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• The Beginning
• Naval Air Combat in the First World War
• Manipulation and Muddle
• Recovery, 1930-1940
• The Operational Environment in the Second World War
• Types of Naval Aircraft and Combat Operations
• Penguinisms
• A Characteristic Penguin
• The Penguin Background
• Development of Carrier Operations
• Palembang : Meridian 1 and 2
• Operations Iceberg 1 and 2
• Assault on the Mainland of Japan

Brian Allen first went to sea as a naval aviation officer cadet aboard HMS Indefatigable in 1952 , bound for Gibraltar. In 1954 he was appointed to Lossiemouth for fighter training and flew the Vampire T22. In December 1955 Brian joined 737 Squadron where he was attached to the Anti-Submarine Training Course flying the Fairey Barracuda. On completion he was destined to fly the then new Fairey Gannet twin turbo prop anti-submarine aircraft. July 1955, and now with 825 Squadron, saw his introduction of the new aircraft, a very different machine to the Barracuda.The Squadron joined HMS Albion on 10 January 1956, as she preceded down Channel in the company of her sister ship HMS Centaur, outwards bound for the Far East. After this tour was completed 825 Squadron was disbanded and Brian was transferred to 751 Squadron aboard HMS Warrior, an old WWII carrier with none of the latest facilities of his previous ship and on its final commission. However, his greatest shock was to discover that he would not be flying a Gannet, but the rather elderly Grumman Avenger, a very different aeroplane with a tail wheel and a piston engine. This would require a great change in take-off and landing technique. In February 1957 Warrior sailed west for the Panama Canal and thence into the Pacific where she and her aircraft would assist in Operation Grapple, the tests of Britain's first atomic bombs. During this operation Brian's adventures included dislodging the padre's kidney stone upon a catapult launch, denting the flight deck by a heavy landing and ditching close to the beach after an engine failure. Having converted to helicopters Brian was posted to 815 Squadron aboard HMS Albion in 1960 flying the Whirlwind Mk 7. During this posting he survived another ditching when his helicopter lost power and sunk. Having returned from a long Far Eastern voyage, Brian was now posted into The Helicopter Trials and Development Unit and it was whilst experimenting in a prototype Wasp that an accident, in which his crewman perished, was to injure him so severely that he was unable to fly again. He completed his commission as an Air Traffic Control Officer.Brian is now retired and lives in Cornwall.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Establishing an air station
• The USS Shenandoah and the early years
• The USS Los Angeles: training and experimentation
• The USS Akron and USS Macon
• Lakehurst: international airport
• Preparations for war
• The war years
• Postwar progress
• End of the program
• Afterword
• Appendixes
• A. Commanding officers, NAS Lakehurst (1921-62)
• B. Performance and other data for U.S. Navy airships (1915-61)
• U.S. Navy lighter-than-air headquarters and facilities, Second World War
• Memorandum on status of lighter-than-air
• E. Postwar airship deliveries to the U.S. Navy
• F. Last airships in the U.S. Navy aircraft inventory.

Originally published in 1990, Sky Ships is easily the most comprehensive history of U.S. Navy airships ever written. The Naval Institute Press is releasing this new edition - complete with two hundred new photographs--to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the book's publication. Impressed by Germany's commercial and military Zeppelins, the United States initiated its own airship program in 1915. Naval Air Station Lakehurst in New Jersey was homeport for several of the largest machines ever to navigate the air. The success of the commercial rigid airship peaked in 1936 with transatlantic round trips between Central Europe and the Americas by Hindenburg and by Graf Zeppelin - ending with the infamous fire in 1937. That setback, the onset of war, and the accelerated progress of heavier-than-air technology ended rigid airship development. The Navy continued to use blimps to protect Allied shipping during World War II. Following the war, the Navy persisted with efforts to integrate the airships, but the program was finally discontinued in the early 1960s.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• LZ-126 : birthplace Friedrichshafen
• ZR-3 : homeport Lakehurst
• Balloons and billets : lighter-than-air training
• Rosendahl's reign
• Testbed for the new ships
• Grounded.

• v.
• 1. Careers of US naval aviators assigned numbers 1 to 2000.