Dear Globe-Guardian Staff,

 

I recently stumbled into your website, and it is an interesting, humorous diversion from the daily grind. I was excited to find the Blimp Spotters Brigade UNTIL I saw the vicious slant that the so-called brigadier general Abnes Carthen has against these gentle, capricious leviathans of the air.

 

What does that brainless woman know, anyway. Her rantings about "the dangers which may be inherent in these low-flying denizens of the heavens" are just plain, uneducated stupidity. Why doesn't she go after commercial airliners. More people are terrorized and killed by these aluminum death traps each year than in the entire history of airship travel.

 

Whole neighborhoods have been bulldozed due to the terrific noise an airliner makes arriving or departing an airport. (Look at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport history and its effect on the cities of Grapevine and Irving.) Blocks of businesses and homes have been burnt to the ground by these monsters dropping from the sky in the worst of places, from commercial, private, and military operators. 3,000 children were killed when an Air Force C-5A Galaxy dropped from the sky in Cambodia transporting refugee children out of the country. Where was the public outcry then? How many skyscrapers have been toppled by blimps bouncing off of their sides?

 

Does she know that during World War II, blimps patrolled our American shores, watching for German and Japanese subs, and were the only aircraft that had the staying power to shadow a sub for hours on end until they could be blown out of the water or run off by Coast Guard gunships. The Graf Zeppelin and the Hindenburg both were carrying paying, commercial passengers from Europe to North and South America across the Atlantic Ocean before Charles Lindbergh made his historic flight from America to France!

 

During a G-8 Summit in France, a single airship was used as an aerial observation post to keep an eye on Paris, and the leaders of the countries involved.  The citizens of Paris "adopted" the airship as a local icon, and the publics sense of security went up during the weeks that the blimp was operating over the city. To do the same thing with helicopters would have taken over two dozen helicopters operating twenty-four hours a day. Imagine the noise! The typical helicopter can only stay up for three to four hours before needing to refuel, not to mention the fatigue on the flight crews.

 

Right now, there are a handful of companies that are constructing the next generation of airship. Imagine something three times the size of a modern cruise ship, with a hard exterior shell and five jet engines, that can move through the skies at 300 miles per hour. Now,  when flying from New York to Japan on business, you are not crammed into a single seat for 23 hours, risking Deep Vein Thrombosis when you get there.

 

Instead, you have a cabin you can sleep in, do office work in, and most of all, relax in. Or, if you wish, you can get out of your cabin, walk around the aircraft, watch the world go by out one of the observation platforms, or even go to the on-board diner and have a meal. I'm sure airlines just love having passengers get up and walk around wherever they want to go.

 

How about cargo transport? Instead of waiting six weeks for your container to get from Korea to San Francisco by boat, it can be here in a day. Sure, you could put it on a jet, but at what expense? On a freight-carrying airship, your cost is one-fifth that of an air carrier.

 

If Carthen really wants to make our skies safer, then she should go after these airlines that cut corners on their maintenance and jeopardize their customers. Before you know it, she will be saying that police helicopters are really spying on our homes gathering information for telemarketers to harass us.

 

Other than her ridiculous view on airships, I think it is neat to see the different operators of airships, and where they have been flying. She might get more input from real airship operators and fans if she were to change her views and see their new potential. I would gladly make submissions to the site if her views weren't so hateful towards airships. Dallas Executive Airport serves many airships throughout the year as they pass through the area, or operate locally for sporting events, conventions, and air shows. That is a lot of opportunities for photos and entries that are being lost.

 

Thanks for letting me vent. Keep us entertained.

 

Jason Martin

Rolling Road Kill Reporter