COWART-CHARLES

A  REMARKABLE  RESCUE

From the early 1900’s the U.S. military was fascinated with the potential of lighter-than-air aircraft and between the two world wars, the U.S. Navy built several huge, helium filled airships.  Despite years of experience these airships were risky to fly and often dangerous to land.  One of these rigid airships, the USS AKRON (ZRS-4), was christened in August 1931 and at 785 feet long was the biggest helium filled airship ever built.  Called the “Queen of the Skies,” AKRON carried a crew of 89 officers and men and was built as a flying aircraft carrier.  In early May 1932, AKRON left its base at Lakehurst, New Jersey, for an assignment in the Pacific.  After 77 hours of nonstop flying AKRON, with her exhausted crew, reached San Diego on the morning of May 11, 1931.  Fog covered the city but the huge dirigible bored its way through the morning mist while thousands watched its arrival.  Approaching the ground one of the Sparrowhawk biplanes was released from AKRON carrying an officer who would supervise the landing of the dirigible from the ground.

AKRON slowly descended until it reached clear skies at 1200 feet but the morning sun was expanding the helium making the ship buoyant and she had used about 40 tons of fuel during her voyage across the continent making her light and almost uncontrollable.  AKRON’s propellers were turned skyward to push the airship closer to the ground where a large contingent of sailors was waiting.  AKRON had 400-foot docking ropes that were dropped so men could grab them and attach the line to fixed ground lines.  A separate mooring cable dropped from the nose to be attached to a mooring mast.  Since AKRON was merely expected to pass through the area there was no regular mooring mast or experienced ground handlers in San Diego. 

So, the men on the ground, about 200 in number, were primarily young and inexperienced sailors from the nearby Naval Training Center.  As AKRON descended toward the landing field it was caught in a gust of rising air and floated away.  Twice more it drifted downward, and finally on the fourth attempt it drew close enough for the ground crew to grab the spider lines and hold it down.  A cable from the airship’s nose was attached to a mooring mast and slowly AKRON was winched in.  Then a gust of air lifted the tail steeply and the airship was tilted nearly vertical, a very dangerous position.  Water was spilled from its ballast tanks and AKRON began to rise.  To avert a catastrophic nose-stand by the errant airship, the mooring cable was cut and AKRON began to rise.  Many of the sailors released their grip on the mooring lines as they had been instructed to do but others were slow to do so and found themselves being lifted off the ground.  Many let go from a low height and one man dropped from about 15 feet and suffered a broken arm in the process.  But three men continued holding their lines, until losing their grips at about 200 feet, two of the men fell to their death. 

The third man who held a line was Apprentice Seaman Charles M. “Bud” Cowart who desperately grasped his line and finally made himself fast to it while being carried aloft.  A radio message from AKRON reported, “Will try to land man on tail rope.”  Several times AKRON’s captain tried to bring his ship back to the field where firemen on the ground lifted nets to catch him but air turbulence was too great and soon AKRON headed out to sea and calmer air while the crew worked out a means of rescuing Cowart.  Two thousand feet above the ocean Cowart looked up at the airship two-hundred feet above him and was heard to yell, “When the hell are you going to land me?”  Cowart was an unusually tough and strong young man, a welterweight boxer who was training for the All-Navy championship.  More importantly, he managed to keep from panicking and was successful in tying himself to the dangling lines.  After more than an hour Cowart was finally reeled in by a winch and successfully brought aboard where one of his first comments was reportedly, “Gimme something to eat.”  When questioned he also said, “I just hung on … I saw the other fellows fall and it didn’t make me feel any too good, but there was nothing I could do about it — ’ceptin to hang on tighter.”

AKRON landed successfully later that evening and Seaman Cowart was greeted as a hero.  A Naval Court of Inquiry later gave cause of the accident as “peculiar atmospheric conditions” and the inexperience of the landing crew.  Cowart reportedly grew up in Oklahoma and died during the early 1980’s.  Details of his Navy career following the AKRON incident have not been recorded.

Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)