Stag blimp was not the 'ghost ship'
BY ROGER SCHLUETER
News-Democrat

When Goodyear's N1A Ranger blimp began flying for Stag Beer's centennial
tour in 1951, its pilots enchanted crowds and newspaper readers with the
ship's colorful history.
Turns out, they said, that very gondola had flown much-needed supplies
to the aircraft carrier USS Hornet in the Pacific so that Jimmy
Doolittle could make his historic World War II bombing run over Tokyo.

By all accounts, the story most likely wasn't true, according to
Goodyear blimp historian Scott Baughman. And, what the pilots failed to
tell was an even more mesmerizing story involving another blimp known as
Ranger.
The story begins in 1940 when Goodyear sold its original Ranger to the
Navy. A year later, it built what it called the L-8 (eighth in a line of
Class L blimps) to replace it. It wasn't intended to be a military
craft, but after Pearl Harbor was attacked, the Navy wanted it, too.
Blimps were valuable for coastal defense, and they could track and
bombard enemy submarines.

So, in April 1942, Lt. j.g. Ernest Cody made his first rendezvous with
history by piloting the L-8 hundreds of miles over Pacific waters to
meet up with the Hornet. There, he dropped off 300 pounds of parts for
the B-25 bombers that Doolittle's Raiders would use to blast the
Japanese capital.
Four months later, Cody would make headlines again. This time, however,
he wouldn't be around to read them.
At about 6 a.m. on Aug. 16, 1942, Cody and Ensign Charles E. Adams took
off in the L-8 on a routine trip from Treasure Island in San Francisco
Bay to the Farallon Islands about 30 miles west of the Golden Gate
Bridge.
An hour later, Cody radioed his base that they had spotted a possible
oil slick on the water's surface and were going to investigate. They
were never heard from again.

Just before noon, bathers on a beach near San Francisco looked up to see
the blimp flying extremely low and aimlessly.
"It appeared to be drifting with its motors off," Bruce McIntyre, a
witness told a reporter at the time. "It was so low I could see shroud
lines almost touching the hilltop."
Soon after, it landed a few miles away on a street in nearby Daly City
after hitting a house and two cars. Residents raced to help the pilots,
but there were no pilots to help. The gondola was empty.

Investigators were stumped. The gondola's door had been propped open,
and the throttles were set at idle. There was no sign of foul play or
fire. The life raft and parachutes were still in the cabin, but two life
vests were missing. Still, if something were wrong, why hadn't they
simply radioed?

Ships and planes searched for weeks, but no bodies were ever found. Some
supposed that one man had accidentally lost his balance, grabbed the
side of the gondola and then pulled the other man over during a rescue
attempt. It was, at best, unlikely -- and never proven.
The L-8 soon was called "the ghost ship." Its mysterious voyage soon was
embellished with wild tales of half-eaten sandwiches and warm cups of
coffee being found in the cabin. Not surprisingly, it eventually became
the stuff of UFO legend.

As for the ship itself, the gondola was refurbished and continued to
serve as a training vessel for the Navy before going back to Goodyear
after the war. Afterward, it was stored for nearly a quarter century
until it took to the skies again from 1969 to 1982. And while the L-8
gathered dust, the original Ranger flew for Stag and others until it was
scrapped in 1958.