Hah, funny you mentioned that... I've been around so long I actually had a NAVCAD Preflight classmate Roland H., who requested, and got Airships, was winged as a "Poopy Bag" Pilot in 1958. I met him again at NAS Moffett in '59, where he was stationed in ZP-?, which was the last ZP Squadron left at that time. Spent an interesting evening learning about BlimpOps!
Seems like they ran their lengthy patrols on the flight deck much like the bridge of a ship at sea. Pilots stood rotating "watches" like an OOD, with a rudder helmsman for heading, engine order telegraph(s) for speed, and an elevator helmsman for altitude. Interesting operation, but not for me (I was an ENS flying the beautiful FJ-4 Fury at the time). Unfortunately for Rollie, his squadron stood down the next year, the end of the Navy LTA era!
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Edit: Guessin' if they were still around today, we'd call them "Winged SWOs"?
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BzB
What did he transition to?