First Use of Helium in Airships

This is the U.S. Navy's lighter-than-air dirigible C-7, which in 1921, became the first airship in the world to use helium (as opposed to the highly flammable hydrogen.)  The flight took off from the air station side of Naval Operating Base Hampton Roads. The aviators, Lieutenant Commander R.F. Wood, Lieutenant Commander Zachary Landsdowne, and Lieutenant C.E. Bousch, took the dirigible on two flights. The first lasted only 15 minutes, but the second one lasted several hours as aviators took their aircraft over downtown Norfolk and Portsmouth.


C-7's helium came from gas fields in Oklahoma and Texas and production at the time was reserved exclusively for the military. C-7's flight was severing as a test bed for using helium in airships as the Army and Navy prepared to receive the giant airship Roma from the Italians.

The New York Times accounces to the world the success of C-7.

N.O.B. Is Dead...Long Live N.O.B.

Ask any sailor stationed in Hampton Roads or who has been stationed in Hampton Roads where the carriers are berthed and  they will tell you "N.O.B."  The problem is that there is no Naval facility called "N.O.B."  The confusion lies in a name change in 1945.  When the Navy took over the property from the bankrupt Jamestown Exposition in 1917, they established Naval Operating Base Hampton Roads or N.O.B. Hampton Roads.  But in 1945, the 5th Naval District, the Navy's regional shore command, issued this memo.  Take note of line #2 (click to enlarge)...

Fifth Naval District changed the name to Naval Station Norfolk, which remains the name to this day.  Of course,old habits die hard.  Sailors will for sometime call the facility "N.O.B."

USS Wisconsin (BB-9), 1919

The first battleship to be named Wisconsin was Battleship Number 9. This is a 1919 rotary photograph of the battleship in a dry dock ("world's largest" according to the photographer) at Norfolk Naval Shipyard. The Great White Fleet and World War I veteran had just returned from post war exercises in the Caribbean. The Navy decommissioned her a year later and scrapped her in 1922.