[Mystery] The Ghost Blimp: The L-8's Vanished Crew

A Routine Patrol

On the morning of August 16, 1942, the United States was deep into World War II. The threat of Japanese submarines off the California coast was real, and the US Navy was conducting regular patrols to protect the coastline.

That morning, US Navy blimp L-8 lifted off from Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. Aboard were two experienced airmen: Lieutenant Ernest DeWitt Cody and Ensign Charles Ellis Adams. Their mission was routine: patrol the coast, watch for enemy submarines, and return to base.

It should have been an uneventful flight. Instead, it became one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in American military history.

The Crash

Hours after takeoff, the L-8 blimp drifted over Daly City, a quiet neighborhood south of San Francisco. Witnesses watched in confusion as the blimp descended erratically, crashing into a hillside and then bouncing into the street.

Emergency responders rushed to the scene, expecting to find injured crew members. But when they opened the blimp's gondola, they found something far more disturbing:

The blimp was empty.

The Mystery

Lieutenant Cody and Ensign Adams had vanished.

The blimp's doors were open, but everything else was intact. The equipment was untouched. The life raft was still secured in its place. The radio was functional. There was no distress call. No sign of a struggle. No blood. No bodies.

The blimp had simply been... abandoned.

The Investigation

The Navy launched an immediate investigation. Search teams scoured the ocean, the coastline, and the surrounding areas. Divers searched the waters where the blimp had been patrolling. Nothing was found.

Investigators examined the blimp for clues. They found:

•The doors were open (suggesting the crew had opened them intentionally)

•The depth charges were still armed and attached

•The life raft was still secured (meaning the crew didn't take it with them)

•No signs of mechanical failure

•No signs of enemy attack

So what happened?

The Theories

Over the decades, several theories have emerged:

1.Accident - The crew leaned out to investigate something and fell into the ocean

2.Suicide Pact - Both men jumped intentionally (though there was no evidence of this)

3.Abduction - They were taken by an enemy submarine or aircraft (no evidence)

4.Classified Mission - The incident was covered up for national security reasons

5.Paranormal - Some believe it was an unexplained phenomenon

The Truth Remains Unknown

Eighty years later, the fate of Lieutenant Ernest DeWitt Cody and Ensign Charles Ellis Adams remains a mystery. Their bodies were never found. No wreckage was ever discovered. No explanation was ever confirmed.

The L-8 "Ghost Blimp" incident remains one of the strangest and most enduring unsolved mysteries in American military history.

What happened to the crew of the L-8? The answer may never be known.

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] On the morning of August 16th, 1942, a US Navy blimp lifted off from Treasure Island San Francisco on a routine patrol hours. Later it crashed into a quiet neighborhood in Daly City, but something was terribly wrong. The blimps doors were open and its equipment had been untouched, but its two crew members had just vanished without a trace.

There was no distress call and no sign of a struggle, just an empty blimp drifting through the sky like a ghost ship. 80 years later, the mystery of the L eight remains unsolved.

Hey guys, and welcome to the Moms and Mysteries podcast, a True Crime podcast featuring myself, Mandy, and my dear friend Melissa. Hi Melissa. Hi Mandy. How are you? I'm doing well. We are having a very exciting week here. How are you? We are, we had to like get into it, plan, record our Zoom just to take notes for us.

Yes. You know, very [00:01:00] high level stuff around here. I will say Zoom AI note taking is. Probably like gonna save my life because I am so bad at remembering things that we talk about in conversation. So it's been, it's one form of AI that I fully support. It it for me, but one time it got something so wrong, I was reading it and it was literally the exact opposite of what we said and I was.

So confused reading it and I was like, this is, this is a problem. We can't go fully off of this ai, but Yeah. Well sometimes it really will almost like roast you. I remember one time, you know, because now we have the AI text on your phone. Oh yeah, yeah. You send multiple text messages. And there was one time I was asking you a simple question, if we could had the money to afford something.

And basically it was telling you that my message said, are we poor? That's exactly what it said. It just came up as a little thingy, are we poor? And I took a screenshot because I'm like, what is happening here? And the answer was yes. Right? Yes. We're speaking of not poor, but that's not a good segue, Mandy.

[00:02:00] Super exciting this week. If you guys are listening, well, what? Whatever. You're listening. Of course you're listening. If you're listening, you're listening. You're listening, right? We have a new logo that we're so excited about after. Eight, almost eight years y Yes. Yeah, it's exciting. We still held onto some of the ideas because we can't let it go.

We still love it. And hopefully the new logo has rolled out everywhere by the time you are listening to this, um, we're, or this is embarrassing for us. Yes, we, yeah, exactly. Or if not, you'll see it next week. Um, because we're really trying to get it out there. But yeah, we've been working on it and you know, we've had our bright.

Pink Moms in Mysteries logo for a very long time. Even the font looks a certain way. Some of you'll be happy to see that. We kept that and we did keep our, I don't, I don't know what you even wanna call it. It's our special little R that we have, well, it's our special little r, as well as the murder mystery from Adam Sandler's production company that I still will stand on.

Business that they stole from us. They stole it from us. [00:03:00] Yes, they absolutely did. Uh, yeah. So new logo, uh, new color scheme, new look, new aesthetic to go with. Not the new moms. We're still the same moms. Oh, gosh. I didn't know I was supposed to change on top of all of those. No, we can't. We simply can't. No, but we're leaning into the Florida aesthetic just a little bit.

I I love the, what Mandy came up with. It looks really, really good. So. Well, thank you. Love the colors. New stuff. All fun. We love that. Yes. So still us same moms, really the same show. Just a little bit of an updated aesthetic. A facelift, if you will. I wish. I wish it was a real one. But speaking of things we are leaning into, which I'm not doing segues very well at all today.

We're leaning into the mysteries this week, right? We are. We're doing a mystery and I'm very excited about this 'cause it's a little. It's different. A mystery with history. It's like my favorite thing. Oh, minty. We're gonna have to have whole episodes about that. Oh my gosh. Don't even get me started. We have too many things [00:04:00] going on.

I have too many ideas. We do. And speaking of mysteries, we've had bonus episodes recently. We have mailbag this week. If you missed mailbag last time and you were like, oh, okay, well maybe I'll listen to it later. This doesn't sound so exciting. It is, yes. If you were wrong. So exciting. This week we have stuff involving Manson, Charles Manson.

What? And we also have Yes. Uh, a, a TaskRabbit. FBI situation. Okay. And yeah, I'm excited. All kinds of stuff. It's wild. Oh, Al Capone. Wow. Okay. Those are all real things. Can we record that instead of this? Those are all real things, so make sure you hang out and listen to that on Thursday. Awesome. So, as Melissa was saying, today's episode is not so much a crime, but it's a mystery that has fascinated the aviation world for decades, and it involves.

A blimp and yes, I'm talking about that big puffy, slow moving balloon thing that you may have seen a handful of times in your life. How many [00:05:00] times do you think you've seen a blimp? I think I've only seen them on tv. That's what this made me realize, like have I seen one or have I, am I gaslighting myself into seeing one?

I don't think I've seen them in person. Don't, you don't really see them too often. I've seen them a few times. Usually they're at like sporting events, but I've also seen them as, you know, I grew up in the Daytona area and so I would see it when they were flying over the Daytona International Speedway.

Again, it's a huge sporting event, which is where blimps often are. So I have seen the Goodyear Blimp a couple of times in Daytona, but o outside of that. I can't think of a time I've ever seen a Blin before. Can I tell you this reminds me of when I was little. I remember DARE came into our classrooms and they were like, how many of you have ever seen an alcohol commercial?

And people would raise their hand, how many of you have ever seen a cigarette commercial? And I raised my hand and they were like, those don't exist. Blah, blah, blah. And so now you're lying. I'm so scared to answer things like this where I'm like, maybe I didn't ever see it. I dunno. So I know. Well, I know there weren't cigarette commercials, but they were allowed to have cigarette advertisements, like a news or a magazine [00:06:00] ad or something like an editorial shot.

How bizarre. Okay. Truly, my mom's best friend ended up dating the Marlboro man a long time ago. That's like Laura in our family. Very, very strange times. But blimps actually trace back to the hot air balloon craze. Of the 17 hundreds, and I guess you can imagine why it would be a crazed in the 17 hundreds, because that would've been really cool back then when you didn't have a whole lot of anything going on.

That was just a different time. It was a time when people thought strapping a basket to a bag of fire was a great way to get around, so they created hot air balloons and of course these early primitive hot air balloons of the 17 hundreds. They had their pitfalls. They were far from perfect. They could really only lift into the sky and then drift whatever way the wind happened to be blowing, which is cool and all, but not very useful if you don't wanna go that way.

So the inventors of these hot air balloons started to figure out how to make the balloons steerable, which yes, you have to be able to control them. That's before you take off into the [00:07:00] sky. Mm-hmm. Yeah. By the mid 18 hundreds, the very first airships were up and flying in the skies. And by the early 19 hundreds, Alberto Santos Dumont and some of his buddies had built the first real blimps with engines.

So a blimp works by staying in the air because it has helium inside of this big inflatable bag, but it also has engines. And if the engines fail, the blimp won't just simply fall outta the sky, it will just drift around. Like a giant balloon full of helium with a basket of people possibly attached. Well, not a basket of people, a basket carrying people attached to it inside.

I like a basket of people better. Yes. Like a, just a human basket. Mm-hmm. So fast forward a little bit to the world. Wars and blimps really started to become a huge thing. They were the unsung heroes of the sky. This is when they were really used for reconnaissance. They used them for anti-submarine patrols and just.

As a general intimidation tactic because these things are huge and what wouldn't be scarier, you know, what would be scarier than it seeing this like giant balloon thing, just like [00:08:00] hovering over your naval bases, like very foreboding. Like we're coming through. I'm sorry, do you remember the drones in New Jersey like a month ago and people were freaking out?

Yeah. There is nothing scarier than these giant things in the sky. Yeah, for sure. The United States even experimented with airborne aircraft carriers and used massive rigid airships to launch and recover small fighter planes. But after the war, blimps really kind of lost their edge. They just weren't as cool.

Um, in the military, they didn't really have a purpose. So that's when they found their new calling, which as I was saying in the beginning, was. More along the lines of advertising and entertainment and blimps started to become not a war tool, but a flying billboard. This really started to take off in the mid 19 hundreds, and companies like Goodyear started using them to advertise at sporting events and other major gatherings.

For a time, rigid airships were used for passenger travel, and they often offered transatlantic flights before airplanes took over. How would you like to fly over the ocean on a blimp? [00:09:00] One of those things with human baskets. No, thank you. I'm good. Yeah. So but now thankfully we have airplanes and we mostly just see glimpses hovering over football games, uh, flashing corporate logos and things like that.

S ominous, yes. But they are also still today used for scientific research. They're used for surveillance and they even use them in hurricane tracking, but there are. Genuinely not that many blimps around. There's actually less than 25 blimps and even in existence today, and only a handful of those are in operation worldwide.

I guess the rest of them are. In storage. Retired. Yeah, so today's story takes place in 1942 at a time when the US Navy was deploying blimps to serve as lookouts for allied ships against German U-boats during World War ii. So the blimps of this time were capable of staying in the air for hours at a time and could locate track and even bombard enemy submarines.

By 1944, [00:10:00] the use of PLIs in the US Navy was actually very popular. They had over 200 blimps with more than 4,500 officers and pilots serving on them. Only two blimps were ever quote unquote lost during World War ii. One of them was shot down and the other was a Goodyear L eight. And the reason we've brought you all here today, the L eight was built in 1941, and it was named for being the eighth of Goodyear's Class L blimps to be built.

Clever about a boring kid way to do that. So it's like whenever your kid, you give your kid a stuffed animal and it's a tiger and they name it tiger. And you're like, really? Literally. I had better than that. Yes. My oldest son had everything was the literal name. He had sharky ducky. The list goes on and on.

Like everything was its literal name with an E sound at the end. I mean, at least that's creative. I mean, at least they added that, not, it wasn't the L 80 D, it was just the L eight, right? So they didn't even do that. [00:11:00] So it was one of the smaller airships at 150 feet long, and with the maximum diameter of 47 feet, it could also hold 123,000 cubic feet of helium.

And I looked this up, Mandy, because I was like, none of those words mean. A single thing to me. What, what does that look like? And I learned that it was basically four, like school buses long. That's how big. I just saw that you added that note to our document here. And I was like, I don't recall looking that up.

I didn't put that in here. I, I put it in there and I was like, I need to make sure I actually mentioned, so Mandy doesn't think she's gas lit herself. So the L eight was originally intended to replace the 1940 Goodyear Ranger, which had been sold to the Navy. But after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, the L eight was also sent to the US Navy.

So in April of 1942, Lieutenant Ernest Cody piloted the L eight over the Pacific Ocean to drop off B 25 bombing [00:12:00] supplies that would later be used by Jimmy Doolittle in the Daring Doolittle raid on Tokyo in 1942. This was actually the first American attack on the Japanese mainland. This L eight flight is viewed as historic because of the bombing that resulted from it.

Doolittle received a Congressional Medal of honor for the attack by December of 1942. The L eight was serving on the west coast doing patrols to monitor for Japanese submarines off the coast of California. Every day, the Plimp would fly from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Faron Islands, then to point Reyes and down the coast back to the bridge.

This path was repeated as many times as possible on the 150 gallon fuel capacity. By August 16th of that year, the L eight had flown 1100 hours on submarine patrols, and there had never been any issues with the blimp or the way it operated. That was until August 16th. On that day, the blimp took flight at [00:13:00] Treasure Island Naval Base in San Francisco, sometime around 6:00 AM.

The plan was for a routine trip to the Ferral Islands to scout out any Japanese submarines in the water. There were two men on board the blimp that morning. They were Lieutenant Ernest, Cody and Enson Charles Adams. A third man named Riley Hill was actually supposed to be on board the blimp that day, but due to concerns about the blimps weight, he was actually left behind at Treasure Island.

Riley later said that he was on hand for takeoff and had already even taken his seat and closed the door of the blimp, and the blimp was already moving. When Lieutenant Cody decided that the ship could not carry the weight of three men and ordered Riley to get out. So before the blimp got too high in the sky, he just jumped out of the ship.

Okay. Number one, I would be so offended if they were like, Hey, bad, you have to go cop out. Yeah, right. We're already in the air and this isn't good for us. And number two, the idea of like not knowing this before the blimp starts right. Kind of worries me the entire flight. How did you, how did you not do [00:14:00] a total weight check to see, like before we all got on this thing like weight watcher style, where you have to stand up in front of everybody and weigh yourself.

Yeah. Right. But at the time, this man ri said it made total sense to him. You know, it made complete sense why you couldn't. Fly the blimp with too much weight in it, and he said he felt like they didn't really need him, you know, on that mission. So he didn't think it was that strange. He just got off at about 7:30 AM the two men who were on board radioed back to Treasure Island, that they had spotted an oil slick in the water and they were going over to investigate it.

At that point, the blimp was five miles east of the Ferral Islands when this message was received. About 15 minutes later, the base radioed back to the LA to follow up on this report about the oil slick and see what was going on. But the LA did not respond back, and the base station never heard from the two crew members again.

Meanwhile, several fishing boats had seen the blimp navigating over the ocean that morning, including a coast guard and a navy ship that reported seeing the LA [00:15:00] descend close to the water and then drop two smoke flares into the ocean before ascending higher into the sky again. Nobody reported anything outta the ordinary about the blimp.

At this time though. At some point the blimp was seen entering a wall of fog and it was circling around this fog. And then at another point during the flight, the LA stopped right next to a Navy patrol plane that was flying at about 2000 feet, and then the blimp dropped back down, which. The pilot thought was a little strange that they were like up in his airspace, right?

And then, but they went back down. But he said he didn't report it as being, you know, anything concerning because he could tell that the blimp was still being controlled. You know, the blimp was still being fully controlled by whoever was driving it. So even though this was strange thing to see. He didn't report it.

And we have so much more to get into after a quick break to hear a word from this week's sponsors. So before the break, we're discussing the blimp. At this point, there are a few people that have seen the blimp doing things that blimps maybe shouldn't always be doing, but nobody's reporting it because it [00:16:00] seems like there is someone still in charge in controlling this blimp.

But when the blimp failed to return to the base, the Navy sent other ships to look for it, but they weren't able to locate, locate it. Eventually they called off. The search reports were received that the blimp had landed at a nearby military base called Fort Funston, but that actually turned out to be false.

Fort Funston told the Navy that the missing men nor the blimp had ever been there. The Navy also received reports about a blimp floating through daily city. Those reports, though were not false at this point. It was believed that Ernest and Charles were still at the military base and had actually allowed the L eight to float away.

Though it was possible, it would be highly unusual for experienced Navy officers to make such a mistake, and therefore their supervisors were very concerned. No kidding. Yeah, I know, right. So let's get into a little of the background of these two crew members that were aboard the L eight that morning. So the first was Lieutenant Ernest Cody, and he was [00:17:00] born on September 22nd, 1914, near Mayville, Michigan to his parents, Walter and Irene.

He grew up on a farm and he had two sisters. In 1931, Ernest graduated high school and started at the Great Lakes Naval Academy in Maryland where he became a midshipman. Eventually he was assigned to work on the USS Milwaukee, but he had been stationed at several other ports, including Pearl Harbor and San Diego.

At some point. He was actually appointed commander of a blimp by August of 1942 when the L eight took its infamous flight. Ernest had 800 hours of flight time in non-rich airships, and he had received several awards from the Navy, including the American Defense Service, medal, American Campaign Medal, and a World War II victory Medal.

Ernest had a wife named Helen, who he married in the summer of 1940. Helen's father lived in Akron, Ohio and worked for Goodyear. The newly weeds also lived in Akron for a short time before Ernest was stationed in [00:18:00] San Francisco. Ernest's mother-in-law told a reporter in 1942, my son-in-law was a level-headed and unexcitable sort of person.

He would've used his head in an emergency, I believe in quote. So one of his supervisors said he always displayed a keen intelligence and used sound judgment. The other crew member, Charles Adams, was born on July 4th, 1908 in Rockville, Pennsylvania to his parents, Minnie and Levi. He grew up with a brother and a sister, and by 1942, Charles had been in the Navy for several years as a petty officer, and on August 15th, 1942, he officially received his promot to a commissioned rank.

Literally, this is the day before the flight in question. Before obtaining his new role, Charles had served as a Chief Bosen and Warren Bosen. A Bosen is a ship's officer who is responsible for supervising the deck crew, maintaining the ship's rigging and ensuring the ship is seaworthy. Mandy, I [00:19:00] hate to tell you, but there's a reason I know that that is not boat Swain and it is Bosen, and that's because I.

Watch a lot of below deck and that's like the thing people wanna be on. That show is always a boso. Once again, reality TV pulling in, saving the day. Yes. Every time. Almost never. But in 1935, Charles survived the famous crashing of the USS Make an Airship. By August of 1942, he had almost 2300 flight hours and had received the Navy Good Conduct medal.

The American Defense Service Medal, the American Campaign Medal. The World War II Victory Medal. Charles was married to a woman named Helen, and they lived in New Jersey before Charles was stationed in San Francisco. Several hours after the LA Blimp went missing, along with Lieutenant Cody and Charles Adams, the blimp was spotted in daily City, California.

It was flying low to the ground and looked like it was underinflated. Eventually, the airship bumped into [00:20:00] the roof of a house and bumped into two cars before it crashed into the street. Onlookers could tell that something was clearly wrong with the blimp. I'm assuming beyond just the fact that it was crashed into the ground.

You know, it probably looked like there were other things wrong with it, but the balloon part of the blimp was sagging in the middle, and there were tears in the fabric. The assistant battalion chief of the Daily City Fire Department was quoted as saying that the blimp, Melissa looked like, quote, a big broken wiener.

That's what the fire, chief. Chief Yes. Said, uh, while it was floating through the city. This is what it looked like. It does give a specific picture. It does. He was right. Yeah. Yes. At some point during the eight's flight, it hit a hill and that bent one of the propellers and allegedly dislodged one of the bombs that it was carrying, which is terrifying.

Oh my gosh. This bomb just fell out of the blimp and rolled away and without the weight of this bomb, which was 300 [00:21:00] additional pounds. We've obviously talked about how. Clearly there's weight constraints on a blimp, and the bombs that they were carrying transporting already were heavy, so this one was 300 pounds.

Once it was gone out of the blimp, that allowed the blimp to be lighter and raise higher into the sky again. At one point, the blimp sank to the ground on a beach, and there were two men there who attempted to grab onto the line. But as the blimp hit the sand, one of the bombs, it was carrying, fell out again.

And now without that extra weight, the blimp once again rose back into the sky. This feels like a cartoon, literally does not feel like a real scenario. I, I like to think I'm pretty levelheaded, but I think if I saw a blimp crashing into the beach, I don't know that my first thing would be to run and go grab the ropes.

I would definitely be running the other direction. Yeah. Especially when you see that bomb rollout. I'd be like, what is happening today? Yes, exactly. But nobody on the beach saw anyone actually inside the blimp during this incident, which makes it all the more. Creepy and like weird. One bystander actually mistakenly [00:22:00] believed that the two men that were trying to hold, you know, grab, run over to the blimp, grab onto the line and hold it down.

They thought that those might be the crewmen who were trying to get the blimp under control. So this bystander made a report that he actually had seen this blimp land on the sand and watched as the crewman got out and walked away while the blimp ascended into the sky. Little did that guy know. It wasn't even the crewman.

No one knows where they were at this point. This was just two people who thought they could hold a blimp down with their fair hands. I've never had that kind of self-esteem ever. Um, so another witness, a man named Ricardo, was one of the first people to actually report seeing the blimp on the beach. He was near the Olympic Country Club when he saw the blimp moving over the ocean and coming towards him.

He said the blimps landing wheel dragged through the sand and the blimp then rose up before descending, and then it dropped the depth bomb and rose into the air again. So multiple people kind of reported seeing this same thing happen. The blimp goes to the ground, something falls out, and then it rises back into the [00:23:00] sky.

But clearly nobody on board, nobody, uh, controlling this thing at this point. Wow. At 11:22 AM Sergeant Brandon was patrolling near the Olympic Club when he got a call about a strange airship flying low to the ground. Sergeant Brandon was able to spot the blimp a short time later, and he started to follow it.

In his car, and as the blimp floated across town, more people just started taking notice, I believe, as you would if a blimp was floating barely above your town, of course. And they began following the blimp as well, just to see where it ended up. This reminds me of the movie. Any Pixar movie really? Maybe up, I don't know.

So some people had cameras that they used to capture images of what the blimp looked like before and after it finally crashed, which I find interesting. Some people had cameras, not everyone having one in their pocket. Yeah. There wasn't TikTok people going live. Right. Um, to watch this. But it, it does prove to show that some people in an emergency will grab their camera Yes.

And [00:24:00] maybe not grab a blimp. Yes. Um, and that's been a thing for decades. So there's a woman named Mrs. Appleton, and she was in her home when she suddenly heard a strange noise on the roof and noticed the darkness was descending over the entire house. And that's when Mrs. Appleton smelled something bizarre, which was helium.

The blimp had actually grazed her house and was now laying in the street nearby. As the blimp was crashing, it damaged some nearby power lines and the helium bag completely covered. A man named William's car onlookers rushed to the blimp to help rescue any passengers that may be inside. But they were shocked to discover that there was no one inside the blimp.

Police and firefighters that responded to the scene cut holes in the fabric of the blimp to prevent it from taking off again. While they worked to figure out exactly what the heck was going on, it was noted that the gondola and passenger cab of the blimp were still intact. All of the controls and the radio were working fine, and the doors were [00:25:00] secure, though one of them was open.

There were two life belts missing from the cab, but that wasn't really unusual because all crewmen wore the life belts when they were in the air for safety reasons. So of course it made sense that the two crewmen were already wearing them when they disappeared versus putting them on because they thought they were in danger.

The San Francisco examiner reported that an officer's cap. A half eaten sandwich papers and a spilled coffee cup were all found inside the gondola. There was also a locked briefcase that contained top secret codes left inside the gondola, and one of the quote unquote, depth bombs was actually missing, though it was later found on the Olympic golf course where the blimp had been seen flying extremely low to the ground.

The blimps propeller showed signs of its unmanned flight throughout the city. One propeller had mud on it while the other was slightly bent. Some newspapers at the time reported that the engine was not running, but had not been turned off, meaning that the blimp had actually just run out of fuel. But in 1959, it [00:26:00] was reported that the blimp may have run outta fuel after it was seen circling a patch of fog earlier that morning.

Other sources state that the blimp still had plenty of fuel, and we still have more to get into after one last break to year word from this week's sponsors. Before the break, we were getting into the. Story of the infamous LA Blimp flight. Infamous because it crashed into a street in a town without anybody on board, and that was strange.

And also it was a broken wiener. That as well, in the weeks that followed this mysterious crash efforts were made to locate the two men who were on board, but they were never found and their bodies were never found either. The beaches in the area, were all carefully searched as well, but nothing even belonging to these two men was ever found.

The Navy wasn't even able to find any leads on these men's whereabouts and couldn't explain what happened to them. They issued a statement saying they were positive that the men were not inside the blimp at any [00:27:00] point during its derelict flight over land. But despite this statement in 1993, which is years later, yeah, the union reported that two witnesses had actually seen a man with a white cap in the gondola of the blimp as it floated over the city.

These sightings have not been confirmed and are highly unlikely, and also. Who are you in 1993 making this claim? Like that's just so random. It feels a little late to come out with it. It does, yeah. Several other reports came in alleging that two men were seen parachuting from the blimp, but these claims were also ruled out because the blimp wasn't missing any parachutes when it was found.

The land search for the two missing men was concluded on August 19th. A spokesperson for the 12th Naval District was quoted in the Half Moon Bay Review saying that the area from the spot where the blimp first touched ground and its final resting place had been thoroughly covered. The search for the men continued in the sea with hopes that the life jackets and life belts that the men were wearing would've kept their bodies afloat if they had gone [00:28:00] into the ocean.

The L eight was examined by the Navy who found no shell holes in the gondola or gas bag, and they found no evidence of structural failure. No stress of weather, no evidence of loss of control. No evidence of a struggle aboard the ship. There was no blood, no shell casings, nothing like that. And they also found that the blimp had plenty of fuel to continue the flight and that the ignition switches had been left on.

At the time of the disappearances, it was theorized that the men had jumped from the blimp when they realized it was sinking and that they were picked up by maybe another friendly ship. But since the men never appeared, this theory was quickly ruled out. Additionally, the Navy said that it was common practice for the crewman to stay with a gondola.

Even when faced with a forced landing situation, meaning that bailing out wasn't something they were even trained to do, which makes sense. These are navy, you know, this is the Navy, right? They're not gonna be like, yeah, if something's going wrong, just abandon ship and bail. See you later, right? Mm-hmm.

Exactly. That's not what they're trained to do. So of course, these strange circumstances have led to [00:29:00] numerous theories about what actually happened to these men, and we're gonna go over a few of the popular ones. So one theory is that the two men got into a fight and fell outta the gondola after the crash.

There were rumors that were swirling around that these two men really disliked each other, but the FBI looked into this theory and found no real evidence that there was any feud or ill will between the men. Another theory is that the men were captured by a Japanese submarine, but this theory also seems unlikely because the men weren't present in any Japanese records or submarine.

Logs searched after World War ii. Stranger theories, including the possibilities that these men were abducted by A UFO also exist, huh? I don't buy that one. I'm a, I like a good, I like an interesting conspiracy theory, but UFOs don't seem to fit this one. No. You're like, not this one. Not this time. We've got others.

Yeah. So there are two other theories though that are the most logical. The first one is that one of the men accidentally fell through a door, [00:30:00] the blimp. After it opened unexpectedly, and then the other man tried to help him, but ultimately they both fell. The investigation on land concluded that the men had left the blimp while it was above the ocean.

So skeptics of this theory question why the men's bodies weren't found floating on the water because they would've been wearing these life jackets and belts. However, if the men fell into the water from a height of, I don't know, hundreds of feet in the air, their life jackets could have just popped off and their bones would've broken upon impact causing the men to sink.

At some point, the Navy gathered a board of investigation to look into the disappearance. The board concluded that there was a strong presumption that both of the men fell out of the gondola and were drowned, but there was no definite evidence to that effect. Though they did acknowledge that it was plausible and a likely scenario.

The board stated no other adequate explanation offers itself for the abandonment of an air worthy airship in the absence of fire. Or other casualty, nor is any [00:31:00] satisfactory reason found for failure to use the radio, nor is any satisfactory reason found for failure of surface vessels to cite the men in the water or their ability to make their way to some nearby ship assisted by their life jackets unless the ladder failed or some further accident occurred after they fell.

During an investigative hearing, Lieutenant Commander George Watson said that nothing he'd been able to discover had given him any ground to form any reasonable opinion about the sequence of events or why the blimp was abandoned, or what happened to the two men aboard A memorial service for Charles and Earnest was held on September 13th, 1942, less than a month after they disappeared, and the two men were legally declared dead the following year.

Ernest has a headstone in Arlington National Cemetery in section MJ site 35. And as for what happened to the LA after the crash, it was actually repaired and it went back into service with the Navy. When World War [00:32:00] II was over, the blimp was actually sent back to Goodyear and it wasn't used again for several years.

Then in 1969, the gondola from the LA was used for the new Goodyear Blim called America, which was used for marketing and sports televising until 1982. When it was placed back in storage, the America had an official retirement flight around the city of Houston with its replacement. That was also named the America.

Oh my gosh, guys, we have got to be more creative. I know. And when it was announced that the L eight was retiring for good, many people urged that the gondola be stored in a museum due to his significance as the ghost blimp, and also due to its significance as a, you know, world War II airship that serviced the Navy.

Yeah. Well that makes sense to me to have that. Yeah. Have that safe memorialized in a way, for sure. Yeah. What do you think happened, Mandy? I honestly think it's just what they concluded. I think whether, I don't know. I mean, they didn't find any evidence that the two men didn't like each other or would [00:33:00] be arguing, but I could definitely see a scenario where I.

Somebody fell out and the other one tried to either save them. I don't really know though. You know they did find the blimp with a door open. Yeah. So that kind of leads you to believe that there was some kind of an accident and maybe, I don't know whether the door opened and the other one man tried to get the door closed and the other one tried to come help and they both fell out.

I don't know. I do think that's probably the most likely scenario is that an accident happened and they both fell out. I agree with you, I can't help, but every time I think of this scenario, I'm thinking more of a hot air balloon, less blimp. So I'm really in my head seeing a hot air balloon. So I have a hard time even I do too, differentiate for I, because I don't fully know what it's like on the inside of like a blimps gondola, you know?

I don't know. Yeah. Um, how easy it would be to fall out. But of course, this is also back in 1940s, so, you know. Who knows how easy it was for those doors to open. I feel like I've been on some, I don't know, just even some different [00:34:00] things I've done on vacations. You know, sometimes the safety features, I'm like, well, this seems like a little rickety for something that's supposed to be holding me into this.

Like, right. You know, so who knows what the, you know, what the doors were even like, were they that secure? Like we don't really know. I do think it's fascinating too, that it's the. The Ghost Blimp. I think. I know stuff like this is like looked at kind of silly in some ways because it probably is the most obvious answer.

But I do think stuff stories like this make you more interested in the time and the history of it, like you've talked about before. It makes you wanna read more about what else was going on in that time, which I think is always kind of interesting. And there was a story that I read that actually happened around the same time.

During 1945, actually this has to do with the Bermuda Triangle and don't I love the, the Bermuda Triangle. I mean, I don't, I love to hear about it. It's fascinating. Right. So this was actually flight 19, and this happened on December 5th, 1945. So really it's around the same time. There are five planes.

There's these torpedo bombers. [00:35:00] Each plane has three people and they're basically doing practice runs, right? To figure out how to. Drop bombs at the right spot. And so basically they're leaving from Fort Lauderdale. There's five legs of this thing. So they go to the first one, they drop their bombs and they go west and they go for 20 miles east, that sort of thing.

Well, at some point, the main lieutenant Charles Taylor, he is reporting that his compasses are not. They're not communicating with each other. They're not working. So keep in mind, 15 people, five planes later, people that were listening to this story were like, he was clearly very disoriented because as they were going east off of Florida, after they've done all this, if they just went west, they would get back to Florida.

Right? But for some reason he was like, we're gonna go northeast. There's five planes. They all have to follow their leader, so they're all following him. He's saying, I think we're over the keys. And they're like, yeah, I don't think you're over the keys Anyway, keeps getting more and more confused. He's like, no, this is the way we [00:36:00] go.

Finally, they convince him to go west. As they go west, there's just not enough fuel, so there's like 10 miles left of fuel left. He says, when the first plane goes down, we all go down. So as the first plane goes down, everybody goes down. And they've never found all five of these planes. They haven't found any of them.

None of them. What? Yes. Okay. That sounds, but in Bermuda Triangle, it's kind of, I don't know, it just was similar, but it made me so sad to be like, all right, we got 10 miles guys. First one goes down, everyone goes down. Like that's it. We're, I mean, all of them had the same amount of fuel, so they would've gone down.

But I don't know, they were just like, that's wild. And the way the Navy originally said that this happened was to say that it was like. Yeah, it was probably that guy's fault, um, Taylor's fault. But then later they said, not quite sure. We we're not quite sure which the theory of that is. Like the Navy doesn't wanna say, we had some guy who really screwed this up.

Right. And they'd rather say it's a [00:37:00] mystery, but then that leads to mysteries like the Ghost Blimp, right? And then this is the Bermuda Triangle and all that sort of thing. So it's a, I wonder if it's just the time that this took place that it was like right. Easier to For sure. And with that one, right. And like with that one, I feel like obviously, like you said, if you're playing follow the leader and you are following up the person who is in command, that's literally what you have to do whenever that's your job, right?

Like that's your job to do that. And so to me, yes, it does make sense that. Like your leader could lead you into like a bad situation. Yeah. That's literally why you are only trusting certain people to be leaders, right? Because they have to be the ones who really know what they're doing, right? 'cause they're responsible for everyone else.

And if an accident happens. Yeah, it happens to all of you. Like, so, you know, I do kind of feel like that is reasonable to say that like he got turned around now the reasons why, if it had anything to do with the Bermuda Triangle, like that could be something totally different. Yeah. That's really sad though.

I've never heard of [00:38:00] that story. I know there was something also that he didn't, they were like, do you need to turn on? Do you have this turned on? Basically just basically for other people to be able to find you. And he was like, Nope, I'm turning it on now. So it doesn't make a lot of sense. Like the whole idea, I think, I think the most likely theory there is that.

He was disoriented. Yeah. And didn't know where he was around. Right. Yeah. Wow. And um, yeah, so it's really sad, but yeah, they're still looking for, they've never found him. Wow. That is wild. We talked and tells you how big the ocean is. Yes. And we've talked before about how like terrifying it is. You know, how flights that have been lost over the ocean and how, you know, there's literally no way of.

Getting to the depths of the ocean to even see if things are down there, you know, or to find, to actually get answers on certain things. But yeah, that's like very scary to me. The ocean is, is I have a healthy. Fear and respect for the ocean for sure. That's, I think a healthy fear is very much required for the ocean, so yes, absolutely.

So what an interesting and, uh, kind of exciting episode this week for sure. So we have, we ended turning [00:39:00] the page and doing last thing before we go few months back. And some people have hated that. They wish that we would do it. We, they wish we were still doing it and I wish I could say we were bringing it back forever, but we're not.

But we are bringing it back for today. Yeah. It actually hurt my feelings the way you sounded that way. I know. I dunno how to tell you this, this will be possibly the last time. Maybe not. Oh gosh. You never do that. I know. Alright, so we, we, until next time. Yeah. So this week. Surprise. We are gonna turn the page and do last thing before we go, before we go.

So we have a little game. You know, we used to love to play our little word association games. You guys always love those. They're always fun. Um, so this one we did kind of related to, not blimps, but just the world of Yeah, air. Nautical weather ships. Yeah. Stuff like that. Yeah. Things along those lines. So, uh, we've played similar games like this before.

I will. Well, we're gonna give each other some clues and the other one's gonna try and guess the word that we're thinking of based on these three clues. So do [00:40:00] you wanna go first, Melissa? Um, sure. How about this, uh, route airplane direction navigation. Oh, that would be a good guess. Um, it's two words. The first one is flight.

Flight plan. The clues. It started with a P flight path. Oh yeah. Perfect. Okay, so my first one will be your clues are fall canopy safety. Um, parachute. Yes. Yeah. Wow. Oh my gosh. Well, I've done that. Yes. So, you know, safety was not a big word. That's the opposite. Next one is travel flights. Terminal airport.

Good. Good job. You said that with no confidence and you really should have had a lot more. Yes. Okay. My next one is Black holes, zero gravity. Infinite space.[00:41:00] 

Honestly, I feel so stupid and don't let my son know that I don't have a clue. I mean, black hole's, all I'm thinking are black hole sun, and that's just a song, so I don't know. Galaxy close, think bigger, um, the, um, world. Uh, no. That would be the worst one. Universe? Yes. Oh wow. Okay. Yes. Cool. Nice. Well, I felt like you gave me that one because I did not get there.

Um, how about this one? Okay. I don't expect you to get this. There's no way I would get this. But let's try rain weather chemicals.

Cloud seating? Yes. Is that seriously? How would you know that? Because I'm a conspiracy theorist. Oh, that was it. I forgot. Okay. Yeah. As soon as I say chemicals, I'm like, there could be a chance. You'll get this. What else do they call that? What are those things in the. The air that [00:42:00] people point to. Mm. You're thinking of chem trails.

Thank you. That's what I would've guessed. Same but different. Okay. I was like, no way. You'll get this one. Okay. Okay. Okay. Let's do uh, my next one. Blades. Hover Rescue Blades. Hover Rescue helicopter. Yes. Yay. I was at first thinking like skating, but that didn't make much sense. My last one is air float party.

Mm. Think simple air float party balloon. Yes. Oh, like just literally Just balloons. Just balloons. Sorry. Exciting. Awesome. Okay. Well those were fun and I always loved doing a little word clue Game with you, Melissa. Thank you. Uh, we're very, very good at this, obviously. Yes. Yeah. And so real quick before we go, if you want more.

Content [00:43:00] bonuses, uh, documentaries that we're gonna be watching this month. We have the premium on Apple Podcast and Spotify. You'll see it's like premium. It'll say subscribers. You subscribe there and you get all access to all of it. We've. Are like three months in now. So there is quite a bit. And of course, patreon.com/moms and Mysteries podcast.

We have coming up our, uh, discord watch along party. We need to figure out what we're watching there and a bunch of other stuff. The Patreon group is just really nice and everyone's comments in there. It's always very, very sweet. So yeah, we love it. All right guys. Well, that was the episode for this week.

Thank you guys for listening. We will be back next week. Same time, same place. New story. Have a great week. Bye.