Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 7, Issue 6, June 2003

Copyright 2003 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article and photos below in your research. Be sure to quote the Seattle Sun as your source.

Stan's Lookout:

Seattle from a blimp - Circa 1962

By STAN STAPP

(Editor's note: This column originally appeared in the North Central Outlook on July 19, 1962.)

It seems doubtful that I'll ever wear the wings of an astronaut, but with a little prodding I might let you sneak a look at my Goodyear Blimp Club charter membership card. I joined the organization Monday evening by taking my first ride in a lighter-than-air craft.

Seattle is a beautiful city from the air, whether seen from an airplane or nose cone. But when you're zipping by at from several hundred to 17,000 miles an hour you're going to miss as much scenery as the motorist who does his sightseeing at 70 mph down the highway without taking time to stop and look around occasionally.

However, airplanes and nose cones don't stop in mid-air, and even helicopters have to keep their motors running. But the Goodyear blimp can crawl along, cruise at 35 to 40 mph, up to a maximum of 62 mph, or idle in the same spot with its motors off.

Monday night, along with Carl Bengsten, Herb Weckworth and Jack Johnson Jr., I was "briefed" at the Goodyear Airport by operations manager Chuck Blanchard, while we awaited the blimp's arrival.

Headquarters is the Century 21 Interbay Parking Site, which cost the organizers of the Fair (the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, now the site of the Seattle Center) $241,000 to construct, but was found to be unneeded after all. Goodyear "converted" the place to an airfield by spending $2,000 to remove some wooden pole barriers, erecting a mooring mast, and running its flag up on the parking site office.

The landing site would be a little bumpy for jets, but the slow moving Mayflower II lands on its one wheel smoothly and with ease.

Goodyear personnel and out-of-town visitors may want to hold their noses between flights, for the airfield, after all, is only a converted garbage dump and it may be quite some time, if ever, before the fragrance dies out, the ground surfacing not being much thicker than a pie crust. But having driven by many times when the dump was in operation, I can assure Goodyear it smells much sweeter now.

As the blimp passes over Piers 90 and 91 coming in for a landing, we start hiking out to the center of the area towards the orange windsock and ground crew. Within a couple of minutes it nears earth veering a little this way and that as the uneven ground winds slightly push about the Dacron gas bag and its 132,500 feet of helium.

Ropes, dangling from the front of the Mayflower II are grabbed by the ground crew as the two engines are cut, and the huge ship is arrested long enough for the previous passengers to make a hasty exist, and we a hasty entrance. Speed is important as the blimp moves about in a tug-of-war with the young men pulling on the ropes. A few sandbags are added to properly balance the whole thing, as this trip will have one passenger less than the previous one.

In essence, the blimp best performs when its total weight is exactly counterbalanced by the lifting power of the helium. Hydrogen, of course, has a greater lifting power, but this is offset by helium's safety, compared with the explosive nature of hydrogen when mixed with air.

On takeoff, the blimp's pilot, J.C. Maloney, sets a rapid climb, controlling the elevators with a large wheel beside his seat, which looks like the wheel on a wheel chair, and moving the rudders with foot pedals.

We head north crossing the Ship Canal into Ballard and eastward to "Outlook land" (a.k.a., North Central Seattle).

Nearly everything looks beautiful from the air as we cruise along at about 1,000 feet elevation. Man's orderliness is much more apparent from the air than the ground, or in reading about his activities in the papers.

Wallingford and Greenwood look like nice communities to live in from a thousand feet up wide streets with brightly colored cars in front of every home, nice homes and years, schools, Green Lake and Lake Union, Woodland Park, and plenty of grass and trees ... and oh, yes, there's our news editor, Trudy (Weckworth), waving from her front yard to us, just like she said.

And look, at that big swimming pool at the Home of the Good Shepherd, didn't know about that before. And doesn't the freeway (I-5, which was still under construction) cut a swath through the North End?

Heading south we cross Lake Union near the Eastlake side and head for the World's Fair. The Fair is a beautiful site from the air, particularly when we stop for awhile and photographer Jack Johnson Jr. gets a good chance to shoot a number of pictures. However, the Space Needle doesn't look quite as tall from this angle as from the ground.

For the first time I notice that some enterprising firms have taken advantage of air travel by advertising on their roofs such as the A&P store, near the Fair, the Travel Lodge, and the Acapulco steamship.

Some 40 minutes after takeoff, our pilot brings us safely into "port" despite the uneven breezes, landing on the blimp's one wheel more quietly and smoothly than any commercial airliner I've been in, and within a minute is off again with another group of passengers.

All of us return to earth satisfied that the only way to sightsee from the air is from a blimp. Too bad that its size and weight limitations make it impractical for wider use in this manner. While it may lack some of the practicalities of an airplane or helicopter, it more than makes up for them in its poetic and esthetic manner.

In comparison, the blimp offers the airgoing traveler the same satisfactions over an airplane that a sailboat does over a motorboat satisfactions that are far too lacking in today's world of automation and hurry, hurry, hurry.

Do you have memories of Stan?

In May, Stan Stapp, 85, announced that he is retiring, due to a gradually worsening eye condition that has made it difficult for him to read small type. He has been writing his column for the Seattle Sun since 1998, and before that wrote a regular column for the Seattle Press and its predecessor, the Fremont Forum, since 1984. For several decades, he was editor and publisher of the North Central Outlook, a community paper covering North Seattle that his family owned up until its sale in 1974.

We will continue to publish Stan's columns from the past, occasionally with updated comments from Stan.

We also plan to publish a retrospective of his lengthy and distinguished career in our annual history issue in August. We are seeking testimonials from readers to publish in that issue. Please mail your comments to the Seattle Sun, 12345 30th Ave. NE, Suite HI, Seattle 98125 or e-mail them to news@theseattlesun.com.