Welcome to Unexplained Extra with me Richard McClane Smith, where for the weeks in between episodes, we look at stories and ideas that, for one reason or other, didn't make it into the previous show. In last week's episode, Out of the Wreckage, we traced a series of ghostly happenings that emerged in the aftermath of the nineteen seventy two
air crash involving Eastern Airlines Flight four O one. These strange tales join a litany of peculiar and supernatural aviation based stories, involving everything from the apparent sighting of phantom planes and pilots to the mysterious disappearances of numerous aircraft
over the years. There's little wonder that the act of flying should provoke so many spectral stories, considering the countless number of lives that have been lost in the process of doing it, from the death of ballooning pioneers in the eighteenth century all the way up to present day astronauts in years gone by. Of course, before radio and radar as aircraft took off into the skies, it was into a wide and vast unknown that they would disappear,
sometimes never to be seen. Again, even today, despite our constant monitoring of the skies through satellite and radar, as demonstrated by the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight through seventy such mysteries are still possible. Of all the strange aviation related disappearances, however, perhaps the spookiest of all are those in which the aircraft return but the crew do not, stories like that of scouting Blimp L eight, which in nineteen forty two became the locusts of one of the
greatest aviation mysteries of all time. The Japanese military's attack on the United States Naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu on December seventh, nineteen forty one, is widely regarded as the moment that spurred the US to enter the Second World War. What is less well known, however, as that in the nine months that followed, Japanese submarines carried out a series of further attacks on the US, including the sinking of six Navy ships and the shelling of
the largest oil drilling facility in California. As a countermeasure to protect North America's Pacific coastline, a series of airship patrols were established along the west coast to keep an eye out for invading enemy submarines. Of all the aircraft to use, it was determined that the humble blimp was best equipped to do the job, with its unique capability to hang in place in one spot above the water for long periods of time without needing to be refueled.
A blimp, unlike a zeppelin, has no solid internal structure and operates more or less like a simple balloon, employing helium to generate lift, and so in early nineteen forty two, famous blimp manufacturers Goodyear were hired by the US Navy to transform their usual model into something more fitting for warfare,
and so the L class blimp was created. At one hundred and fifty feet long, L class blimps were equipped with two depth charges to attack submarines below the water, as well as a thirty caliber machine gun and a cabin large enough for three crew. On any given day, blimp reconnaissance crews would typically complete a four hour search of the coastline within a fifty mile radius of their
takeoff point before returning back to base. The mission assigned to the crew of Blimp L eight on Sunday, August sixteenth, nineteen forty two was no different. On the morning of the flight, however, a last minute changed to the flight plan was made when it was found that condensation on the blimpse out shell also known as its envelope, made it too heavy to fly with the crew of three.
As such, Mate third Class James Riley Hill was relieved of duty for the day, leaving Pilot Lieutenant Ernest DeWitt Cody and Ensign Charles Adams to complete the mission on their own. At thirty eight years old, eleven years older than the pilot, Ensign Adams was by far the more experienced of the pair, with over two thousand and two hundred hours of flight time in what are termed lighter than air vehicles or LTA's over the course of a
twenty year career with the US Navy. By comparison, twenty seven year old Lieutenant Cody had only seven hundred and fifty six hours of LTA flight time. Regardless, Cody was highly thought of as a bright, up and coming operator in the field and considered to be one of the most capable pilots among his peers. The mission therefore to conduct a four hour patrol off the coast of San Francisco was to be a fairly mundane and routine one.
It would prove to be anything but. On the morning of August sixteenth, nineteen forty two, the first light of dawn revealed a moderately overcast sky above the city of San Francisco, with visibility good at a range of roughly three to five miles. As members of Airship Patrol Squadron thirty two, Lieutenant Cody and Ensign Adams were stationed at
Moffitt Field near Sunnyvale in California. That morning, however, they would be taking off from Treasure Island, an artificial island just to the east of San Francisco between the city and the mainland. From there, they were to head west out over the Gulf of Farrellanus toward the Farallon Islands before heading north to Point Rayas, then circling back to
Moffitt Field. At six o three am, Win Control gave Cody the order to take off, and moments later they were floating high into the air, heading out over the Golden Gate Bridge and into the clouds above. An hour and a half later, at seven thirty eight am, Lieutenant Cody contacted Wing Control to inform them that they were now over the ocean, four miles east of the Farallons. At seven forty two am, Cody called through again. Adams had spotted at length the oil slick in the water below,
and they were heading closer to investigate. The crew dropped a few smoke flares onto the surface of the water to highlight the spot, then proceeded to circle it as they hunted for the possible sub on the waves below them. The crews of a nearby cargo ship, the SS Albert Gallatin, and fishing vessel Daisy Gray, having picked up the transmissions, watched on with interest as Cody and Adams's blimp came
steadily into view. As the Daisy Gray hauled in its fishing nets and moved out of the area, its crew and that of the Albert Gallatin continued to observe the blimp through binoculars, with Cody and Adams clearly visible to
them inside the cabin. At some point, the blimp steadily began to descend from three hundred to only thirty feet above the water, where it stayed for the next hour, continuing to circle the area until shortly after nine am, when it rose up suddenly and disappeared into the clouds above. Despite Blimp L eight being observed until nine am by the crews of SS Albert Gallatin and the Daisy Gray
back at wing control. Nothing had been heard from the blimp's crew since their last communication at seven forty two am. As concerned for their whereabouts grew, two search planes were promptly sent out to look for them. It was almost two hours later when the blimp was finally spotted again, heading east toward the Golden Gate Bridge, appearing to be under control, rising to two thousand feet above the clouds
before descending back into them. A short time later, Richard Quam, an off duty sailor, was heading out to Ocean Beach on San Francisco's west side when he spotted something completely unexpected in the sky heading towards him. It was Cody and Adams's late blimp, barely fifty meters above in the air,
sagging significantly in the middle. Quam watched as it drifted silently toward the beach, scuffed the sand, then shot up again, smashing into a cliff face with the horrendous sound of scraping metal, before edging up and over it as it continued to drift in land stunned golfers at the Olympic Club's Lakeside golf course on the other side of the cliff watched with alarm as one of the blimp's depth chargers became dislodged and rolled off down a hill, while
on another hill nearby, members of the Daily City Fire Department, who were burning brush at the time, turned their attention to the errand airship and promptly raced off after it. As the blimp continued to drift listlessly in land, heading over Lake Mercid Park, then later Mission Street, thousands came out to track its progress as it scraped across rooftops, ripping out wires and aerials in a steady hail of sparks.
Richard Johnston, resident of four nineteen Bellevue Avenue, who was busy cleaning his car in the street at the time, was forced to run away in terror as the voluminous craft appeared suddenly from over the tops of the nearby houses, before it came crashing down right outside his house. Johnston's neighbor, William Morris, a volunteer firefighter, watched in shock as the blimpse cabin smashed first into the road, then into a utility pole, snapping it in two with an electric explosion
of sparks and splintered wood. With golden sparks still spitting and flying from the wires and the deafening hiss of escaping helium filling the air, Morris ran to the crew's aid, but as he drew nearer to the cabin, he saw
its door was wide open and nobody was inside. When the firefighters arrived soon after, they began quickly slashing at the blimps envelope, which by now had smothered Johnston's car and much of the street around it, just in case the crew had somehow got stuck in there, but there was no one there either. An inspection of the Blimpse cabin revealed that all three of its parachutes were still on board and untouched, along with its single life raft.
Two life jackets were missing, However, since the crew would be expected to wear them for most of the flight anyway, it offered no clue as to where they'd gone exactly. A check of the engines revealed the blimp to being good working order, with no damage to the helium valves and at least four hours of gas left in the tanks.
The radio two was found to be completely undamaged. Strangely, a hat belonging to one of the crew was found propped up on the control board, while a briefcase containing the missions classified material was found where it was usually kept behind the pilot's seat. For three days, search team scoured land and sea covering the known course of the blimp for any sign of the missing men, but nothing was found. The following year, having first been officially declared missing,
the men were eventually declared to have died. An official inquiry concluded that no fire, no submersion, and no missiles
struck the late. Needless to say, numerous theories have been posited as to what happened actly, with the possible capture of the men or even a planned affection to the Japanese Navy, as well as a potential attack from a stowaway being among the more grounded explanations to other things identified during the inquiry was that the blimps loudspeaker used to contact ships on the waters below, was found hanging loose out of its holder, and the cabin's door was unlatched.
According to John G. O'Hagan, whose history Net article Mystery of the Ghost Blimp from April twelfth, twenty sixteen, gives one of the most comprehensive accounts of the event. One likely possibility was that the door had accidentally unlapsed at some point during the journey, with one of the men
falling out as a result. In the panic of the moment, with no time to radio the incident back to base, the second crew member had tried to hail his compatriot with the loudspeaker, only to then slip out the door himself.
It's a plausible argument until that is, you consider the testimony of the SS Albert Gallatin and the fishing trawler Daisy Gray, both of the vessel's crews who'd observed the blimp on the Fateful Day, testified that both Lieutenant Cody and Ensign Adams were on board when they first saw it, and neither had been seen falling from the cabin during the time they had eyes on it, from the moment it arrived, right up to the point when it lifted
away and disappeared into the clouds. If you enjoy Unexplained and would like to help supporters, you can now do so via Patreon to receive access to add three episodes, just go to patron dot com Forward Slash Unexplained Pod to sign up. Unexplained, the book and audiobook, featuring ten stories that have never before been covered on the show, is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase through Amazon,
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