Goodyear pilots had a different sort of job. They were operating over land, flying 100 passengers a day, at 10 to 15 minute intervals, in one town after another. They might suspend operations when ceilings were low, or winds high, or gusty, not because they couldn’t fly under those circumstances, but because flights would be less agreeable, and might be hazardous for their passengers. However, the ships themselves, having no shelter at hand, had to stay out and take it. Their job was to interest the people of America in lighter-than-air, and they had to go wherever people were, regardless of what flying weather might intervene. So between Navy, Army and Goodyear airships operating over a period of years, it was fairly well demonstrated that there is very little unflyable weather for lighter-than-air craft. That is a conclusion of no small importance. Winds of gale force may make it prudent for the airship to stay in the hangar or on the mast, and conditions of zero ceiling, zero visibility, which ground other aircraft, would make operations hazardous, especially over mountainous country, but even the most adverse weather conditions would hardly keep the airship at home if an enemy was at large. Any time submarines are operating the airship can be available to seek them out. Another result emerging from the fact of fleet operations was that flying men and construction men, working together, became a closely knit group. Engineers learned to fly ships, and flyers took their turn in the shops. In building airships for the Navy, at the speed demanded by war conditions, the control cars were built in the shop and the envelopes cut out and fitted and cemented together in the balloon room. But operating men, flyers and ground crew men, mechanics and riggers and maintenance men took over from there, put the ships together—assembled them, tested them out, delivered them to the Navy. [Illustration: Lessons in streamlining gained from building and flying blimps became useful when barrage balloons came into the picture as a new defense weapon.] [Illustration: The mooring mast made the blimps expeditionary craft, eliminated the need for large ground crews, permitted more flying days per month, increased safety.] [Illustration: Floating Navy blimps and barrage balloons, with their curious star-fish tails, give the service dock something of the appearance of a giant aquarium.] [Illustration: Principal use for the rigid airship in wartime is as an airplane carrier, with half a dozen planes to extend its reconnaissance range and determine the enemy’s position.] It was this co-ordination between men in green eye shades, working over the drafting board and wind-tanned pilots, studying gray skies and phosphorescent control boards, which enabled the organization to meet the war emergency of large scale production of non-rigid airships.