Airship crews are at action stations even during peace time, on the alert against the appearance of strange craft. They identify each passing ship through binoculars, by voice or radio, taking no chances that attack without warning by a seeming peaceful ship might not be a declaration of war. As many as 40 or 50 ships may be encountered and identified in a day's patrol. The airships are off at sun-up, back at sundown, unless on more extended reconnaissance, move quietly into the big dock.
Patrol is tedious work. Occasionally there is a break in the routine. Lt. Boyd has been assigned command of the big TC-14 for the next day's patrol. He is up late studying the curious tracks he is to follow in coordination with the other airships. At midnight however the radio brings startling word. An airplane leaving Norfolk with a crew of ten for Newport, is reported missing. Nearby destroyers, airplanes, airships, are ordered out as a searching party. The TC-14, having the longest cruising radius, 52 hours without refueling, is sent off at once, with a senior officer, Lt. Trotter, in charge. Men's lives may be at stake.
By daylight, the TC-14 has flown over the entire northern half of the plane's track and back, watching intently for distress signals or flares or any sign of the distressed plane. Three miles north of Hog Island light outside Norfolk, the ship encounters fog extending clear to the water. Search of this area is hopeless and the ship scouts the edges, waits for the fog to burn off. At noon as it lifts, pieces of wreckage are spotted at the very area which it had hidden, and which the TC-14 had flown over five hours earlier.
The airship cruised around, hoping that some bit of wreckage might support a survivor, finally returned to its station after 20 hours, during which time it had covered 1,000 miles, intensively in parallel courses 20 miles wide. Had the luckless plane or any of its crew been able to send up flares anywhere within an area of 20,000 square miles of water, the airship could have come up alongside and effected a rescue in a matter of minutes.
In the meantime, Lt. Boyd, originally assigned to TC-14, was up at dawn only to learn of the change in plans. He was assigned to pilot the smaller G-1 trainer to New London, keep a sharp look-out enroute for the missing plane, then work with the destroyers on torpedo exercises. The G-1 had no galley aboard and in the rush the matter of food for an 18-hour cruise was somehow overlooked, and Boyd and his crew set off with only a couple of sardine sandwiches apiece and a pot of coffee, which quickly grew cold.