From Esquire archives:1943,Airships vs nazi submarines.

[carmelo]

From Esquire magazine,november 1943:

 

[cluttonfred]

Neat, thanks for sharing. And just so folks don't think the blimps were limited to patrols near the coast, see the first article attached and the second at the below.

https://books.google.com/books?id=n0ahyfwZH0MC&pg=PA26#v=twopage&q&f=false

 

[covert_shores]

Nice artwork. Did they really have any effectiveness against uboots?

 

[TomS]

The lore has it that no merchant ship escorted by airship was ever sunk. Of course, they were mainly coastal escorts after the US coastal threat was abating. But they do seem to have been pretty good at holding down U-boats, if not so great at scoring kills.

They also did some interesting work in MAD barriers and in aerial influence minsweeping that are often overlooked.

 

[cluttonfred]

The reading that I have done suggest that one U.S. Navy ship was lost while under blimp escort, and one blimp shot down when it went in to depth charge a sub but the depth charges wouldn't release so it was stuck at low altitude. My understanding is that the real effectiveness of the blimps was as observation posts, able to warn of an approaching U-boat and direct surface escort ships or aircraft to the location.

 

[JohnR]

How far out did they operate? I have seen pictures of them on the decks of escort carriers, was this done regularly or was it just an experiment?

Regards.