Ernest M. Marshall

This book is simultaneously a biography of Rear Admiral Herbert Victor Wiley and a history of the U.S. Navy's lighter-than-air (LTA) program. As tensions rose between Japan and the United States over control of East Asia and the Pacific Ocean, the prospects of war between the two nations increased. The Navy tracked Germany’s use of zeppelins during World War I and saw an aircraft with the potential to conduct long-range reconnaissance over the oceans—something that could not be achieved by...