‘Forgotten Weapon’ fills void in WWII history

Near Gulf Greyhound Park in Galveston County is a road with the name of "Blimp Base Road." Follow it, and you reach a field with strange-looking brick towers. They are the ruins of infrastructure supporting a forgotten weapon of World War Two: anti-submarine airships. The story of the U.S. Navy's airships and their role in the war against Nazi U-boats is revealed in "Forgotten Weapon" by William F. Althoff. While airships played an important role, their contributions have been disregarded. At its height, the U.S. Navy had 15 airship squadrons and over 200 blimps.

The Galveston County Daily News

 

And it should be remembered that during their service through the war years, this statement has been made; "…No Allied merchant ship protected by the airships had been lost."

However that is somewhat mis-leading in that it includes the words "protected by", and the word "lost" could be implying something besides sunk. The rate at which the merchant ships were attacked and sunk surely diminished as the blimps came on-line, but the number is clearly not zero. The same article contains this:

In 1942 the United States lost 454 ships to enemy submarines in Atlantic and Gulf waters. The next year, with increasing numbers of blimps in service and other forms of anti-submarine warfare taking hold, the number fell to 65, and in 1944 to 8. The peak month for Navy blimps was March 1944, when 119 were in operation.

See:

AmericanHeritage.com / Blimps At War