All Roads Lead Home

                                          

The next break in figuring out what happened came after I had found the L8 Judge Advocate Generals inquest documents at the National Archives in Washington DC. The boxes were cataloged as part of the collection on Pennsylvania Ave but they couldn’t locate them and insisted for the longest time that, by the nature of the contents, the boxes should have moved to the NARA 2 location in College Park, Maryland. College Park did not have them either but kept pointing back to the DC NARA location.

I spent many days and weekends searching catalogs and talking to the research assistants looking for some way of finding the boxes. I became a regular and was probably engaging enough, or maybe “enraging” is the right word, that the staff huddled to hear about the L8 mystery.

Finally an older gentleman remembered a couple of boxes no one knew anything about sitting in a remote corner. The clouds parted and I had the L-8 inquest records!

From that I had the blueprints for the Enterprise ( sorry Star Trek fans that's the L-5 ), used during the inquest as well as photos and transcripts of the testimony of events. weather maps, radio log transcripts, evidence of what happened.

Not hearsay. Not vague assumptions. Sequence of events and times.

Facts!
Names!
Places!

Names became the crib for the next breakthrough.
I’d gotten the public records for Cody and Adams from the Department of Defense. Another challenge involved getting the people handling the request to find records for the two men. Each time I sent a request with the birth place and date of death and explained the story of how these two men disappeared and were declared dead, I received a polite note saying these two men did not exist.

It was only after I tipped the scales and my persistence was more annoying than looking that I got word that they had found the records for Dewitt Cody. Cody's record came in the form of a two sheet letter listing his date of birth and a synopsis of his military record. Adam’s records were still MIA but after I gave them the service record number for Cody they were able to find Adams since the formers folder mentioned the latter’s. His record came after a long time in a thick envelope.

It contained paper treasure!

Armed with his information I re-requested Cody's record and this time was pleasantly surprised to get the whole set of contents of his public records.
Interesting tidbits came flowing out. Where they were born. Where they served.
Many interesting things about the two men. There careers and and an insight into who they were.
Adams was present at a number of air disasters. He was part of the ground crew present at the crash of the Hindenburg. He was at Pearl harbor on Dec 7th 1941. He was born in Pennsylvania, but married a woman from Boonton, NJ. I’d lived in Boonton for years and now live nearby. So the road for the story brings me close to home and includes a turning point in the story.

I tried to absorb as much of their lives as possible since I couldn’t tell what was important or not.
I ran off looking for more clues, a whirlwind of research, hunting for clues and evidence of what really happened to the crew of the L-8.

One important thing I did was start ordering the DOD records for all of the key people in the testimony.
Imagine my surprise when I find that one by one, everyone involved has come from New Jersey. Some months before but most within a few weeks or days.

It is at this point I realize that there’s more to the story than “they fell out” and it takes me home - quite literally, but more on that later - to New Jersey and Lakehurst..and another accident!

The incident of the L8 is the third and final act in a three act play. It lead me to understand a part of WW2 I never really knew existed.

The story behind the story is about brilliant people and heroes. It's about the tools used to win the war and how those tools were developed and changed the world. It's about the people from all over the planet who made that happen. And accidents happened - the L8 wasn’t the first and it wouldn’t be the last - and still the people who developed the technology to help win the war kept their hearts and minds on what mattered, in silence, thinking of the greater good.

The story isn’t really about an accident it’s about those noble and brilliant people all over the planet who saw or suffered the evil in the world and did something about without regard for gain, accolades, or stopping when death was staring them in the face. It showed me the good and noble in a world gone mad.Somewhere in there, there's a story that is relevant in these troubling times and what's really important.

I believe that you can judge a persons real character when it's dark, cold, wet, alone, under tension. Peoples true spirit  will come out under those conditions and real character will show. 

The story also involves "smoke and mirrors" that comes from the need to keep things secret. There are  the things you can see and the things that are really going on. Everything has a public and secret side. Things are not necessarily what they seem taken at face value.

I’ll leave you with a something to look into before the next post. OSRD - Office of Scientific Research and Development.

Stay tuned and if you came to this blog through a web search engine, be sure to check out www.ghostblimp.com for documents and photos related to the L-8!

                                                            Otto

ps: I’d like to wish everyone a...

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Wesołych Świąt i Szczęśliwego Nowego Roku
Frohe Weihnachten und ein glückliches Neues Jahr
Joyeux Noël et une Bonne Année
메리 크리스마스와 새해 복 많이
Веселого Рождества и Счастливого Нового Года
Prettige Kerstdagen en een Gelukkig Nieuwjaar
Feliz Nadal e un Feliz ano
クリスマスと新年のお喜びを申し上げます。
Buon Natale e un Felice Anno Nuovo
לעבעדיק ניטל און אַ מזל ניו יאָר
Feliz Navidad y un Feliz Año Nuevo
Срећан Божић и Срећна Нова Година
圣诞之际，祝你心中有首快乐的圣诞和新年快乐
  عيد ميلاد سعيد وسنة جديدة سعيدة

Eureka!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Did Lt Cody Survive?

Ernest Dewitt Cody and Charles Adams vanished without a trace on August 16, 1942.

It's a fundamental "fact" of the mystery surrounding the L8.Two men enter and viola, they disappear without a trace.

That is unless you read their DOD files and then you will have to reconsider whether that really was the case.

Ernest Dewitt Cody's wife, Helen, wrote the Bureau of Naval Personnel on August 22, 1947 to report that her mother had seen Lt. Cody, alive, but dazed and confused.

Gentlemen:

I am the widow ( now remarried ) of the above Naval Officer who was reported missing by your department on 17 August 1942, and officially reported deceased on 17 August 1943.

Lt. Cody was on a routine patrol flight in a lighter-than-air craft off the coast of San Francisco at the time he disappeared. The ship was based at Moffett Field, California, and crashed in Daly City, California, on 16 August 1942 with everything in flying order and intact, but no one aboard. As your department knows, no trace was found of Lt. Cody nor his co-pilot.

I wish to report that my mother says she saw Lt. Cody in Phoenix, Arizona, this past Spring, and that his eyes looked peculiar, as though he were suffering from shock, or a mental illness. To me it is possible that he might be alive, and be suffering from amnesia, or that a head injury may have caused loss of memory.

My mother did nothing to stop him due to the fact that I am remarried and have a child by this marriage, and she didn't want to "stir up" old memories. At the time I was living in New York City, but have since moved to Phoenix. That is her reason for telling me at this time and not at an earlier date. She was afraid I might see him and that it would be too great a shock. (She, herself, suffered a bad case of shock and was ill for a week afterward).

Merely to emphasize my belief in my mother -- she knew Lt. Cody well, loved him, and would not make a mistake any more than I, should I see him. Also, I have never hoped for his return because the Captain of the station told me not to -- that it would be better for me to face facts and start a new life. For that reason, I am asking your help in checking this clue, not for any whim of mine, but because I would like to see Lt. Cody reunited with his family if he is living.

Will you please check this matter?

Thank you very much.

              Very truly yours,

                 Helen H. C. Delamater

If you have read or seen accounts of the L8 mystery, by now you might have a favorite theory about what went on surrounding the disappearance of the men aboard the gondola that morning, and theory in hand, might wonder if this fits the mold.

Did one fall out into the water, the other exiting safely at some other time?

Did both fall and was it possible that a person could survive a fall from the height of between 600 and 900 feet?

Does this mean that the men made land and this was why no bodies were found?

I had considered the idea that either one caused the other to fall to his death, intentionally or accidentally, and then walked off the L-8 when it first rolled into the beach near the Grand Highway, it's first contact with solid earth.

There were multiple witnesses that make this impossible. In fact, two witnesses were seen by another passerby who reported that the L-8 pilots were safe but had fallen into the water. It turns out that a passing librarian saw two men struggling with the deflating L-8 in the ocean surf. She assumed that the two men were the Navy officers trying to wrangle the L-8. She was the mysterious caller who said that the L-8 had crashed but the pilots were safe. A short time later a second call reported that the pilots were not present at the crash scene.

Had one or more people been aboard the L-8 at landfall these two men would have seen them.

So we can only conclude that the two men "left" before rolling over the beach and into the golf course where it would temporally sit.

So we come to the next question to consider. Can someone falling from a height of 600 to 900 feet survive the fall?

One established fact is that both parachutes were still aboard the L-8.

I found documents from that period that were used for training soldiers to jump. The minimum height to land was determined by the amount of time it took to open the parachute fully and decelerate to a rate where the person would survive. The minimum was roughly 575 feet. German soldiers were told that the minimum was about 100 feet lower.

My first thought was about human psychology. People will grasp at straws in the odd hope they'll survive even if the numbers don't add up. People will jump from a high building to get away from a fire. So I can't imagine if the blimp were going down or in distress that these two men -if they had time to think - would decide to jump without parachutes even if they were obviously too low. They were most likely high enough. So why not use the parachutes.

The obvious solution is that they didn't have time or they didn't chose to leave of their own accord.

They left too quickly or were unconscious to step into a parachute no matter how futile if they were that low.

That made me start wondering what height a person could fall from and survive. I found a fantastic paper on just that subject that described real instances of people who fell from planes, had parachutes that didn't open and other falls from heights that I would have assumed meant an automatic death sentence.

To my surprise people have fallen from planes flying at tens of thousands of feet and lived!

I'm not being flip when I say it's not the fall but the sudden stop that kills you!

It's the rate of deceleration that determines whether a person lives or dies.

It all comes down to physics and fate but it is possible that someone could fall from a blimp into the water and live. You'll recall that the two parachutes were still on board the L-8 when it was recovered. So if they fell it was sans parachute they could have survived.

I found a paper on incidents involving survivors of falls from great heights and one thing that they had in common was brain damage similar to what Cody's mother-in-law reported as his state of mind. Survivors suffered from similar symptoms.

This new piece of evidence gives us new avenues of speculation on what happened and the fate of the pilots.

This started out as such a simple mystery but I keep finding the trail leads in the most interesting directions.

                                                   Otto

L-8 blueprints - actually the Enterprise...

I realized I hadn't posted the L-8 blueprints I found at the national Archives.
With the 70th anniversary coming up I thought it a nice memento. I had a digital copy made by the NARA staff. The original is too big to unfold and showing its age.

Be aware that the file is big.

https://14023b33-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/ottolandproject/Home/21174_20.JPG?attachauth=ANoY7crznqGa2Onkh7yGDrNuI5MfExsDzT1xS_kO0FIAx7ueB8bX0Ha-LbSInD1-3Ak6PTRNh8U5QKEBSYMrGHH0SMWg-K8Hjt1B4killZL6p0NkV1LS3GZ6sJNngsm0GE1ik-hMye2CWCsO41lOEr4cXxG6GO_uUU2iO1-GYLvOYt2ryGH5iOa7g0mj_dWW-59RBKTxZul8dwRrhszsutp94etvd6fnz-aAx-bW6g1k_QGLuJzbQWw%3D&attredirects=0


See NARA site for rules surrounding proper citation. Otherwise gratis.


As far as the story goes, I'm working on it and it never fails to add twists and turns.
There are two solutions possible, one simple - one man fell out of the bouncing balloon when the door was left unsecured when the mechanic, Riley Hill, was ordered off. His testimony says he did not secure the door. A simple mistake.
 The second man fell when, suddenly one person lighter, the balloon jutted at and odd angle and springing up tossed the second man out of the open door.

But let me just say that Occam's Razor aside, the simple surface story often covers deeper secrets.
The L-8 is one of those stories. Nothing is quite what it seems.


I was hoping to hear from the many lurkers out there. Any responses would be greatly appreciated.

One update. I just was looking at the blueprints and saw that they used the Enterprise blueprints for the inquest. A copy of this sits on the wall of my writing desk and I can't tell you how many times I've sat and stared at them and never noticed.

The lightened blimp without the weight of the crew had a valve that automatically opened at 2500 feet to prevent a fatal failure of the balloonets. This is what caused the air bag to defalte and finally fall into Daly City.


               Otto 

Parachutes

Two men leave a blimp gondola hundreds of feet in the air. There are two parachutes on board.

Why are they still there on board the L-8 after the wreck is investigated? Why not use them if you find it necessary to leave the gondola?

 

Blimps were used for a number of scientific and military uses before and during the war. They made excellent platforms for working since they could stay up for long periods and hard room for small groups of workers. Blimps During the war, blimps were used for patrolling and heavy lifting. The K-series blimps, K-1 through 4 offered more room and lift than the L-series.

They were platforms used in the years leading up to the year, used by the military and organizations like the NDRC (National Defense research Committee), as a safe and reliable workspace.

But there were accidents even though precautions were taken. An inflatable raft and parachutes were provided on- board. Life-preserver vests, colloquially known as 'Mae West’s', named for the actress with a similar physical attribute that was produced by wearing the vest.

 

There are a few logic problems I think need to be reviewed if we're to come to a real conclusion to the mystery. Some of these involve the parachutes that were found untouched, on board the L-8 gondola after crews were sent to the crash site.

Parachute jumps from blimps were part of the standard training that crews went through. Should the crew need to leave the gondola in an emergency in the air, they would have been able to do so if the blimp was above 600 feet. Jumping at a lower height would not necessarily give the parachute enough time to deploy and have the envelope fill with air, slowing the jumpers descendent enough to survive the fall. German paratroopers were trained to jump at even lower altitudes – though I no statistics as to how the survival rates of the two groups compared!

My problem starts with the fact the parachutes are left untouched inside the ship.

If the crew were forced to leave the gondola lower than the minimum height that would assure a successful parachute jump, I think that human psychology would kick in and the crew would have donned the parachutes, even if for nothing other than comfort.

If the emergency was not going to cause an immediate crash of the blimp, the crew was trained to free balloon inside the gondola, dropping weight or releasing helium to control descent. They were a special breed of men who didn’t panic even under the most extreme circumstances. Quick, sure, independent thinkers, they were used to handling problems on their own. Each had gone through years of schooling. In the case of the co-pilot, Charles Adams, he had logged a huge amount of time aboard airships over the years. Both men were comfortable in stress-filled, life threatening situations. Adams was present at the attack on Pearl Harbor firing a deck gun at Japanese Zero fighter planes. He was also at the crash of the Hindenburg as part of the ground crew seen running towards the burning wreckage even before it completely settled on the air field.

With that type of hands on, combat proven experience, I find it hard to believe they died as a result of a panicky decision. Having read about their lives and the service records of the blimp pilots, it’s just not a likely scenario.

If the emergency required a man to go outside of the gondola, say for example, something became entangled in an engine mount or cowl that could become a bigger problem. While there were no harnesses, it would even be possible that they might put on the parachutes as a safety precaution. It may have been over-confidence on their part that they could handle the situation, working without a net. But these two men were heading home, nearing Treasure Island and help. Surely the radio calls would bring help.

It would also seem unlikely both men would leave the gondola to fix a problem outside of the gondola, and one falling accidently, taking the other to their death.

But let us consider physics and what may have happened. If one were outside, the other in with an open door, the sudden loss of weight would cause a bounce that may have dislodged the second man through the open door. A reasonable point I think.

But I would still be left with wondering what circumstances would not mean an immediate jump using the parachutes while they attempted to fix the problem.

I’m left with two possibilities. First, that they either were in a situation that left them unable to put on the parachutes and while doing so, one fell, causing the other to dislodge.  The other possibility is that they jumped unable to help themselves, the autonomic response similar to people who jump from a burning building.

Curiouser and curiouser.

                         Otto

L-8: 70 Years of mystery

Happy New Year!

2012 is the 70th anniversary of the disappearance of Cody and Adams aboard the L8.  There is more to the story than just the L8 incident. There's a story underneath the story involving the war effort.

There are more people who died making sure we won the war and their story has never been told.

Stay tuned.

Hope all of you have a Happy New Year!

                            Otto

Why did the L-8 deflate?

There are some questions that became apparent while I started researching the mystery of the L8 that became significant later on.

The first was why the blimp was deflating as in drifted towards the beach off the Great Highway.
Obviously, the loss of helium in the balloonets, but what caused the loss?

The possibilities include things like bullet holes, tears and punctures of the bag. This would be a reasonable first guess. Given the lack of evidence in the common understanding of the story details, it's also a likely one.

When I first started hunting for details, this was my working theory.  After I found the L-8 inquest folder and digested the testimony, the premise quickly faded away. I had thought that the L-8, which should have had three people on-board, might have been over-weight due an already existing person being inside. In flight, the intruder surprised the crew and shot them, in the process puncturing the balloon. This theory actually seemed good when I read that in the weeks prior to the incident, a man was spotted breaking into hangers, leading to a running gun battle through the streets. Spies had a definite interest in  what was happening at Moffett Field and Treasure Island, and so I thought a spy might have attempted to see what secrets could be gained by getting on the L-8 flight. That is it seemed possible until I visited the L-8 in Pensacola. There is no hiding space that would make this a practical consideration.

The L-8 was deflating when it came rolling across the beach, dropping onto the gold course south of San Francisco. This means whatever happened occurred at sea. This lead to another popular theory that the L-8, while investigating the oil-slick that may have been a possible submarine contact, and that the L-8 crew were attacked and over come by the crew of the enemy submarine. Also a valid working theory, until we read the testimony. The crews of the Albert Gallatin and Daisy Grey were watching the whole time as the L-8 circled the spot, up until it turned about-face and started to head back to Treasure Island, under control and normal operating condition. The only notable facts about this are that they would normally have continued onto the Farralone Islands during a normal trip. The second fact is that they dropped ballast when they turned back. They never came close to the surface of the ocean according to any of the witnesses -dispelling another theory that the crew may have been too close to the water and were sweep away by a wave. The metal used in the gondola would have showed etching if it came in contact with seawater and the repair crews reported there was no sign of seawater in or on the gondola.

The L-8 would pop up and return to air when one of he two 350 pound bombs attached tothe gondola was knocked off at the golf course. Still venting gas, it would come to it's final resting place in Daly City.

The answer of why helium was lost in the first place comes from the blueprints of the L-8 I found with the inquest testimony.

The L-8 and other blimps, were equipped with an automatic valve that opened when the blimp went to high and, since the bag would expand with the lower outside pressures the higher it went up, could potentially burst the balloon unless gas was vented. The L-8 was set to automatically vent at 2500 feet. This prevented a catastrophic failure of the balloon. The crews would be able to drift down slowly if the controls or crew  were disabled.

You can see the vent in the picture of the L-8 as it floated above Daly City just before it's final crash.

So why did the balloon go higher than 2500 feet? The L-8 suddenly lost it's two crewman, and lightened by the weight of two men, suddenly popped higher into the sky. Rising above the 2500 feet limit, the valve opened as designed and started to cause the decent of the, now crew-less, L-8! The winds pushed the L-8 towards the beach and the more public part of the story.

Thanks for reading the blog, L-8 fans! More to come in the future. Stay tuned!

                    Otto