Louis William Prost (1920- 2022) of Wilmington piloted a Navy airship in World War II. Performing ocean surveillance, he and his crew kept Nazi submarines at bay from U.S. shores and Atlantic convoys.
Commander Prost, the first aeronaut to be inducted into the Delaware Aviation Hall of Fame, enlisted in the Navy in 1942. He took preflight training at the University of Georgia and practical training at Evansville University, Ind. After winning his airplane wings, he was selected for lighter-than-air training at Moffett Field in California and Lakehurst Naval Air Station, N.J.
He flew anti-submarine patrols out of South Weymouth, Mass., to war's end. Though a small group, the 1,500 pilots and 3,000 men of America's fleet of about 125 Goodyear blimps escorted 89,000 Allied voyages safely to Europe. They lost only one airship.
Prost was awarded the Air Medal for flying from Bermuda to the Azores—the longest wartime flight of an airship. He was co-pilot on a Navy airship that broke the Russian record of 123 hours aloft; the U.S. ship went 170 hours.
Under contract with All American Engineering at Georgetown, Del., he developed aviation-related commercial products, and he set up and supervised lighter-than-air training programs abroad.
Commander Prost logged more than 9,000 hours of airship time and 900 hours of fixed-wing time. He was the past-president of the U.S. Naval Airship Association, headquartered in Pensacola, Fla.
