Airship Patrol Squadron 32 over Naval Air Station Moffett Field
USN L-ships from Airship Patrol Squadron 32 over Naval Air Station Moffett Field during WWII. Hangar #1 on left. Hangars 2 and 3 on right.
When the United States entered WWII, a coastal defense plan was developed to protect the shipping lanes and search for enemy vessels and aircraft. The plan established 10 USN airship bases. Airships were generally better than airplanes to escort surface ships and search for submarines and mines because of their slower speeds, longer times aloft, and resultant advantages for visual, magnetic, and radar surveillance. The existing airship hangar (Hangar #1 in above photo) made Moffett Field an obvious choice for the first west coast airship base and Airship Patrol Squadron 32 (ZP-32) was established there on January 31, 1942 with LCDR George F. Watson as commanding officer. Ironically, Moffett Field was an army base at the time and the squadron's first two airships, TC-13 and TC-14, were originally army airships. But later in 1942, the base was transferred back to the Navy, the squadron was renamed Blimp Squadron 32 (still ZP-32), and Hangars 2 & 3 (above photo) were built to house its L, G, M, and K-type Goodyear airships. In 1931, Hangar #1 was constructed for the USS Macon and in 1933, the base was dedicated as NAS Sunnyvale. It was renamed NAS Moffett Field later that same year to honor Rear Admiral William A. Moffett who was killed when Macon's sister ship, USS Akron, was lost in a storm off the New Jersey coast.
ZP-32 patrolled the central Pacific coast from Moffett Field and auxiliary bases at Eureka and Watsonville, California. The northern and southern coasts were patrolled by the other two west coast blimp squadrons: ZP-33 at Tillamook, Oregon and ZP-31 at Santa Ana, California, respectively. The west coast airships operated from Ensenada, Mexico to Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada. In October of 1942, all of the west coast airships were under the command of Captain Scott E. Peck of Airship Patrol Group 3 at Moffett Field. Two months later, the west coast airships were organized as Airship Group 3 of Fleet Airship Wing 31 with headquarters at Moffet Field. From July of 1943 until the end of the war, the official organization was Fleet Airships Pacific, Fleet Airship Wing 3 and included ZP-31 at Santa Ana, ZP-33 at Tillamook, and ZP-32 and Blimphedron 3 (Blimp Headquarters Squadron 3) at Moffett Field. The airships patrolled shipping lanes, escorted surface vessels, searched for missing aircraft, personnel, Japanese submarines and mines, and experimented with new radar and magnetic detection methods under development at that time. These methods included magnetic anomaly detection (MAD) and microwave early warning (MEW) radar. Similar to Patrol Squadron VP-63, which adopted the name "MAD CATS" to emphasize its use of magnetic anomaly detection, ZP-32 apparently adopted the "MEW" cat on its insignia to emphasize its use of microwave early warning radar. However, it is not known if this was an official insignia.