Catagraph.us

I discovered this video thanks to a recent MetaFilter thread regarding people who have fallen from planes and miraculously survived. One such survivor was Juliane Koepcke. In 1971, Koepcke fell two miles from the Lockheed Electra carrying her and her mother to Pucallpa, Peru.

This video is a beautiful confluence of writing, visuals, and music.

I’ve been on a bit of an airship kick lately. Or perhaps, an early 1930s aeronautical sketching streak. There’s something about that time which stokes my imagination and these recent efforts serve, more or less, as a self-tutorial in the aesthetics of the period.

Richard K. Smith’s The Airships Akron and Macon arrived on Monday. The book is a fascinating read and an incredible treat for the eyes. Smith must have gone to some astounding lengths to collect and distill the information he provides in his book — I’m continually astonished at his insights into the design of the airships as well as the political issues which surrounded their construction and employment.

More on that in future posts, perhaps. I’ll close this with a poor copy of one of the most beautiful, poignant photographs contained in Smith’s book: the USS Akron (ZRS-4) emerging from a bank of clouds. As you look at it, just imagine the smell of rain in the air, and the music of her engines against the wind in the distance.

After landing at Teller, Alaska on May 14, 1926, the airship Norge was deflated and disassembled for shipping back to Europe. Here, the crewmen regard papers related to the operation. (In retrospect, this might be more realistic if the gentleman in the foreground were holding a pipe or crowbar rather than paper.)

Due diligence for this kind of illustration demands I study a lot of old outerwear and photographs of the period (even if it doesn’t yet show in the resulting sketches). I recently came across an excellent site for that purpose entitled Archival Clothing, maintained and composed by Leslie Larson. Highly recommended for those with more than a passing interest in vintage clothing styles.

A great deal of my time in recent days has focused on the research of airships of the late 1920s and early 1930s. One such airship — the Norge — is famous for being the transportation of the first verified expedition to reach the North Pole (on May 12, 1926 — 83 years ago). The expedition was composed of Umberto Nobile (the designer of Norge), Roald Amundsen (expedition leader), and Lincoln Ellsworth (polar explorer and source of funding), among 13 others.

In this illustration, we see an unidentified explorer leaning from the control car on the ship’s arrival at Teller, Alaska on May 14, 1926, ready to assist with landing operations.

Cats. You gotta watch them all the time. Particularly when rebuilding an engine around anything mechanical.

A Consolidated P2Y-1 seaplane and ZRS-5 overfly ruins at a location code-named “Site 10″ by the Navy.

As with many of these documents, the exact date of recording is redacted. However, at least six P2Y-1s were in service with the VP-10F squadron at NAS Coco Solo by 1 April 1933.

An F9C pilot — apparently having just returned from patrol — signals the flight operations officer aboard ZRS-5.

ZRS-5 takes on provisions and fuel from an unidentified Lapwing-class destroyer as an F9C flies past.

Provisioning operations of this type were inherently dangerous due to the tendency of large airships to ‘weathervane’ with the wind. This could be offset to some degree by deploying tethered, sinkable sea anchors around the periphery of the ship prior to beginning resupply operations or anchoring the ship’s nose to a masted barge.

An F9C on routine patrol falls away from ZRS-5 somewhere over the Indian Ocean.

(One might reasonably ask what ZRS-5 was doing over the Indian Ocean, of course. Answers are forthcoming.)