With blimps operating from such bases, in addition to the patrols being executed by other naval craft, we might conclude that no submarine could venture within 100 miles of the American coast during daylight hours without considerable risk of detection, and that blimps should be able to make contribution to the safety of coastwise shipping and harbor cities. The patrol areas assigned to the blimps would have their flanks exposed, but airship patrol would be co-ordinated with that of airplanes and surface craft, guarding the areas farther out. That this conclusion is reasonable is indicated by the fact that from 1939 on, Lakehurst Naval Air Station, under command of Commander G. H. Mills had been doing just this, patroling areas all the way from Nantucket to Cape Hatteras. CHAPTER II British Airships in the First War [Illustration: Airship over water] Germany entered the first World War with high expectations as to one, perhaps two of its new weapons of war. Its submarines might offset Britain’s superiority at sea, and certainly the Zeppelins, which had proved themselves in four years of commercial flying, would be able to cross the English Channel and carry the war to the island which had seen no invasion since William the Conqueror. No nation except Germany had Zeppelins. And as the German people began to feel the pinch of the blockade, cutting their life line of food and supplies, they brought increasing public pressure on High Command to use these weapons to punish England. Later commentators have speculated as to whether, if Germany had held its fire, waited till it could assemble an overpowering force of Zeppelins and submarines and stage a joint attack, it might not have been able to force a quick decision. But the Zeppelins were sent over a few at a time, as fast as they could be built, and England was given time to devise defenses. These were chiefly higher altitude airplanes, farther ranging anti-aircraft guns, sky piercing searchlights, which combined to force the invaders to fly continuously higher as the war wore on, as high as 25,000 feet at times, with corresponding sacrifice of bombing accuracy. And when machine guns, synchronized with the propellers, were mounted in airplane cockpits, and began to spit inflammable bullets into the hydrogen filled bags and send them down in flames, the duel took on more even terms. Less spectacularly the Zeppelins were used on a wide scale as reconnaissance and scouting craft, which flying fast and far were given credit on more than one occasion for saving German Naval squadrons from being cut off by superior Allied forces, were acknowledged even by the British to have played an important part in the Battle of Jutland.