by Allen Steele
The Goodyear blimps you see at football games had about as much in common with the Centurion as a Chevy pick-up does with a Corvette: same manufacturer, but the similarity ends there. The Centurion was 343 long and 108 feet high, and was powered by two 800-horsepower engines. It had a double-decker car with crew space for twenty-one; the bunks, bathroom, galley, and ward room were squeezed into the upper deck above the cockpit, AEW compartment, and engine room. It could stay aloft for over two hundred hours without having to land; its cruising speed was 56 mph, although in a pinch it could reach a maximum airspeed of 80 mph.
When I went through communications training at the Navy flight school in Pensacola, I’d thought I was going to wind up aboard an aircraft carrier, so I was disappointed when I was put on a blimp instead. However, I soon discovered that I liked this job much better. The Centurion was based in Key West, so my newly-wed wife and I were able to rent a little beach cottage off-base, and my patrols never took me away from home for more than a few days. Our captain, Roy Gerrard, had been flying blimps since World War II, and the crew was a tight-knit bunch; you could’ve easily taken us for a group of men who belonged to some club that happened to have its own blimp.
The pleasure we took from our job, though, was tempered by the knowledge that the Centurion’s days were numbered. Blimps were obsolete. Planes had already taken over the task of hunting subs, and once the SOSUS net was in place, advance early warning would be taken from us, too. Now that America and Russia were shooting guys into space, there was even talk that there would soon be military space stations. Alan Shepard was a Navy man, and we were proud of him for being the first American in space, but we were all too aware that his Mercury capsule made a blimp look pretty old-fashioned. Whenever the Centurion went out on patrol, we knew that it might be for the last time.
But our mission in the first week of October ’62 was rather unusual. Instead of flying up the Atlantic coast to New England and back again, Capt. Gerrard had received orders to go the other way, down to the Bahamas northeast of Cuba, where we would conduct aerial reconnaissance of the passages between the Acklins, Mayaguana, and Caicos islands. We were supposed to be searching for Russian subs, of course—Nikita had lately become a little too chummy with Fidel for anyone’s comfort—but we were also to be on the lookout for any freighters or fishing trawlers that appeared to be heading for Cuba.
And we’d taken aboard a new crewmember: Lt. Robert Arnault, a Navy intelligence officer temporarily replacing the j.g. who usually had the same job. None of us had ever met him before; he’d flown in from Washington only a couple of days earlier, and although he tried to be one of the guys, it soon became apparent that he wasn’t going to fit in. Capt. Gerrard was still in command, but it was Lt. Arnault who was calling the shots. The skipper’s sealed orders had been hand-delivered by the lieutenant and they were the only people aboard who’d read them; the rest of us were in the dark as to what this was all about. Arnault wasn’t overbearing—he slept in the same bunkroom and ate the same meals with us, and he could make small talk about the World Series or that new spy movie starring some fellow named Connery—but he wouldn’t say a word about why we were here.
You, of course, have the benefit of hindsight. It was at this time that the Soviet Union began a secret operation to arm Cuba with nuclear weapons. They did this because the U.S. had recently placed long-range nuclear missiles in Turkey, and also to prevent another invasion like the one at the Bay of Pigs the year before. So Russian vessels were bringing in medium-range R-12s and intermediate-range R-14s, any one of which could easily reach the American mainland, along with short-range battlefield rockets equipped with low-yield tactical nukes that could be used to repel an invasion.
But the Americans had a mole in the Kremlin, a Soviet military intelligence officer who’d been feeding Russian secrets to the CIA. Colonel Penkovsky was eventually caught and executed, but not before he tipped off the Americans as to what Khrushchev was planning. The CIA didn’t have any solid evidence that the U.S.S.R. was sending nukes to Cuba, though, and they would need firm proof before they could take the matter to President Kennedy. So that’s why the Centurion was watching for Russian vessels sailing to Cuba.
For four days, we orbited Acklins, Mayaguana, and Caicos, maintaining constant surveillance of the passages between them from an altitude of 2,500 feet. We spotted plenty of ships, but only a couple were flying the red Soviet flag. When that happened, we’d descend to 1,500 feet and shadow them for awhile, monitoring their wireless communications and taking pictures that we’d transmit back to Key West via radio facsimile. Nothing about their appearance suggested that they were carrying missiles, though, and their radios would go silent when we were in the vicinity.
We weren’t aware that most of the rockets were still on the way. The ships carrying them were still in the north Atlantic and wouldn’t arrive in the Caribbean for another week or so. However, the first few R-12s had already reached Cuba, along with a handful of tactical missiles. The R-12s didn’t have the range to hit Washington or New York, but they could blow away Miami or New Orleans. Not only that, but Khrushchev had given Castro permission to launch the missiles if the U.S. attacked his country, and Fidel had no problems with nuking the yanquis; along with some Kremlin hard-liners, he believed that a first-strike would settle matters once and for all. They didn’t know it, but Air Force general Curtis LeMay and many other American counterparts shared the same sentiments.
The world was on the brink of nuclear war, and no one knew it yet. Almost no one, that is.
On the morning of Friday, October 5th, I came down from the bunkroom to take my watch at the radio board in the AWS compartment. As I relieved the radioman who’d handled the overnight shift, I noticed that the dawn sky was an ominous shade of red. For the past two days, we’d been receiving weather reports from Puerto Rico about a tropical storm off the Leeward Islands southeast of our position. As soon as I saw those amber-streaked clouds, I had a hunch it was getting closer.
I was right. No sooner had I sat down than the telex rang three times, signaling an incoming signal. I waited while the message printed out, then I ripped it off, opened my codebook, and spent the next minute or so deciphering it. Capt. Gerrard had just come downstairs when I handed the decoded message to him.
The captain read it and sighed. “Great,” he muttered. “That makes my day.” The other officers in the AWS compartment turned to look at him< as he went on. “That tropical storm south of us has become a Cat 1 cyclone. It’s now called Hurricane Daisy, and its present track has it becoming Cat 2 and turning north-northwest.”
“That’s coming our way, isn’t it, skipper?” That came from our flight engineer Jimmy Costa—“Handsome Jimmy” we called him, because he wasn’t—who’d just stuck his head in from the engine room.
“Uh-huh.” The captain folded the message and gave it back to me so I could file it. “We’re to land at the nearest available field and sit it out.” A terse smile. “Glad someone has the common sense to order us in.”
Everyone nodded. Back in the thirties, the Navy had lost two dirigibles, the Akron and the Macon, during storms at sea. No one in the airship corps had forgotten those disasters, but we were always scared that we’d get some dummy in charge of things who thought that a blimp could fly through a hurricane. Lucky for us, a dummy hadn’t written our orders.
But we still had a problem: where to land? A blimp doesn’t need a runway—it can touch down almost anywhere—but it does require a mooring tower if it’s going to be tied down for awhile, which is what we’d need to do if the Centurion was going to ride out a hurricane. Key West was too far away; we’d never make it before the storm overtook us. Puerto Rico was closer, but it lay in the direction Daisy was coming from. And the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay was out of the question; Lt. Arnault reminded the captain that our mission orders specifically stated that we were not to approach Cuba under any circumstances.
Our navigator, Harry Taggart, pulled out a loose-le
af notebook and flipped to the list of possible airship landing sites in the Caribbean, and sure enough, he found one: Great Inagua, the larger of a pair of small islands about 50 miles west of Caicos and 55 miles east of Cuba. Only one town, but it had an airfield, and on that airfield was a mooring tower which had been there since WWII. The Centurion was on the other side of Caicos; we could easily reach Great Inagua before Daisy came through.
So I sent a telex to Key West informing them of our plans, and as soon as it was confirmed, Phil Bennet turned his pilot’s wheel and put us on west-by-southwest bearing for Great Inagua. I called ahead to Matthew Town, and after a half-hour or so I finally heard a Caribbean-accented voice through my headphones. He told me his name was Samuel Parker, and although he was surprised that an American airship was on its way, he assured me that he’d muster a ground crew for us.
The Centurion reached the Inagua islands shortly before noon. We passed over Little Inagua, a tiny spit of sand and grass which appeared to have sea birds and wild goats as its sole inhabitants, and came upon Great Inagua, which wasn’t much larger but at least showed signs of human presence. Matthew Town was located on the island’s southwest corner; as the blimp’s shadow passed over its sun-bleached rooftops, townspeople came out to stare up at us. There didn’t seem to be much down there: a bunch of houses, a church steeple, a handful of fishing boats tied up at the dock.
The airstrip was primitive, a single runway which looked as if it had been last resurfaced around the time Amelia Earhart disappeared. The mooring tower was located at its coastal end, not far from a couple of small hangars on the verge of collapse. It looked like a misplaced Aztec pyramid, its iron frame rusted black and flecked with salt. Six dark men in shorts and island shirts lounged beside the antique flat-bed truck that had brought them there, smoking cigarettes as they watched the blimp come down; it wasn’t until Centurion was only twenty feet above the asphalt that one of them tossed away his smoke and sauntered out to raise his hands above his head while his companions trotted over to grab hold of our lines.
The islanders dragged the ship the rest of the way in while one of them climbed a ladder up the tower and snapped a cable hook to the blimp’s prow. A diesel wrench then reeled in the cable until the Centurion was snugly docked against the tower. Eight of our guys jumped out of the car and helped the local ground crew pull the lines as far as they would go, then used a sledge hammer to pound iron pitons into the sandy ground and lashed the ropes to them. The skipper waited until he was sure the Centurion wasn’t going anywhere before he ordered Phil to cut the engines.
I joined the Capt. Gerrard and Lt. Arnault as the locals ambled over to greet us, and it wasn’t hard to tell that they were amused to have a Navy blimp make an emergency landing in their forgotten little part of the world. In fact, we’d later learn that the only reason why the tower hadn’t been tom down for scrap metal was that every year the U.S. State Department sent the District of Inagua a $500 rent check. Among them was Samuel Parker, the person with whom I’d spoken on the radio; besides running the airfield, he also was the customs officer. He made a great show of asking for our passports, which he carefully inspected as if we might be anyone except what our uniforms plainly showed us to be, before he formally shook hands with Capt. Gerrard and welcomed us to Great Inagua.
The wind was beginning to pick up by then. The sky was still bright blue, but a dark wall of clouds had become visible on the southern horizon. We were prepared to spend the night in the blimp, but Mr. Parker wouldn’t hear of it. There was a large guest house in Matthew Town which we were welcome to use, and a restaurant across the street was already ready to have us over for dinner.
Capt. Gerrard quickly took him up on the offer; after four days of sleeping in narrow bunks and having canned food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, some Caribbean hospitality would be a nice change of pace. We couldn’t leave the Centurion by itself, though, so the captain asked for two volunteers to stay with the blimp. Harry and Phil raised their hands; they’d keep watch on the blimp, and use a walkie-talkie to call for help if the storm threatened to break it loose from its moorings. The rest of us fetched our duffel bags, then crowded into the back of the beat-up truck along with the ground crew, and held on for dear life as it made a bumpy, gear-grinding journey into Matthew Town.
The town looked pretty much like any other small Caribbean port: white-washed wood-frame houses on sand-filled streets, an abandoned prison dating back to the 1700’s, a church and a few shops surrounding the town square. The kind of place inhabited mainly by native Caribbeans and a handful of retired British civil servants; there were probably more sea gulls than people. Not exactly a tourist destination. I figured that we were probably the only visitors the town had seen in awhile.
I was wrong.
As it turned out, Daisy only sideswiped the Bahamas. By the end of the day the hurricane turned north and headed for the East Coast; the following day it would dump several inches of rain on New England before petering out over Nova Scotia. As cyclones go, Daisy was something of a wallflower.
There was no sense in taking the blimp aloft again. The crew spent the afternoon in the guest house, playing cards and listening to the Series on the radio as wind-driven rain lashed against the windows. The storm subsided just before sundown, but the winds were still just high enough to make flying hazardous, so Capt. Gerrard decided that we might as well spend the night on Great Inagua and take off again the next morning. Call it shore leave.
None of us were unhappy with the decision save for Lt. Arnault, who seemed nervous about the prospect of missing any Russian freighters bound for Cuba. But the Centurion was the skipper’s blimp, and he wasn’t about to do anything that would unnecessarily put his ship and crew in harm’s way. Besides, he reminded Arnault, any Soviet vessels in the vicinity had probably dropped anchor somewhere to ride out the hurricane; they weren’t going anywhere either.
The guest house was a two-story inn in the middle of Matthew Town, the doors to its rooms facing outside. The Centurion had arrived after what passed for tourist season on Great Inagua, so we were able to take over the whole place. Most of the crew shared quarters, but Capt. Gerrard claimed a room for his own. So did Lt. Arnault, which nettled a lot of the guys; who does he think he is? was the general consensus. I didn’t care one way or another; I was bunking with Handsome Jimmy, notorious among the crew for his snoring, and so I knew I probably wouldn’t get a lot of sleep that night.
The island’s only restaurant was just across the street, and as Mr. Parker had told us, the proprietors had been forewarned that twenty-one Navy men would be coming over for dinner. By the time we’d wandered over there, they’d laid out a nice spread: grilled tarpon fresh from the dock, with hush puppies, greens, and the best key lime pie I’ve ever had. There was a bar in the next room, complete with a pool table and a TV; after we finished stuffing ourselves, we moved over there and settled in for an evening of goofing off.
The regulars gradually filtered into the place, and at first they were put off by the presence of so many uniforms, perhaps afraid that we might be stereotypical American sailors and wreck the joint. But the captain had firmly told us to be on our best behavior, and after awhile the locals warmed up to us. A couple of our guys got a pool tournament going with them, while others gathered at the TV to watch The Jackie Gleason Show on a Miami station.
I had just returned to the bar for another beer when I found a young woman sitting there. She was about my age, maybe a year or two older. Women had just started wearing their hair long again, and hers was blond and fell down around the shoulders of her cotton summer dress. She wasn’t a raving beauty, but she was pretty all the same, and she was there by herself.
I had no intention of trying to pick her up. My marriage was solid; I was faithful to my wife, and one-night stands had never been my style anyway. It was just that I was tired of seeing no one but other guys, and a pretty girl would be good company for a change. So I walked over, introduced mysel
f, and asked if I could join her. She was a little wary of me, but she nodded anyway, so I parked myself on the next barstool and asked her about herself.
She told me that her name was Helga—no last name, just Helga—and she was from West Germany; I picked up the European accent as soon as she spoke, so the latter was no surprise. She said that she was visiting Great Inagua with two male companions—her cousin Kurt and their friend Alex, an American—and that the three of them were avid birdwatchers who’d come to the islands for its tropical birds. They were renting a house just south of town; she’d dropped in for a drink while Kurt and Alex visited a grocery store down the street.
I told her who I was and why I was there, and she gave me a knowing smile; yes, she’d seen the blimp when it had flown over the island. She was curious about why a Navy blimp would be in the area; our mission was classified, so I told her that it was a routine patrol, nothing more. Even as I said this, though, I became aware of a presence behind me. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that Arnault had deposited himself on the next barstool.
“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to interrupt.” He looked at me. “Mind if I butt in, Floyd?”
“Sure. We’re just talking.” I gestured to the woman sitting next to me. “This is Helga. Helga, this is…”
“Bob Arnault.” He raised a finger to the bartender, signaling him for another beer. This was the first time I’d heard him refer to himself as Bob; on the blimp, he was always Lt. Arnault. “You from around here?”
“No.” Helga shook her head. “I was just telling Floyd that my friends and I are visiting Inagua to study its birds. There are the loveliest pink flamingos here, and we’re photographing them.”
“They’re staying on the outskirts of town,” I added, not wanting to be left out of the conversation. “She says they’re—”
“Where are you from?” Arnault asked, ignoring me. “You’re not from the States, I can tell.”