The Cordova daily times., 1922-12-08
U. 5. AIRSHIPS TO USE HELIUM
 INFUTURE

WASHINGTON, Dec. 8. Score, l tary of War Weeks is planning to
 make balloons safe for ballooners. Although the Army Air Service has
 been working for many months upon
 the problem of producing helium gas l in large quantities, the destruction
 recently of the Army dirigible C-2 ] at San Antonio has aroused the War
 Department to increased efforts in this direction, and it is hoped that within less than year the Army will have a sufficient quantity of the non-inflammable gas for all it's needs.
 At the present time the Army has about 1,O0O,000 cubic feet of helium.
 This amount is considerably less than sufficient to fly an airship of the dimensions of the giant dirig- ible Roma, which burned at Norfolk
 more than a year ago with terrible loss of life. The report of the board of officers which investigated the
 Roma catastrophe declared the loss of life would have been much less | if the Roma's great envelope had | been filled with helium instead of the highly inflammable hydrogen,
 but since the Army did not have the helium the accident could not have been avoided.
 No Loss of Life
 Fortunately there was no loss of l. life when the C-2 burned at San Antonio. And since the envelope of the C-2 like those of most of the other dirigibles now in existence is unsuited for the use of helium, it is perhaps just as well that she burned
 under those circumstances before there had been another such catas- trophe as that of the Roma to the
 record of the Air Service.
 The joint Army and Navy helium
 plant at Fort Worth, Texas, is now in operation. It is from this plant that both the Army and Navy eX- pect to obtain their future supplies of non-inflammable gas. It is estl- mated that by the end of next year the plane will have produced from 12, 900 ,0o0 to 14,0o0,o00 cubic feet or helium, which is expected to pc sufficient for the immediate needs ], of the two branches of the service.
 Not only does helium require
 different material in the dirigible envelope, but it also requires big ger envelope proportionately than that necessary for airships floated by hydrogen. The proportion be- tween the lifting power of helium and that of hydrogen is about as 92 to 100, according to the Air Ser vice, experts. This means that the envelope of the Roma or the C-2 would have had to be enlarged ii the ships were to have had the same
 buoyancy when helium gas was used. buliublS IiCi'eht N~8S The four new dirigibles now being built for the Army Air Service all are to be equipped with envelopes suitable for using helium. Thls means that a different sort of mate rial must used in the construction of the bag. It has been estimated
 rial must be used in the construction the C-2, equipped with the same sort of envelope, would have permitted the escape of approximately 5000 cubic feet of he,lium gas day, while with the specially adapted bags the loss is reduced to almost nothing.
 Of these four airships three are
 small, being of about the same al
 mensions as the C-2. The fourtn' however, will be nearly four times as large, and will be only slightly small
 CT than the Roma, believed to De
 the largest dirigible of her type ever
 constructed.
 While there is difference or opinion among Air Service experts
 as to the practical military value
 of the dirigable, the department has no intention of abandoning this type of aircraft. If the ill-fated Roma had continued in service it had been in
 tended to try the experiment of using her as an "airplane carrier" from which airplanes might be launched during flight of the air ship. This line of experiment prob ably will be continued in the future.