Far Away Places

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Following the First World War, it was expected that the next war would be between Japan and the U.S. for control of the vast Pacific Ocean. Responsibility for conducting surveillance of the Pacific to detect attacks from Japan fell to the Navy. This was a problem for the Navy because surface ships were too slow and the Navy had too few of them, and airplanes lacked the range to conduct the needed reconnaissance. Based upon the Germans' experience with dirigibles in WWI, which demonstrated that Zeppelins (airships) could range for thousands of miles on a single tank of fuel, the Navy turned to airships to solve its problem. This book is the interwar history of the Navy and its attempt to develop an airship program to conduct surveillance of the 60 million square miles of ocean and over 95,000 miles of shoreline against invasion from Japan. Thousands of pages of archival material from the NARA, newspapers, books, and the unpublished personal memoir of Vice Admiral Charles Rosendahl are used to weave the story of this time in history and focuses both on technology and conflicts within the Navy Department that affected the outcome.