ments. The speed was to be obtained by a combination of high
power with the utmost refinement in design to keep down resis-
tance. Twin engines were used giving a total of 250 B. H P.
The actual speed on trial was 60 miles per hour, making prob-
ably the fastest airship of its size ever built.

During the intensive research to improve the B class envelope
fabric, it was determined that deterioration was largely caused
by the combined action of heat and the actinic rays of sunlight.

FIG. 7.-Car of C-1, showing engine mounting, air scoop behind propeller, bomb and rack on side, parachute protruding from container, inside fairing on car bottom.

Attempts were made to meet the trouble by filtering out the
actinic rays through coloring first the exterior of the fabric,
and later the rubber gas film between the plies of cloth. Proper
coloring materials were hard to get, and it was usually found
that the deterioration resulting from the heat absorbed by the
fabric was nearly as rapid as before. About the time the C
class design was begun, information from abroad showed that
the British airships were suffering from the same troubles and
that the most successful protection for the fabric was a coat-
ing of aluminum powder, the object of this coating being to

stop all the light from going below the surface of the envelope and to reflect and radiate quickly nearly all the heat. The C class envelopes were made of fabric coated with bright alumiThis fabric has been found by comparative exposure tests superior to the best developed during the war in England, France and Italy.

num.

The principal dimensions and characteristics of the C-5, as weighed off before her start for Newfoundland, were as follows:

Endurance at 45 m. p. h., 47 hrs., or 2150 miles.

Endurance at 55 m. p. h., 28 hrs., or 1540 miles.

During 1918, contracts were placed with Goodyear and Goodrich for 30 airships, the cars to be supplied from the Burgess Company, Marblehead, Mass. After the armistice, contracts were reduced to 15 ships.

C-1, the first ship, was completed in September 1918, and on its maiden trip October 22, 1918, flew 400 miles from Akron to Washington in 83 hours. It flew over the Navy Department building and landed at Anacostia to permit an inspection by officers of the department. It then preceeded to Rockaway, Long Island. Later in the year, the C-1 was ordered to Key West and flew down the coast stopping at intermediate air stations.

The C-5 on May 14, 1919, flew from Montauk to Newfoundland with six men in 25 hours, 50 minutes, a distance of 1022 nautical miles on chart without stop. This flight will remain

for a long time as a notable achievement. The distance actually flown (not being in a straight line) was about 1200 nautical miles or very nearly the distance from Newfoundland to the Azores.

The C-5 was unfortunately lost at Newfoundland in a gale while moored out in a field and was, therefore, unable to attempt

the Trans-Atlantic Flight which was within her designed endur

ance.

The navy's first airships, the B class, were thoroughly practical ships and while not remarkable for performance, are interesting as the solution of a design and production problem. The navy's second lot of airships, the C class, were, in performance, an enormous advance over the B class and placed us at once abreast of the times. These ships are generally admitted to be, for their type, equal to or superior to anything abroad.

[COPYRIGHTED]

U. S. NAVAL INSTITUTE, ANNAPOLIS, MD.

THE OPPOSITION TO SANE SPORT IN AMERICAN COLLEGES

By FRANK Angell

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In a late number of the NAVAL INSTITUTE PROCEEDINGS Medical Inspector Taylor, U. S. N., has drawn up a vigorous indictment of the system of sport carried on, or suffered, in most American universities, and that no one may, from the start, mistake the intent of the article, he has entitled it the "Crime of the Colleges." The separate counts in the indictment are to the effect that the system of athletics in vogue in our colleges to-day wastes itself in turning out merely a few highly specialized athletes, that the major sports of football, baseball, track, and rowing are carried on by an insignificant minority of the students whilst the participation in athletic games of the great majority consists in howling from the bleachers in intercollegiate matches. From this follows an over, and often injurious, physical development of the few, and a serious lack of bodily exercise for the many.

The present writer confesses to an experience of about 25 years as chairman of a faculty athletic committee in a university of moderate size, and for fear that this confession may conjure up the vision of an antiquated professor fishing up his arguments in matters athletic from his inkstand, with a desk chair as the point d'appui of his experience, he hastens to add that in his sinful youth he was excessively addicted to all kinds of athletic games and has on various occasions played against Annapolis in baseball and football.

It might be comforting to the spirit of a college man if he were able to drive back a vigorous rejoinder to Inspector Taylor's

1

Refers to November, 1918, issue, No. 189, of the PROCEEDINGS.

straight-from-the-shoulder charge of our collegiate criminality, but except for a feeble rejoinder to the effect that neither the military police nor orders from the Secretaries of War and Navy were required to force West Point and Annapolis into a similar course of crime, there seems to be no "come back." One cannot even counter; the charge is in the main just. "In the main " because in many colleges intramural sports and exercises are carried on with considerable success and more or less enjoyment on the part of the participants. But these sports have no rating alongside the intercollegiate events; by the elect of the "big games" they are endured but not esteemed.

Now three per cent is a liberal estimate for the number of men students in any institution taking part in football; from one and a half to two is the commoner proportion. Similar conditions prevail in track and baseball. As the system goes, football, for example, consists in selecting a few powerful or skilful men, originally handpicked from some high-school where they had undergone a similar process of selection, and then drilling them intensively and monotonously by highly paid coaches to meet a similarly drilled and selected bunch of men in a “big game.”

Inspector Taylor's point is that this sort of thing injures men physically. My point is that this grinding drill takes out of a sport its essential element, which is the enjoyment of the player. De facto the game does not exist as a sport; it has become a business -in more senses than one..

In Ciceronian phrase, "since these things exist," why are they so? Why are they not mended by college faculties? Assuredly, the addresses made by college men at the meeting of the National Collegiate Athletic Association in New York last December show that college men are not only aware of the evils of the situation, but are keenly desirous of mending them. The present writer has in his correspondence files two valued letters from presidents of large Eastern universities from which it appears that movements toward reform in athletics in the institutions under their direction had been blocked or hampered by alumni influence. The more demonstrative and noisier elements among the alumni stand for the big games and object to any interference with a system which seems likely to produce them. The "rah-rah and sporty" contingent want to get together at these events for a