I'm a huge fan of history, especially history around WW1 and WW2 (I've done only 1 post about war stories but i focus mostly on flags lol) and i've never heard of this story before! In fact i was not even aware the US had used Blimps on their war efforts, i know the Germans used them a lot in WW1 and used some in WW2 though.
I wonder what happened to the crew of the 2nd ranger, maybe they all fell to the sea? did aliens kidnap them to do some probing? Maybe the Blimp had a time machine inside? how do you evapore an entire crew and never find bodies or corpses?
And evaporating the crew without damaging the airship. It's very mysterious, unless they jumped or fell out somehow.