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Isadore Stessel
1915 ~ 1943 U.S. Navy WW-II Blimp K-74 |
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Isadore Stessel
1915 ~ 1943 U.S. Navy WW-II Blimp K-74 |
K-1. Delivered in 1931, this one-of-a-kind design was the
first U.S. Navy pressure airship to use an internal
suspension system. It had an initial volume of 320,000 cubic feet, but was modified several times during its
service life. The K-ships of World War II that followed and
their post-war modifications increased to a final size of 547,000 cubic feet.
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Isadore Stessel, bombardier on a Navy Blimp K-74, died at sea near the Florida Keys on 1943 - his life the only one lost in a fight with a German submarine that shot the airship down.
54 years later, Isadore Stessel's cousin received the medals Isadore earned:
The medals were presented at a ceremony as part of Armed Forces Day & National Heritage Preservation Day at the site of the former Richmond Naval Air Station in South Dade County. It was the base for blimps that patroled the Florida coast during WW-II, looking for enemy submarines and escorting merchant ship convoys.
The purple heart was apparently mailed to Isadores parents in 1944 but was never delivered. All the information the Stessels received was a telegram reporting his death, plus the particularly terrible detail that he had survived the downing of the blimp only to be killed by a shark. His remains were not recovered. He was 28 years old, the son of Sam & Rose Stessel.
There were 11 men aboard the blimp, a 250 foot K-74 escorting a convoy of merchant ships past the Keys. Near midnight on July 18, they detected a submarine on the surface, following a tanker ship and a freighter. Not sure if the sub was friend or foe., they decided to fly in low over it. If it fired at them, they would know. A deck gunner on the sub opened fire. The blimp's machine gunner fired back. Stessel, a petty officer second class turned loose two depth charges, ashcan like bombs designed to shatter submerged submarines. The enemy sub escaped only to be sunk a few days later by the British. The K-74 damaged the sub's ballast tanks badly enough that the sub could not submerge, there were no survivours from the sub. The tanker and the freighter were unscathed. The blimp deflated and fell onto the ocean. All the crew but Stessel were rescued.
Six cousins still survive Isadore Stessel. Until march of this year, none of them knew how bravely he and his mates fought on the night of July 18, 1943. Not even the Navy knew how successfully they fought until the 1960's. The blimps crew's commanding officer was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1963. The medals awarded to Stessel were approved in the 60's, but Saul Stessel said no relatives were ever contacted about that.
Much of what the Navy knows were dug our of archives by Chief Yeoman Anthony Atwood
Larry Rodrigues - U.S. Navy Airships Picture Book
Naval Airship Association, Inc
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