Shipbucket

In the intervening post-work hours, I too found that cutaway-model picture. Crud, I wanted to take credit for it!

However, I observe the following.

The era of this design matches very closely the afloat radar pickets, which mounted the same-frequency wide-antenna radar designated, at the time, SPS-17A. The width of this antenna is.... 42ft, essentially that described in Ryan's SAC sheets as well as on Wikipedia.

I strongly suspect there would be immense commonality between SPS-17A (and the later wide metric-band search radars) and the antenna within the airship. The latter would surely be more lightly constructed, since it has no wind loading, but would be otherwise identical.

Quite an interesting observation.

I think just to illustrate the positioning of the antenna itself and the rather novel concept of suspending an air search antenna within an envelope, it will probably be sufficient to use the existing radar's drawing. I'll try to get to it tomorrow but no promises!

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)

All you ever wanted to know about the ZPG-2 airships: http://libtreasures.utdallas.edu/xmlui/ ... 735.1/1880

177MB PDF maintenance manual for the ZPG-2s. Wish I had this when I first drew these blimps... would have eliminated a lot of extra googling and headscratching over what certain parts were!

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)

Does it contain the location and shape of the radar too?

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Would you please not eat my gun...

Ah... this manual is for the ZPG-2. We were discussing the later ZPG-2W and ZPG-3W. The ZPG-2 was the original ASW patrol blimp.

Speaking of which, I never did get around to that cutaway view... I'll try to do that tonight... LOL

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)

No, but this might "Illustrated Parts Breakdown, Navy Model ZPG-3W Airship" (from the same collection, and I've already shared it with Colo).

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𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐍𝐄𝐓- 𝑻𝒐 𝑪𝒐𝒈𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝑺𝒐𝒍𝒗𝒆