Lighter Than Air - Monograph on the Ewa Mooring Mast

In 20 March, 1931 a report by Lt. H.A. Ingram, U.S. Navy, titled

"Monograph on the Mooring Mast and Lighter Than Air Station"

outlines specifically the many fascinating details behind

The purpose, design and construction of the Ewa Field Mooring Mast.

The report is repeatedly laced with the term "lighter than air" to

describe such air stations, the type of pilots, missions, etc.

Two main sites were considered on Oahu for the Mooring Mast station- Mokapu, site of today's Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station, and Ewa.

Mokapu was considered more expensive to develop and had no railway access- something very important in the 1920's. Some other sites up around Schofield Barracks were also kicked around, but it always came back to Ewa as being the best all around location. One big factor was that Oahu Railway & Land Company had both the land rights through their Campbell Estate lease, plus what was considered an "excellent"

railway line very near the desired mooring mast location.

Things were put into high gear when the Navy decided it wanted to send the U.S.S. Los Angeles airship out to Hawaii as soon as possible. The

initial lease term began on March 3, 1925. The nearby Ewa Mill

Plantation agreed to supply fresh water and construction of the mast site was completed by a private Honolulu contractor on July, 1925. While no mention was made of it in Ingram's monograph, the mooring mast

and base facilities were almost certainly brought out to the Ewa site via the O.R.&L. railway line- which still exists today.

The Navy also allowed the Army to use the mooring mast in 1928

as an artillery observation point during several months of mobile field artillery practice in the Ewa area.

In 1929 arrangements were made to allow the German airship

Graf Zeppelin to use the mast facilities during her Round The World Cruise during that summer, but the Graf Zeppelin never made it.

The 1931 Monograph ends with the Navy considering upgrading the

base facilities with better communications and support buildings.