Iowa's Men In Black Overalls

Ida: In Dresser, local lore has it that the land around the future Iowa Rural Housing Authority's newest low income housing project is cursed. Ever since Jacob Carson, Monroe Watkins, and Owen Adams were mysteriously killed on August 23, 1897 atop the ridge overlooking the fields of what would be the Housing Authority's land, people have shunned the property. Old timers say the three teenagers went up on the ridge to discover the cause of strange orange and blue-white lights in the sky over the field below. A hermit who lived on the hill, so the tale goes, saw two men wearing black denim overalls take the three young men away. To this day, no one's real sure how the lads died exactly---but that they "broke every bone in their bodies".

     Also according to legend, soon after the murder, two men stormed into the house of Dennis Fairchild, editor of the Dresser Republican and the Mayor of the town at the time. Helpless to intervene, his wife and daughter watched the two black-overall clad men pull Fairchild out of the house and savagely beat him. Fairchild never spoke about it and if anyone stopped by to tell him of strange lights or dark-clad strangers at their door, he denounced them as crazed rumor-mongers and threw them out of his office.

     But those few stalwart souls who swore through hell and highwater on a raft of Bibles about what they saw in the sky were soon visited by the two Men in Black Overalls...

     The Housing Authority's intention to purchase the shunned property dislodged a century-old secret; a secret so well kept that even the US Navy scarcely believed the 16 acres of alfalfa known in their archives as the "Cordelia Installation" had ever belonged to it at all. Only after 8 months---during which both land and information about it were reclassifed as "Classifed"---did the Navy conclude that the land and all related information could be safely de-classified. IRHA purchased the land and the Navy very quietly released the information to the public. That once forgotten secret information tells the fantastic story of the Men in Black Overalls.

     The Navy documents make no mention of how Captain Stephen Cabbot USN became the officer in charge of the Cordelia Installation. However, this is covered extensively in diaries at the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Archives. Cabbot met then Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Thodore Roosevelt, at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard on March 18, 1897 for the keel laying ceremony of the USS Borealis. The event was a triumph to Cabbot's distinguished eight years as a Senior Designer with the US Navy Design Bureau in Washington, DC and this might have been why Assistant Secretary Roosevelt sought him out. The diaries suggest Roosevelt won over Cabbot by showing him a set of German blueprints. While Cabbot couldn't read German, what fragment he gleaned of the whole surely astounded him: the plans were that of a rigid airship over 300 feet long! Roosevelt then presented Michael Steiner as the man who knew the most about the blueprints. The tall, lean Steiner smiled often but said little---an enigmatic trait Cabbot detested not merely for its mystery but also for the way Steiner's toothy smile exuded a chilling ruthlessness.

     The ghostly frames of a tumble-down bandstand and trackless railroad station that foggy morn of of March 27, 1897, were not what Captain Cabbot expected of the Cordelia Installation. Clearly, the Assistant Secretary had never seen the abandoned western Iowa town he had rather dubiously purchased under US Navy auspices. But by the end of the week, all 75 men of Cabbot's command had quietly assembled at Cordelia, and began erecting the first of two huge work sheds. With Roosevelt's blessing, Cabbot constructed a 40-foot semi-rigid test ship to shake out any problems with the blueprints of the huge German craft. With the US Navy providing sailcloth and seamen to stitch and rig the gas bag to its keel and control gondola, she was quickly readied for her maiden flight in early April, 1897.

     But mechinical flaws bedeviled Cabbot's design from the outset. While her cigar shape suggested air-worthiness, Steiner's small engine was under-powered and the two propellers cavitated so baddly at high speed that the craft wollowed and steered sluggishly. To counter this, Cabbot was obliged to add a pair of stubby wings both fore and aft to add stability. The Navy construction gang, who were mostly Irish, dubbed the airship the St. Brendan likening its wollowing to a "curragh", a small Irish boat used by the saint.

     The airship's keel included a central mast designed to anchor internal cables and thus minimize stress. This configuration also required that the gas-handling hardware be fixed to the mast on top of the airship. A small rope ladder on the mast went from the gondola into the body between the airship's two gasbags up to small cupola on top where the pressure release valves were. Two days after the first inflation, the groundscrew discovered the gasbags were leaking the extremely flamable hydrogen gas. Cabbot ordered the ship deflated and every inch of canvas laquered to better seal the leaks.

     The first full flight test came on the night of April 15, 1897. With light winds out of the southwest at sunset, Cabbot and Steiner climbed into the rickety open two-seated frame. With the motor clattering and the groundscrew straining on her tethers, Cabbot ordered to cast off. At once, the St. Brendan leapt into the air. As it rose, Steiner engaged the propellors and they ascended skyward even more swiftly. Below, they could see the groundscrew starting bonfires to delineate the boundary of the field for the ship to land.

     "Since she handled well despite her numerous flaws, I decided gain altitude and check her speed," recounted Cabbot in his report to Roosevelt. "Little did I realize this Icarian evocation. As we gained height, the fierce, frigid wind twarted Steiner's straining motor to keep the St. Brendan on course. Bringing her about northwest to tack against the wind only caused her to buck and wollow. Pointing her head-on into the wind smoothed her out but allowed the wind to drive us before it. Soon, I beheld raw, jagged lightning near to the west. I called to Steiner to lash himself to his seat with one of the tether lines as I did the same. This meant that neither of us could climb into the cupola to release the gas and allow us to descend. Only after three hours did we land in a farmer's field---some 150 miles from where our adventure began!"

     The next morning, Josiah Watkins stumbled across his field outside Waterloo marveling at the cigar-shaped flying contraption grounded there. Despite Steiner's insistance that they kill the man or lose their secrecy, Cabbot asked Watkins for help. He concocted the story that he and Steiner were aeronauts bound on a 'round the world expedition to discover the Lost Continent of Atlantis and that they needed to repair their damaged craft, which Cabbot styled The Argo. So impressed by his guests, Watkins gladdly let them keep the craft on his property until it was fixed.

     News of the ship's appearance spread through Waterloo like a prairie fire; by late afternoon, the two aeronauts found themselves besieged by curious onlookers. Despite the hub-bub, Cabbot blithely fell to repairing bent struts and cables. Steiner, frustrated with the lack of security, kept the spectators well back with the farmer's Winchester '73. Roosevelt may never have learned of the sudden public unveiling of his secret pet project but for his visiting the powerful financier J.P. Morgan in Pawtutcket, R.I. where he chanced to see a news story in the Evening Times of Pawtucket (see: 1897: Airships Lands In Iowa, May, 1997, vol. 4, Issue #5).

     Shortly after the two men returned from Waterloo with the St. Brendan, the enraged Roosevelt awarded Steiner carte blanche to guarantee the project's secrecy. Steiner plunged eagerly into this new task, cutting project staff to essential persons. He directed a barbed wire fence be erected along the wooded ridge tops overlooking Cordelia and that a few feet inside the fence, bear traps be hidden under leaves. A sentry guised as a hermit patroled the perimeter.

     Cabbot, meanwhile, found himself redesigning the larger airship alone; Steiner, so engulfed by his security mania, no longer took an active interest in the airship. As the plans called for the two engines to be enclosed within the two gondolas (both three times larger than the St. Brendan's single gondola), Cabbot faced two obstacles. First, the 45 horsepower engine ran with an exposed flame, similar to the Daimler engines of that period. Second, no matter how well doped and laquered the gasbags, hydrogen leaked out within a matter of days---possibly due to the heat and corrosive effects of the motor's exhaust. Through early June of 1897, he tested different motor assemblies with differently treated gasbags together. Tests on five-foot diameter gasbags were conducted atop a 50 foot tall wooden tower at night so Cabbot could safely see where fire would start. Most failed on their seams, resulting in fantastic explosions that sent huge fireballs of hydrogen gas roiling up into the night sky. These fireballs enraged Steiner nie unto apoplectic hysteria. Cabbot countered the wilds of western Iowa concealed these experiments and shortly complained to Roosevelt that Steiner was coming to believe that the airship project was ancillary to maintaining project's secrecy.

     However, Cabbot soon managed to find a combination of engine and gasbag treatment that worked together with some reliable safety. Meantime, the huge airship, the SR-1 (SR standing for Strategic Recconaisance) had grown so big that another 150 feet had to added onto the end of her hanger for her to fit. Steiner promptly complained to Roosevelt that keeping the logistics for building the giant hanger alone was a perfect nightmare in preserving installation security. Roosevelt merely demanded the airship be completed soon. Despite a seeming thaw in the US's relations with Spain, public support still clung to the Cuban Guerillas; a fact whose explosiveness wasn't lost on Roosevelt.

     In early August, 1897, Cabbot and the construction crew completed the SR-1. Although Steiner played a small---if sometimes antagonistic---advisorial role in mounting the engines, the enitre design was Cabbot's. In particular were the four "air-screws". These were propellors with five short, fat blades. They differed greatly from the propellors on the St. Brendan in their pitch and swept-back shape causing little cavitation and providing great power--- a fact that goaded Steiner to no end. These produced enough power to propel the SR-1 at an astonishing 10 mph; a feat which Count von Zeppelin's yet to be built LZ-1 wouldn't achieve until 1902 over Lake Constance.

     Steiner had been correct that the explosive experiments would draw attention. Three young men, who lived on farms around the area, had been fascinated by the strange lights and glows just over the ridge and resolved to investigate. As they climbed the ridge, they met a hermit who explained that the lights were the restless spirits of ancient indian medicine men buried atop the ridge. Probably the three lads took his advice and stayed away---but only for a little while. The hermit, meantime, reported his encounter to Steiner. Extra men soon patroled the perimeter ready to scare off the meddling kids.

     On August 23, as the SR-1 emerged from its hanger for its maiden flght, a stiff wind blew up out of the northwest. The groundcrew struggled to keep the bucking dark gray ship from breaking loose. At Cabbot's insistance, Steiner called in the men from the ridge top to help rein-in the troublesome ship. Both Cabbot and Steiner had donned their flight suits; filthy denim work overalls, blackened by oil, soot and exhaust from the airship's motors. Suddenly, Steiner glimpsed a pin-point of light flicker briefly on the ridge top. Knowing at once who it was, he raced towards the ridge, Cabbot trailing after. As the two men carefully crept into a gulley that climbed the ridge, Steiner explained he planned to scare off the three lads before they saw too much. Keeping a wary eye on the feeble glow as they climbed, they soon reached the top, and found themselves only a few yards away from three shadows crouching by the stump of an uprooted tree. A lantern lay nearby, half concealed by brush. One of them said he could see something of "the big sausage-shaped balloon" down below.

     Cursing, Steiner drew his revolver and fired a shot over the three youths' heads, then commanded them to put their hands up. Without further niceties, he marched them down the slope into the installation itself. Cabbot said nothing during this, claiming that he believed Steiner would turn over the youths to the local sheriff and went aboard the SR-1 to warm up the engines. Suddenly to his horror, he turned to see the three bound youths thrust into the gondola behind him. Steiner followed, brandishing his revolver.

     Cabbot reports: "When I demanded to know what he intended, Steiner ignored me, and called 'Cast off lines!' The ship lifted smoothly into the air despite the unwilling passengers, whose terrified expressions I could barely make out by the dim light of our only Edison light. When I demanded to know what he was planning, he merely smiled in his maddening way. When the ship rose to about 50 feet, he engaged the motive system and the ship thrummed dully with spinning airscrews. I know not what course we steered as Steiner had the helm, but it seemed that as our height reached 200 feet, he sang out that the rudder was acting sluggish and suggested that the control cable had become fouled. There was a pair of pulleys which had caused such a problem before and these were located aft amidst the gasbags overhead. I climbed the short ladder to the rickety catwalk. The ship shuddered gently but enough to threaten my perch on the catwalk. I clung to the frail catelevering and soon found the troublesome pulleys. To my surprise there seemed nothing wrong with them and I returned to the gondola. As soon as I entered, I was found Steiner standing in the gondola perfectly alone. Suddenly, the sickening horror overwhelmed me: the ship's shuddering I experienced while on the catwalk had been caused by Steiner throwing the three boys from the gondola!"

     It is unclear whether Roosevelt received subsequent reports from his fractious project leaders. All the Navy's documentation about the SR-1 and the Cordelia Installation abruptly ends. He most likely destroyed the reports---though one can surmise that he ordered both Steiner and Cabbot to devise a more potent Security Arrangement. The trail would appear then to go cold but for a photo in possession of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Archives. It shows Roosevelt and a small detachment of his Rough Riders in front of a bandstand with two other men. Penciled on the back of the photo is the legend: "Cordelia, May, 1898". Below appear the signatures: Captain Stephen Cabbot USN, and Michael Steiner.