When we think of the Goodyear Blimp fleet we don’t think of drama and amazing rescues. Nope, we think about gracefully gliding through the air, delivering cool camera angles at major sporting events, that kind of stuff. In the late 1970s though there was an incident that was captured in the video below and we think it is worth watching. The Goodyear Mayflower got into a group of high tension electrical lines and sustained big damage in the contact. No one died and rescue workers handled what had to be a first for them like aces. You’ll see it all here.
Basically the blimp was out at night and a mistake was made. The aircraft became ensnared on these power lines and being that it was pitch black, we’re thinking that it took some time to actually assess what they were looking at. Once a plan was established they used a huge cherry picker to fish the crew out.
Incredibly, the craft was actually flown back to its base where it was almost immediately retired from the fleet. The video you’ll watch below as the last actual flight of that vehicle.
Living on the Jersey shore just East of Lakehurst, blimps were an everyday experience as a kid in the 50’s. They flew so low and slow over our house you could talk with the crews as they past. Their forward landing lines barely cleared the highest tv antennas when the winds were high.
One summer we had a conflict with Lakehurst SP’s over an overly large box kite (6′) v. blimp. Maybe some other time… 🙂
Climb down a sketchy rope ladder in the dark with no fall arrest? Sure, why not?