For those of you that like a mysterious story, here is one from Popular Mechanics: "A Navy Blimp Crash-Landed on a City Street. Why Had the Crew Completely Vanished?" It was August 6, 1942. A blimp designated L-8, on loan to the Navy from Goodyear, had been patrolling the coastal waters off California for Japanese submarines. Armed with two 365-pound depth bombs and a .30-caliber machine gun, it carried a crew of two: Navy airmen Lieutenant Ernest Cody and Ensign Charles Adams. An hour and a half into their patrol, they identified a possible enemy submarine and dropped smoke flares to mark the location before investigating further. But that afternoon, the partially deflated blimp was drifting over a residential neighborhood, bumping into cars and houses before coming to rest. "The door had been latched open, the loudspeaker system’s microphone was dangling out the open door, and the engine was still running, but there was no sign of Cody or Adams." And there never would be. The two had vanished. "After a year with no sign of either Cody or Adams, the men were declared dead."
The blimp was returned to Goodyear after the war and used until it was retired in 1982. "It now sits on display at the National Naval Aviation Museum, the gondola repainted with its old L-8 design and markings, still at the center of a mystery that, in all likelihood, will never be solved," the article ends.
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