MYSTERIOUS  CRASH  OF  BLIMP  L-8

During the early days of World War II there was fear that Japan might invade the West Coast and in February 1942 a Japanese submarine fired shots on an oil refinery near Santa Barbara, California.  In response the Navy increased its activities, and one measure was the use of lighter-than-air blimps to conduct surveillance patrols off the coast in search of submarines. 

At 6:03am on August 16, 1942, blimp L-8 of Blimp Squadron Thirty-Two departed  the San Francisco area to patrol offshore near the Farallon Islands.  Aboard L-8 was a crew of two, LT Ernest Dewitt Cody the pilot and ENS Charles Ellis Adams the copilot.  A third crewmember had purposely been removed from the flight as heavy moisture was weighing the blimp down, making it unsafe for him to remain on-board.  The first leg proceeded without incident.  At 7:38am, LT Cody radioed that he was three miles east of the Farallon Islands.  Four minutes later he radioed, “Am investigating suspicious oil slick—stand by.”  This was the last time the crew was heard from.  Fishermen later reported they had witnessed L-8 as it flew near the Farallon Islands, saw it drop two float-lights, watched as it circled at an altitude of 200-300 feet, saw two men in the gondola, and observed it as it searched until about 9:00am when it left the area and headed toward shore in the direction of San Francisco.

When L-8 failed to make normal hourly radio reports, all attempts to contact L-8 were unanswered.  Three hours passed with no word from the crew.  Finally a message was received about 11:15am that the blimp had drifted eight miles off course and had come ashore just south of San Francisco where a swimmer witnessed L-8 as its wheel dragged along sand at the water’s edge and then strike a sand knoll from which it bounced up in the air and then moved further inland where it hit heavily on the side of a canyon, knocking off what turned out to be a depth charge.  Now lighter, L-8 rose and drifted slowly inland where hundreds of people watch the blimp which they described as collapsing in the middle.  They watched as L-8 again lost altitude and finally settled down on top of a house in Daly City. 

Miraculously, no one was injured when the blimp came to rest and almost immediately neighbors and city officials were on the scene.  Surprisingly, when they searched the gondola, there was no sign of the two pilots.  One door was found locked and the second was closed but unlocked and the safety bar, normally used to block the doorway, was  no longer in place and a microphone hooked to an outside loudspeaker dangled from the gondola.  Subsequent examination revealed the radio was in working order, the engines were normal except for damage caused when L-8 struck the sand dune and canyon, there was another 6-hours of fuel, all equipment was in place including a briefcase containing classified material, LT Cody’s cap rested on the instrument panel, and nothing was missing.  It was as if LT Cody and ENS Adams had opened the door and simply stepped out into thin air.

A later extensive  investigation by the Navy failed to reveal any information concerning the cause of the accident and it remains unexplained why the two pilots stopped using their radio which was in working order and what caused them to leave the airship in mid-flight.  No trace of the two pilots was ever found.  To this day the cause of the accident remains a mystery.  The control car was later used on another blimp and following the war the gondola was donated to the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, Florida, where it was restored and is now on display.

Historical records reveal LT Cody was a 1938 graduate of the Naval Academy, initially served at sea before completing lighter-than-air flight training at Naval Air Station, Lakehurst, in December 1941, and in April 1942 piloted L-8 as it delivered “important equipment” to the carrier USS Hornet off the coast of California immediately before the Doolittle Raid on Japan.  According to records he had accumulated 756 hours of lighter-than-air flight time.  In his memory  a cenotaph memorial marker has been placed in Arlington National Cemetery.  He was survived by his wife whom he married in May 1940.  She later remarried.

                        L-8 as it descends over Daly City

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