Project Vigilant
6 JULY 1960
PROJECT VIGILANT
On 16 May 1960, in response to the Soviet shoot-down of Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 spyplane, Premier Nikita Khrushchev pounded his shoe on a United Nations lectern vowing, “We will bury you!” The USSR was now the enemy, and long-range bombers regularly sortied on mock atomic raids. Early airborne warning (AEW) was the buzzword of the day in the Air Force and Navy. And for this purpose, our Navy launched “Project Vigilant”–a planned fleet of the largest non-rigid airships to date.
Blimps of this day could loiter ever watchful for days off our coast. And the planned N-class was massive at 403 feet in length with envelopes that held four separate ballonets of 383,000 cubic-foot capacity each. Powered by two Wright R-1820-88 Cyclone engines with variable pitch propellers, their top speed was 82 knots. A crew of up to 25 could cruise for 69 hours without refueling. A 40-foot early warning radar dish rotated inside the envelope. Four such blimps were built by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company and entered service with the Navy in 1959-60 in the role of “all-weather AEW.”
ZPG-3W-1 (N-class lead airship) departed this day from NAS Lakehurst, NJ, on a mission to locate a missing yacht. But upon crossing the coastline near Barnegat Bay around 1430, observers noted something wrong. The envelope appeared to partially deflate, and for several minutes the blimp hung awkwardly in the air, sagging amidships. A crewman attempting to correct a radar feed problem had accidentally opened the circuit breakers controlling the blimp’s gas pressure. LT Joseph J. Saniuk, the pilot, unaware of the repair effort, had placed the controls on autopilot. The combination of settings was causing Helium to automatically vent. Saniuk, who had trained on fixed-wing planes, instinctively pulled the nose up and gunned the engines when he sensed a downward pitch. Paradoxically, this completely buckled the envelope and sent ZPG-3W-1 spiraling into the sea. The control car sank on impact, eighteen of the 21 crewmen aboard never regained the surface.
A large gash was discovered in the envelope of ZPG-3W-1’s wreckage prompting the Navy to sue Goodyear for $8 million on behalf of the families of 11 of the lost crewmen. But the Navy’s claim of a defective seam was dismissed after expert analysis revealed the tear had occurred when the blimp struck the water’s surface. The remaining three N-class airships were grounded on 30 November 1960. In fact, this loss effectively sacked the Navy’s entire lighter-than-air program, which had been largely eclipsed in the early 1960s by advances in radar and fixed-wing aircraft technology.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 11 JUL 24
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
Althoff, W.F. Sky Ships: A History of the Airship in the United States Navy. Nampa, ID: Pacifica Press, 1991, Appendix E.
Shock, James R. U.S. Navy Airships 1915-1962: A History by Individual Airship. Edgewater, FL: Atlantis Pub., 2001, pp. 193-194.
Site visit. Naval Air Engineering Center, Lakehurst, New Jersey, 2 February 2012.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: LT Saniuk was lost in this crash, and his remains have never been recovered. Saniuk Road aboard the former NAS Lakehurst (now Naval Air Engineering Center) remembers the pilot of ZPG-3W-1.
The Navy’s last lighter-than-air flight occurred on 31 August 1962. Two N-class airship control cars have been preserved today at the Naval aviation museum in Pensacola.
Blimps differ from rigid airships in that they have no internal supporting skeleton. As a size comparison each of the modern Goodyear Blimps is 192 feet long. The name “blimp” is of somewhat curious origin. It may have originated as a contraction of the Navy’s nomenclature for B-class non-rigid (limp) airships. It has also been suggested “blimp” is an onomatopoeic word describing the sound made by a finger tapping the inflated envelopes. Rigid framed airships could be built to larger dimensions. The Hindenburg, for example, was 804 feet in length.
Khrushchev’s diatribe at the United Nations General Assembly may well have been misinterpreted by westerners. “We will bury you” is a Russian saying meaning simply, “we will outlive you,” not necessarily a threat of annihilation. It remains unclear today which meaning Khrushchev intended.
