The Clio messenger. (Clio, Mich.) 1907-current, 1922-03-02
TH|RTY-FOUR DIE
IN BURNING bL|MP
Largest Semi-Rigid Airship Meets
Disaster in Flight Over
Langley Field.
WIRES FIRED HYDROGEN GAS
Those Not Immediately Killed by the
Fall Burned to Death, Since
Fierce Heat Forbade Attempts
at Rescue-List Of Victims.

A'ViAOih, a., GU. hhC
est disaster that ever afflicted Ameri-
can military aeronautics, thirty-four
men died this afternoon when the
army dirigible Roma plunged a thou
sand feet and crashed to earth in
flames near the Hampton Roads army
base
Only eleven of the forty-five men
aloft were saved, and some of them
were terribly hurt.
1t took less than a minute for the
burning airshlp TO reach the ground
after the explosion.
Those who jumped were forced TO
take this slim chance of escaping GER
tain death In the flames, which had
quickly enveloped the entire craft. Ii
Is believed those who remained in the
ship were instantly killed by the eY-
plosiOn or trapped by the flames and
unable to seek possible safety in flight.
Reports from Portsmouth, which is
near the naval base, said the Roma,
after a Santing plunge of hundreds
OF feet, struck one of the barracks
buildings at the base and then ex-
ploded with ripping crash. A sheet
of fame leaped from the rent In the
gas bag and the passenger compart-
ments slung underneath dropped TWEEN
~ feet 10 the ground below.
The breaking of the rudder with its
vertical controls, affixed in box kite
fashion to the stern. was the original
cause of the disaster. Its more hOr-
rible phase came just as the stricken
craft plummeted into the earth. The
metal clad nose snapped high tension
electric wires. With a flash and a roar
that carried dread warning TO the
imprisoned crew, the dirigible was
fired from stem TO stern.
Army officers who survived the dis
aster declared It was caused by the
collapse of the elevating rudder. The
Roma was sailing along smoothly
about 800 feet in the air. they said.
when the elevating rudder suddenly
buckled. throwing the stern of the
craft upward.
Pilots Efforts Futile.
The buckling of the rudder crippled
the steering apparatus and started the
Roma on its plunge toward the ground.
The downward progress of the airship
was checked by shutting off the en-
gines, but the pilots were powerless 10
right the craft and 1t plunged to the
ground, crashing through line of
high tension electric wires and landing
upon a pile of steel rails and wheels.
The survivors emphatically denied
statements of civilians who saw the
accident from the ground that fire
broke out on the Roma before 1t struck
the ground The army officers who
escaped also said they believed the fire
and explosions which followed the
crash were caused by the heat of the
arship's motors, rather than by con-
tact with the electric wires.
Striking these, the big dirigible cap
sized its great 4l0-foot hydrogen bag
smothering the passenger and engine
compartments as It crashed TO earth,
10 become Immediately a raging fur
mace Of blazing hydrogen gas in which
all who had not jumped TO earth met
a terrible death. All Of the eleven sur
vivors escaped by jumping as the ship
struck, only one of the victims meet
Ing death in this way.
Leap to Beat Fiery Death.
Only those whose fortunate position
in the car enabled them TO take the
hazard of leap before the flames ran
with lightning speed through the gas
bag, "A city block long, had the faintest
chance for their lives. The thirty-three
who couldn't jump died.
The crushed, misshapen mass that
thudded down on the field was n flu
neral pyre of such intense heat that
the agonies of those who were not
killed in the crash must have been
mercifully brief. The bodies were
burned beyond recognition and the
slow work of listing the victims was
carried out partly by process of elm
ination and partly through noncombus-
tIble objects that the aviators were
believed to have carried I'm their
pockets.
The list. when 1t was completed,
showed that two majors, four captains
and seven lleutenants were lost I'm
those few minutes of swift catastrophe
that wiped out much OF the flower OF
American army flying.
Furnace Heat Bars Rescue.
For many minutes the pillars OF
flame that went torching skyward de-
fled the bravest of rescuers. Mortified
watchers, some of them veterans Of
gallant exploits abroad, rushed for the
blazing charnel house. Heat halted
them in their tracks. Some had dear
associates among the Inflated crew,
others were actuated by all the tradi-
tlonal daring Of the servlce-but those
walls of heat were beyond human pen
etratlon. Not until three fire depart
ments, modified at breakneck speed,
had exhausted their chemicals and the
twisted aluminium metal work was
losing its red glow, could any one APP
proach. Then there remained only the