and says one of them as dark Hair.
18:43
Speaker 1: And then they also see at nine am that the
18:45
Speaker 1: crew throws the crew of the Ghost Blimp throws off
18:49
Speaker 1: the ballast. They rise, and they turn and they're heading
18:52
Speaker 1: back towards San Francisco. This is the last time that
18:57
Speaker 1: either of those two men were ever seen or heard
19:00
Speaker 1: from again. There was nothing suspicious about this. You know,
19:04
Speaker 1: back at this point, if you lived on the coast
19:06
Speaker 1: to California, you would see patrols, a blimps. It was
19:09
Speaker 1: a regular routine thing. So they thought nothing of it.
19:12
Speaker 1: They thought they were just doing their job. But air
19:16
Speaker 1: traffic controllers over there Moffat Field are starting to get
19:21
Speaker 1: a little squigged out because they're not hearing anything on
19:26
Speaker 1: the radio from the blimp. Right that Their last transmission
19:29
Speaker 1: would have been that thing about investigating the suspicious oil slick,
19:32
Speaker 1: right yeah, And by eight fifty a m. The L
19:36
Speaker 1: eight was still silent. When no follow up, So two
19:40
Speaker 1: planes were sent out vaut os to you Kingfisher Flute planes,
19:44
Speaker 1: and they were just sent out to physically find the
19:48
Speaker 1: L A, to find the blimp. And then there was
19:51
Speaker 1: a kind of like an all points bullets and put
19:54
Speaker 1: out where other aircraft were told, Hey, there's a stray
19:58
Speaker 1: blimp somewhere. We don't out nowhere, tell us if you
20:01
Speaker 1: see it. They haven't checked in, so this wouldn't have
20:03
Speaker 1: been officially like a rescue mission yet, but they were
20:08
Speaker 1: out there to kind of figure out what was going on.
20:10
Speaker 1: Perhaps it could have been chocked up to like communication
20:12
Speaker 1: equipment malfunction or what have you. But by ten forty
20:15
Speaker 1: nine am, the pilot of a Pan American clipper ship
20:20
Speaker 1: reported that as he approached San Francisco, he noticed the
20:24
Speaker 1: blimp hovering over the Golden Gate Bridge. So, okay, things
20:28
Speaker 1: are looking up. Uh. Then yet two more reports from
20:31
Speaker 1: different aircraft saying they've seen the ship too, So it
20:34
Speaker 1: seemed like things were heading in the right direction. But
20:37
Speaker 1: then at eleven am, v L eight did a really
20:40
Speaker 1: funky maneuver. It like rose sharply and disappeared into the
20:44
Speaker 1: clouds and gained altitude quickly of about two thousand feet. Okay,
20:50
Speaker 1: so this is important because blimps have a lot of
20:54
Speaker 1: caveats to their operations, and these guys just hit one
20:58
Speaker 1: of the big ones. Two thousand feet is pretty close
21:02
Speaker 1: to a threshold at which a blimps valves automatically open,
21:06
Speaker 1: and the reason they open is so that they can
21:08
Speaker 1: release helium and prevent an explosion. That's why crew members
21:14
Speaker 1: would do their best to avoid ever getting past that height.
21:17
Speaker 1: But this crew, as you said, just ignored this and
21:21
Speaker 1: consequences be damned. And that would have been some relatively
21:24
Speaker 1: low tech situation like a Bara metric, you know, measurement
21:28
Speaker 1: thing that can detect altitude and then would have triggered
21:32
Speaker 1: this release valve. Correct. Yeah, that would be automated. They
21:35
Speaker 1: would not have to do anything. That happens automatically. We
21:37
Speaker 1: can get that height. Twenty minutes later, the airship is
21:41
Speaker 1: spotted over the coastal Highway. We have we have a
21:45
Speaker 1: photo from one Richard Qualm, who was a seman on duty.
21:49
Speaker 1: He took this photo. It went around to all the
21:51
Speaker 1: newspapers because in this photo, no one is in the
21:57
Speaker 1: passenger compartment of the blimp. The engines don't work. Uh,
22:01
Speaker 1: the shell that was filled with helium is partially blown off,
22:06
Speaker 1: and the l ad itself is quickly like descending in
22:09
Speaker 1: the air. It's losing gas, starting to resemble that broken
22:14
Speaker 1: Wiener that we talked about at the top of the show. Right,
22:17
Speaker 1: that's that's correct. It's it's it's on its way to Wienerhood.
22:20
Speaker 1: Two swimmers we're nearby. They saw hanging ropes dangling from
22:25
Speaker 1: the blimp. They tried to grab it and stop it,
22:28
Speaker 1: but it was just too heavy because you know, it's
22:30
Speaker 1: a blimp and they're just two dudes that that that's
22:33
Speaker 1: a valiant effort. I appreciate the klitza of these swimmers UM.
22:38
Speaker 1: But then the l A I don't know, do you
22:41
Speaker 1: call it running aground? I think it's just more crashed
22:44
Speaker 1: uh into a golf course. And one of the depth
22:48
Speaker 1: charges that we were talking about that would only go
22:50
Speaker 1: off in water, thankfully UH fell off because they're also
22:54
Speaker 1: triggered automatically by pressure UM, so they wouldn't have like
22:58
Speaker 1: just impact exploded. They would have needed to be triggered
23:01
Speaker 1: by a depth That's what they're called a depth charge,
23:03
Speaker 1: because they have to reach a certain depth and then
23:05
Speaker 1: the charge is triggered and they explode. But even though
23:09
Speaker 1: it didn't explode, think about the weight. It just sheds
23:13
Speaker 1: so much weight and so now it's almost like the
23:15
Speaker 1: blimp is bouncing because without that way, it rises back
23:19
Speaker 1: up again and it drifts east over the Crocker Amazon
23:25
Speaker 1: neighborhood UH near the San Mateo, San Francisco County line.
23:29
Speaker 1: It starts to lose its elevation again because it's leaking
23:32
Speaker 1: all this helium. It scrapes rooftops. It's this is exactly
23:35
Speaker 1: what we were talking about in the beginning. It hits
23:38
Speaker 1: those telephone lines, arcs of electricity, and then it touches
23:42
Speaker 1: down in front of a house at four nineteen Bellevue Avenue.
23:47
Speaker 1: It's safe to say the residents of that house, we're
23:50
Speaker 1: not expecting a blimp delivery. Uh. Two thousand people running
23:55
Speaker 1: out in the streets. What happened? What happened? What happened? Uh?
23:58
Speaker 1: They're joined by military person now and police who are
24:01
Speaker 1: trying to stop the crowd from running up to this
24:04
Speaker 1: blimp which might explode because it still has one depth
24:06
Speaker 1: charge left and it's leaking gasoline. Its engines are pointed
24:10
Speaker 1: at the ground. You know. We it's it's like it's
24:13
Speaker 1: tragically yet gracefully draped over dodged sedan. And here's the
24:20
Speaker 1: pain in the ass about it for that guy, the
24:22
Speaker 1: owner of the sedan, have been meticulously waxing it when
24:26
Speaker 1: he saw the blimp, then he had to run it.
24:28
Speaker 1: Sounds like that should be like a verse from the
24:31
Speaker 1: Alanis Morset song. Ironic. You know, it's like a blim
24:35
Speaker 1: crash when you've been waxing, y'all. Car, I never mind
24:39
Speaker 1: all workshop that with Alanis really quickly. But so the
24:47
Speaker 1: reason that the Hindenberg exploded was because it was filled
24:50
Speaker 1: with hydrogen, which is a massively combustible gas. UM, but
24:55
Speaker 1: I think it had properties that made it better then helium,
24:59
Speaker 1: which is why it was used. It was more readily
25:01
Speaker 1: available or something. And then obviously after that they pivoted
25:04
Speaker 1: to helium. But can you remember why off the top
25:06
Speaker 1: of your head hydrogen was used at all, Like there
25:09
Speaker 1: had to be some reason that it was superior to
25:12
Speaker 1: helium despite its incredibly combustible nature. Yeah, helium weighs about
25:17
Speaker 1: twice as much as hydrogen, So if you have helium
25:22
Speaker 1: in your airship, it reduces the uh, it reduces your
25:26
Speaker 1: maximum elevation or your cruising range because it has less
25:30
Speaker 1: of a lift basically, right. But they very quickly realized
25:34
Speaker 1: that hydrogen was a no go because you know, Hindenburgh.
25:37
Speaker 1: But back to the L eight. So there's this melee
25:40
Speaker 1: you know in the streets. UM, the the the gas
25:44
Speaker 1: bag which I love as like an insult or as
25:46
Speaker 1: a term, you know for a balloon. UM had completely
25:49
Speaker 1: deflated UM and it was absolutely covering that Dodge sedan.
25:54
Speaker 1: Like you said, the gondola doors was upended. They were
25:57
Speaker 1: swinging swung wide open. Thankful a you know, it's a blimp,
26:02
Speaker 1: and it did kind of land gently. It wasn't like
26:04
Speaker 1: a plane crash. I mean, it just sort of gently
26:07
Speaker 1: hovers down to the ground and then touches down. So
26:09
Speaker 1: any crew members should have been able to walk away unscathed, right,
26:13
Speaker 1: and yet there was no one aboard a yeah, those uh,
26:19
Speaker 1: those two guys were missing. Also, just to be very clear,
26:24
Speaker 1: with helium and hydrogen, helium has the big advantage of
26:28
Speaker 1: not being flammable. It's just rare and a little more expensive.
26:32
Speaker 1: There's actually, actually for anybody who is a fan of
26:35
Speaker 1: birthday balloons, there are concerns about a helium shortage that
26:39
Speaker 1: you know, the idea that Earth may be running out
26:41
Speaker 1: of helium. Episode for another day. But anyhow, this is
26:46
Speaker 1: where the investigators find themselves amid the mystery Casey, can
26:52
Speaker 1: we can we have that creepy music please? Yeah? Suspenseful?
26:55
Speaker 1: All right. There's a lot of fuel left in the tanks,
26:58
Speaker 1: three parachutes, single life raft, the machine gun, the pilot's
27:03
Speaker 1: personal weapons, allowed speaker, a walkie talkie. Everything else is
27:07
Speaker 1: in place. One door of the gondola is locked, the
27:11
Speaker 1: second one is just closed and unlocked. The motors were fine,
27:15
Speaker 1: at least except for where they had hit the pavement.
27:19
Speaker 1: All the control buttons were in the on position. The
27:22
Speaker 1: radio was working right, The radio was fine, and if
27:26
Speaker 1: it hadn't have been, the crew had literally had a
27:29
Speaker 1: loud speaker on the vessel and they could just have
27:32
Speaker 1: yelled out to any one day floated past. And the
27:36
Speaker 1: parachutes were fine. There were a couple of things missing,
27:40
Speaker 1: smoke bombs and life jackets, so did they jump out?
27:43
Speaker 1: Problem is that it was common for military pilots to
27:48
Speaker 1: just wear the life jackets already even if something wasn't
27:51
Speaker 1: going wrong. And again, these were highly trained airship pilots.
27:54
Speaker 1: And like we said, the briefcase, uh, the light's briefcase,
27:57
Speaker 1: which would have contained I guess like manifest type things
28:00
Speaker 1: you know, with like the cargo or payload or whatever
28:03
Speaker 1: information was found behind the pilot seat in in like
28:06
Speaker 1: a lock box situation. So the implication there was that
28:11
Speaker 1: Cody Adams wouldn't have thought what was happened with Syria
28:14
Speaker 1: enough to warrant getting rid of those documents so they
28:17
Speaker 1: wouldn't fall into enemy hands, right, Yeah, And it makes sense,
28:22
Speaker 1: and the Navy is at a loss. They search everywhere,
28:26
Speaker 1: as we said, for these uh, these two missing men. Uh.
28:29
Speaker 1: They comb the area of the flight path all nights
28:34
Speaker 1: and for the next three days they have good weather
28:38
Speaker 1: for the search, but they cannot find any sign of
28:41
Speaker 1: these officials. Uh. The Navy said that they think there's
28:46
Speaker 1: it's highly unlikely that these guys would have been attacked
28:50
Speaker 1: by enemy forces nobody, Like. The Navy went on record
28:55
Speaker 1: saying no one can give a satisfactory explanation of what happened.
29:00
Speaker 1: So they start asking civilians and naval personnel. No, they
29:06
Speaker 1: found that there were no missiles, there were no uh,
29:09
Speaker 1: there are no fires, no attacks. There didn't seem to
29:11
Speaker 1: be any kind of miscellaneous conduct on the part of
29:14
Speaker 1: the ground crew or anyone. And they went back to
29:18
Speaker 1: those ships who said, yeah, we saw them just fine
29:21
Speaker 1: in the ocean totally. And there's a lot of like
29:23
Speaker 1: video and maybe not video, but there's a lot of
29:24
Speaker 1: like photography that you can find online and like in
29:27
Speaker 1: some of these history YouTube videos that we looked at
29:30
Speaker 1: of you know, the thing just kind of hovering there.
29:32
Speaker 1: There's there's a good shot of it like all kind
29:34
Speaker 1: of caved in in the middle, like like the broken
29:36
Speaker 1: Wiener situation. Uh. So then Commander Francis Connell heads up
29:40
Speaker 1: aboard to launch an inquiry, a week long inquiry that
29:44
Speaker 1: takes testimony from all these folks that were talking about
29:47
Speaker 1: naval personnel that were involved UM and established that there
29:51
Speaker 1: was quoting just from the inquest UH no fire, no submersion,
29:55
Speaker 1: no misconduct, and no missiles destruct The l eight, UM,
29:59
Speaker 1: that other ship that we talk about, the fishing vessel
30:01
Speaker 1: Daisy Gray, UH and UM from the military vessel the
30:05
Speaker 1: Gallatin all testified, gave the time stamps. You know, all
30:08
Speaker 1: of the sequence of events was laid out very clearly.
30:11
Speaker 1: And remember there was that one point where they absolutely
30:15
Speaker 1: did see the crew members aboard in that in that
30:18
Speaker 1: gondola because it's not huge and there's like you know,
30:21
Speaker 1: very clear windows, so you can see there's there's people
30:23
Speaker 1: on there. Yeah. Nobody could answer the most basic questions,
30:28
Speaker 1: why did they stop broadcasting the radio is working? Why
30:32
Speaker 1: did they leave the airship midflight? What happened? And that
30:36
Speaker 1: mysterious uh stretch of time between when they spotted the
30:40
Speaker 1: oil slick and when they came ashore at Ocean Beach,
30:43
Speaker 1: So between seven forty two and eleven fifteen am. This
30:46
Speaker 1: is the weirdest part why didn't they send a radio
30:49
Speaker 1: message after they cited that oil slick? If so, if
30:54
Speaker 1: one person fell from the cabin while investigating, why didn't
30:57
Speaker 1: someone else, the other guy radio for help? Like? What where?
31:01
Speaker 1: Where the hell did they go? This is where the
31:04
Speaker 1: conspiracies proliferate. You had people saying, well, they were captured
31:08
Speaker 1: by a Japanese sub and then, of course, because it's
31:11
Speaker 1: World War Two, you had people say no, no, no,
31:14
Speaker 1: they were spine for Japan and they rendezvous with one
31:17
Speaker 1: of those sneaky Japanese subs to make their escape. Interesting,
31:22
Speaker 1: that's that's an interesting one. Yeah, um, But the results
31:28
Speaker 1: of this inquest really generated more questions than it did answers,
31:32
Speaker 1: right um. And of course, whenever you have a vacuum
31:35
Speaker 1: of of of answers, it's going to be filled by
31:39
Speaker 1: all kinds of outlandish theories. Um. And there were quite
31:42
Speaker 1: a few. You just mentioned a couple, but they get
31:45
Speaker 1: even weirder. I mean, it's not really within the scope
31:48
Speaker 1: of this episode, but alien abduction was even something that's
31:52
Speaker 1: been kicked around over the years, right um. One of
31:55
Speaker 1: my favorites, or maybe the one not my favorite, but
31:58
Speaker 1: the one that seems most plausible. Is that there was
32:00
Speaker 1: a malfunction and one of the crew members had to
32:04
Speaker 1: climb outside of the airship to you know, mess with
32:08
Speaker 1: it um and then got stuck or was in peril
32:12
Speaker 1: in some way, and then the other crew member had
32:14
Speaker 1: to go to his rescue and then they both fell. Right.
32:19
Speaker 1: But again, it seems a little weird like that they
32:21
Speaker 1: would both be put themselves in that situation, right. Yeah,
32:26
Speaker 1: this is no holds barred speculation. Uh. The one that's
32:29
Speaker 1: the most hilarious to me is the idea that a
32:31
Speaker 1: stowaway had snuck on board and in mid air has
32:36
Speaker 1: somehow overpowered these guys got rid of them and got
32:40
Speaker 1: rid of themselves as well. But if you've ever seen
32:42
Speaker 1: the inside of one of these compartments, there's no place
32:47
Speaker 1: for someone to sneak away and hide. It's it's just
32:50
Speaker 1: not happening. They would have to be very, very small.
32:53
Speaker 1: It's like one of those like Kia model bedrooms, you know,
32:55
Speaker 1: like I mean, but with way lets way way fewer
32:57
Speaker 1: compartments probably and way let way less Scandinavian design, no
33:02
Speaker 1: question about it. Then there's the theory that it was
33:04
Speaker 1: some kind of a wall situation gone awry, or they
33:06
Speaker 1: were trying to escape, like you said, not a Japanese
33:09
Speaker 1: spy situation, just literally trying to get the heck out
33:12
Speaker 1: of there. Uh. And then my personal favorite is that
33:15
Speaker 1: it was it was over a woman. There was some
33:17
Speaker 1: kind of bizarre love triangle situation going on. One crewdman
33:22
Speaker 1: murdered the other. Uh, and they all, you know, but
33:26
Speaker 1: dumped his body and then fell overboard. That ism is
33:32
Speaker 1: gonna get you. Here, here comes another, here comes one. This,
33:35
Speaker 1: this it'll be familiar to so they don't want you
33:37
Speaker 1: to know listeners. Uh. In an episode we just did
33:39
Speaker 1: about the disappearance of a young woman on a Disney
33:42
Speaker 1: cruise ship. Uh. The idea of a rogue wave, which
33:46
Speaker 1: is often in nautical investigations kind of like the go to.
33:50
Speaker 1: It was a rogue wave, which if you're not familiar
33:53
Speaker 1: with that, it's just a massive, massive wave that kind
33:56
Speaker 1: of comes out of nowhere and f's here s up. Yeah.
34:00
Speaker 1: Not to be confused with a ranger wave, a barred wave,
34:03
Speaker 1: or a palette and wave. They're very you know, they're
34:06
Speaker 1: very discrete different classes of waves. But you're right, road
34:09
Speaker 1: waves come up as the like last ditch explanation when
34:13
Speaker 1: investigators are at a loss for something, but they are real.
34:16
Speaker 1: They do happen. There's another theory by a guy named
34:19
Speaker 1: Auto Gross who has a website called ghost blimp dot com.
34:24
Speaker 1: Well then he's legit. Well he spends the tail. I
34:26
Speaker 1: think he says the blimp had been secretly testing experimental
34:30
Speaker 1: radar and the men were overpowered by microwaves and this
34:34
Speaker 1: caused them to tumble out of the cabin. But the
34:36
Speaker 1: thing about that story is good story, but there's no
34:39
Speaker 1: proof of it. So right now, the most plausible answer
34:45
Speaker 1: is also one of the most you know, were one
34:48
Speaker 1: of the least satisfying and most frightening, because they could
34:52
Speaker 1: have just made one silly mistake. Something could have been
34:55
Speaker 1: wrong with the door. Someone leaned against it, and then
34:58
Speaker 1: someone the other guy tried to rab his compatriot, and
35:01
Speaker 1: then they both fell or something. Once they hit that limit,
35:05
Speaker 1: they were having a uh, you know, mechanical malfunction, and
35:08
Speaker 1: they didn't think that. They didn't know they were going
35:12
Speaker 1: slow enough that they would be safer in the cabin,
35:15
Speaker 1: So maybe they just jumped out somewhere. But then like
35:17
Speaker 1: in their parachutes. I guess the thing for me, though,
35:20
Speaker 1: is um the window for all this to have happened
35:23
Speaker 1: was pretty small from like when they were spotted to
35:26
Speaker 1: when the actual crash took place. Yeah, yeah, just from
35:30
Speaker 1: seven to eleven ish. Uh. We still don't know. That's
35:34
Speaker 1: the thing. We don't know what happened to these two
35:37
Speaker 1: missing airmen. We do know what happened to the L
35:42
Speaker 1: eight though. This is where it goes full circle. As
35:47
Speaker 1: the mystery dies down, it remains unsolved and the case
35:50
Speaker 1: goes cold. The blimp is repaired and it resumes its duty,
35:55
Speaker 1: this time as a training vessel. And then after World
35:59
Speaker 1: War Two, the Navy gives the blimp back to the
36:03
Speaker 1: Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company and it becomes a good
36:06
Speaker 1: Year blimp and it travels the friendly skies from into
36:11
Speaker 1: like nineteen eighty two when it was retired, And there's
36:15
Speaker 1: still good Year blimps out there. If you want to
36:17
Speaker 1: see the the original L A ghost blimp, you can.
36:22
Speaker 1: I believe it's Where's it the Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida.
36:27
Speaker 1: And it's on display now with the same markings it
36:30
Speaker 1: had back in That's pretty cool. And you know, the
36:35
Speaker 1: Goodyear blimps are known for kind of hovering over you know,
36:39
Speaker 1: sporting events and patrons of San Francisco Baseball would have
36:44
Speaker 1: seen this very same blimp. Uh, the mysteriously crashed right
36:48
Speaker 1: in their neck of the woods, hovering over Candlestick Park
36:51
Speaker 1: during games. And with that, the story of the ghost
36:55
Speaker 1: blimp ends or does it? Perhaps you, fellow ridiculous story
37:00
Speaker 1: and know something the rest of the world does not.
37:03
Speaker 1: If that is the case, we would love to hear
37:06
Speaker 1: from you. You can find us on the internet. Find
37:09
Speaker 1: us on our Facebook community page, Ridiculous Historians, where you
37:12
Speaker 1: can meet the best part of this show, your fellow listeners,
37:15
Speaker 1: and if you like to sip the social meats. You
37:18
Speaker 1: can also find us online as individuals, cash us outside
37:22
Speaker 1: or on Instagram where I am at how now Noel Brown?
37:25
Speaker 1: How about you? Buddy? You can find me on Twitter
37:28
Speaker 1: at Ben Bullan hs W and you can find me
37:31
Speaker 1: on Instagram. I'd love to Uh, I'd love to see
37:34
Speaker 1: you there. I'm at Ben Bolan. Just hit me up
37:37
Speaker 1: with ideas for shows. Always a pleasure, uh, And thanks
37:41
Speaker 1: as always to our super producer Casey Pegram. Would you
37:47
Speaker 1: ride on a blimp, Casey? But you're ride in an airship? Yeah?
37:50
Speaker 1: Why not? Let's do it did we uh at some
37:52
Speaker 1: point make plans that all three of us were gonna
37:54
Speaker 1: try to get up in the good years. Yes, the
37:57
Speaker 1: promises were made a line because we're forged and I
38:01
Speaker 1: hope to make good on that one day. Huge thanks
38:03
Speaker 1: to Alex Williams who composed our theme. Christopher haciotis here
38:06
Speaker 1: in spirit, Jonathan chick Land the Quister, See real soon,
38:10
Speaker 1: you so and so airship you do Zeppelin? Yeah that's cool.
38:16
Speaker 1: That's that. That sounds way too cool, But thanks to
38:20
Speaker 1: Eve's Jeff Cote, and thanks of course uh to our
38:24
Speaker 1: favorite airman who may or may not have experience on
38:27
Speaker 1: a blimp, Gabe Lousier. He is uh the best rated
38:32
Speaker 1: by us and we cannot wait to have him on
38:35
Speaker 1: the show again or reil soon, so stay tuned for that.
38:38
Speaker 1: I think his first name is actually pronounced job, you know,
38:40
Speaker 1: like the like the biblical figure it's goob, or it's
38:44
Speaker 1: it's jabe, you know what I mean, like Jeff. Totally
38:48
Speaker 1: see you next time. Flix. For more podcasts for my
38:58
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app app podcasts,
39:00
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.