This grew out of the fact that the Allies planned to order the Zeppelin works at Friedrichshafen torn down but had held up the order long enough for it to turn out one more ship. This last ship would be given to United States in lieu of the Zeppelin this country would have received from Germany, if the airship crews, like those of the surface fleet, had not scuttled their craft after the Armistice, to keep them from falling into enemy hands. The Allies stipulated that the Los Angeles should carry no armament. It took a specific waiver from them for the ship to take part several years later in fleet maneuvers. Other airship activities in this country were at a minimum. The blimps, little heard of in this country during War I, remained in the background. A joint board of the two services gave the Navy responsibility for developing rigid airships, the Army to take non-rigids and semi-rigids. The Navy maintained a few post-war blimps for training, had little funds except for maintenance. The Army, having Wright Field to do its engineering and experimental work, fared somewhat better, carried on a training and something of a development program. It built bases at Scott Field, Ill., and Langley Field, Va., ordered one or two non-rigid ships a year, purchased a semi-rigid ship from Italy, ordered another, the RS-1, from Goodyear, operated it successfully. The Army’s non-rigids, however, were overshadowed by the Navy’s rigids and even more by its own airplanes, with the result finally that the Chief of the Air Corps, Major General O. O. Westover, a believer in lighter-than-air, an airship as well as airplane pilot, and a former winner of the James Gordon Bennett cup in international balloon racing, told Congress bluntly that there was no point in dragging along, that unless funds were appropriated for a real airship program the Army might as well close up shop. And this step Congress, in the end, took, and the Army blimps and equipment were transferred to the Navy, and the experimental program started by the one service was carried on by the other. The rigid ships were in more favorable position because they seemed to have commercial possibilities, and it was the long-range policy of the government to aid transportation. Government support to commercial airships could be justified under the policy by which the government gave land grants to the railways, built highways for the automobile, deepened harbors and built lighthouses for the steamships, laid out airports for planes, gave airmail contracts to keep the U. S. merchant flag floating on the high seas and air routes open over land. On this theory Navy airships, even though semi-military, got some support during the reaction period, because they might blaze a trail later for commercial lines—which, with ships and crews and terminals, would be available in emergency as a secondary line of defense, like the merchant marine.