[Illustration: The Enterprise lands to rescue the crew of an ice-locked steamer in Chesapeake Bay.] However the storm was not to be denied, and before he could get altitude, the wind threw the ship into a nest of high-tension wires, set it afire. Brannigan climbed out, walked to a nearby automobile, transferred to a second car enroute to the hospital after a collision—and died the next day from third-degree burns. He called Furculow, his co-pilot, just before the end, told him to see that the men in the crew were taken care of, that they were not penalized for the loss of the ship. Furculow, now flying airships for the Navy, is not the only man in Goodyear who will not forget Charley Brannigan. It is on such men that the traditions of the service are built. Any cause for which men give their lives cannot be held lightly. The Goodyear Company had built a few airships of its own prior to the 1925 Pilgrim, when helium became available. Best known of these was the “Pony Blimp” which operated out of Los Angeles from 1919 to 1923, flew passengers to Catalina, worked for the movies in Arizona and Wyoming. But the real beginning came with the Pilgrim, the larger Puritan and still larger Defender, as the Goodyear fleet came into existence in 1928-29. Early pilots had no specific instructions except to take the ships out and fly them—fly them hard, find out all they could about them, see what weaknesses and shortcomings there were and how to improve them. It was another test fleet, repeating the history of the automobile. The pilots were supposed not to get hurt, but they were to fly in all kinds of weather they felt it safe to fly in. They might lose a few ships, but were expected to be able to walk away from them, not to get in any trouble they couldn’t get out of. They had an advantage over Army and Navy fliers in having a free hand as to where they might go. They were expected to make mistakes but should learn from them. Such instructions, largely unwritten, acted as a challenge to the pilots, a high-spirited and courageous group. Starting with a few men who had flown airships in the World War, or helped build them in the balloon room and the machine shop, they added some technical school graduates in 1929, and others as needed.