In 1919, US Navy Admiral William S. Sims asked the Senate to appropriate money to invest in rigid airships, saying that all first-class naval powers needed these ships as part of their fleets. Airships would allow the Navy to defend in three areas: sub-surface, surface, and air. The Navy’s first rigid airship was the ZR-1. It was later renamed the Shenandoah, and its maiden voyage was September 4, 1923.
The Shenandoah was constructed at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey. For weeks before her maiden voyage, thousands of visitors came from across the country to catch a glimpse of its giant hangar, 256 feet across, 803 feet long, and more than 200 feet tall.
On the morning of the launch, the ship was inflated with helium and pulled from the hangar. It took 400 men to hold the giant airship as she was slowly moved into place.
Some 2,000 spectators, including dignitaries like Rear Admiral William A. Moffett, gathered to watch. When it came time to launch, the Shenandoah rose rapidly to 1,000 feet and then headed east toward the Atlantic Ocean. The test trial was a success, and Moffett predicted that rigid airships would prove one of the country’s greatest forward strides in aviation. He hoped for a day when airships would provide overnight mail service to Europe, fly over the North Pole, and explore the Amazon River Valley.
By 1924, the Shenandoah set a record with a 9,000-mile flight over 18 days, crossing the country and becoming the first airship to travel west of the Mississippi. The public came in masses to view the ship, which brought enthusiasm and pride to the nation. The USS Patoka underwent major modifications, and an experimental mooring mast was constructed 125 feet above the water. This allowed the Shenandoah to conduct mooring experiments.
On September 2, 1925, the Shenandoah departed Lakehurst to participate in promotional flyovers to visit 40 cities and state fairs. On September 3, during the airship’s 57th flight, the Shenandoah got caught in a violent thunderstorm over Ohio. An updraft carried the ship higher than its pressure limits could handle, and it broke apart. Fourteen crew members died, and 29 survived when they rode the ship back down to the ground. Following the crash, Army Colonel William “Billy” Mitchell criticized the leadership of both the Army and Navy, calling them incompetent and negligent. In response, Mitchell was court-martialed and found guilty. He was suspended from active duty for five years, but Mitchell resigned from military service.
Ironically, Rear Admiral Moffett, one of the staunchest advocates for the development of airships (Moffett Field in California is named after him), died in 1933 when he was a passenger aboard the USS Akron, a dirigible that crashed into the ocean off the coast of New Jersey during a storm.
The US Navy suspended its airship program in 1961, and the last flight of a naval airship occurred in 1962. Have you ever seen a Navy airship in person? If you would like to learn more about the naval airship program, search Fold3® today.
As a crew member on the USS Crevalle SS291, we operated off the cost with dirigibles as they hovered with sound equipment over the water. They nailed us very well and we were not able to escape their locating devices. Sorry to see these magnificent Navy air ships decommissioned.
Our family reunion was held in Oregon this summer and a number of us visited the Tillamook Air Museum. The size and scale of the airships is difficult to comprehend until you stand inside one of these hangars. The museum is an important aspect of our national defense and military history. They are always looking for funding if people wish to donate.
Missy,
Were you at the reunion at the State Park?
I grew up in South Jersey and remember seeing them once in a while in the sky. My dad told me all about them.
I spent the first three years of my life [born in 1950] at Lakehurst Naval Air Station and have pictures of going for hot air balloon rides inside the hangar buildings where the blimps / Dirigibles were stored .
This is also where the Hindenburg went down due to a lightening storm . My father was a Naval Supply Officer , who was called back to service during the Korean Conflict
There is a section of boot camp in Great Lakes NTC that has or had wood barracks named in Adm Moffetts honor
We pass by the memorial of the wreck of the Shenandoah often. It is on Interstate 77 in Noble County, Ohio. My Dad was always interested in it.
RTC still has Camp Moffett on the Northside. We all had to match through the tunnel to and from there.
Was in Camp Moffet during Boot Camp in 1962-63 in the wood H-type barracks from WWII.
Thanks for the great pictures and the information! I grew up in South Jersey and my father was there when the Hindenburg crash happened, and it burn up! He said it was very sad to see people jumping out of it as it was on fire after hitting power lines to their deaths! I also remember seeing another Blimp go over our home in Collingswood, NJ. at a later date.
As a young boy I saw one being guided out of its hanger at the NAS in Tustin, CA.
My first tour in the navy I was assigned to a squadron at NAS Moffett Field. Historical Hanger 1 was built to hold those behemoths. The track rails for the docking mast are still visible on the tarmac. Across the field are hangers 2&3. Also built for blimps.
My grandfather helped build and fly the Shenandoah and other dirigibles… and was lucky enough not to be aboard when they crashed. He went on to serve on the Enterprise and other aircraft carriers during WWII, before becoming a jet aircraft inspector after retiring from the Navy. I still have a lot of his lighter than air memorabilia.
Rob. I am writing to advise you that the Navy Lakehurst Historical Society would probably be ecstatic to see or just know of your artifacts. I worked at Lakehurst for about 35 years until 2008 and am a friend of theirs and became an interested fan of LTA. They have one of the best LTA (Lighter Than Air) museums anywhere. You do know that Lakehurst Naval Air Station was the first International Airport for overseas flights and was built to be that from the beginning. Most folks don’t know how to tell the difference between a Blimp and a Dirigible. Look at the side and if it is a smooth side it is a blimp but if it has ridges running from the front to the rear it will be a dirigible. The lines on the side give the airship its shape and are pieces of metal usually aluminum frame work while a blimp is held shaped by air pressure inside the “bag” or envelope, as it is called in proper circles. Well so as not to give away too much of the wonders of the Lakehurst Museum, just google the Navy Lakehurst Historical Museum and make an effort to get there to really be educated. I am into this because I am Chales Applegate, the President of the New Jersey Air Victory Museum at 68 Stacy Haines Road in Lumberton, N.J. Drop in sometime and see our one of a kind aviation artifacts. Have a great Navy Day.
My great grandfather died in this accident.
I’m so sorry. My grandfather was a telegraph operator for the B&O railroad in Cambridge and reported that it was in trouble an hour before it went down. Unfortunately, that was no help.
To Robert Roche: At Moffett Field, near dirigible Hanger 1 is a museum dedicated mostly its former resident dirigible. The museum has artifacts, photographs and more, and also includes other US Navy info and artifacts. I would expect that if you contacted the museum they would be delighted to put your items on display.
Moffett Field has a long landing field and for a long time was home to Lockheed P3c airplanes that flew in and out constantly for submarine surveillance. A few years ago the Navy left and it now belongs to NASA-Aimes and other occupants. After the Navy left they refused to maintain or retrofit Hanger 1 which was found to have an abundance of PCBs and other hazardous materials in the massive framework and outer covering. Through legal action the Navy agreed to not demolish this huge treasured artifact that sometimes made its own weather inside when the end doors were closed. The Navy removed the skin but refused to sanitize the framework or re-skin the hanger. Finally, Google, who is a very close neighbor, agreed to undertake the task. That has been going on for at least two years and the new skin, not yet finished, looks very good. I don’t know what will happen next after completion of this massive refurbishment.
I have seen a large variety of planes come and go to this field, including Air Force 1, Blue Angels and U-2 planes that after taking off would go straight up until out of sight.
Lockheed Missiles & Space Company (LMSC) was right next to the airfield. When a large satellite or a submarine-launched ICBM was completed a Lockheed C5a would come in to take it elsewhere. After Lockheed and Martin joined, LMSC that had once been a major employer in the Silicon Valley has shrunk their extensive facilities to almost nothing and moved elsewhere. Meanwhile, much larger buildings of new players now occupy the LMSC land.
I have never seen any of the hangers of these majestic airships in the US but during 1956 to 1958 my dad was stationed in Germany and we saw a hanger of a Zimmerman
The airship and blimp hangers at NAS Lakehurst were so big that they often had their own weather system inside, including clouds and rain. Hanger 1 is huge and was built for rigid ships like the Shenandoah and the Hindenberg. The small K class were smaller and not of rigid construction like the Akron, Shenandoah and the Hindenberg with their internal metal frame. I was there in 1959, ’60, ’61 and ’62
It has always been my understanding that rigid airships (dirigibles) were inflated with hydrogen not helium, as helium did not have enough lifting power for dirigibles which were heavier then blimps. On the other hand, blimps are lighter since they do not have metal frames and helium is sufficient to lift them into the air. Also helium does not burn, while hydrogen does as it did in the
Hindenberg.
Is this correct that dirigibles only used hydrogen?
Hi Richard, The Shenandoah was the first rigid airship to use helium rather than hydrogen. Helium was scarce at the time and the Shenandoah used much of the world’s reserves.
My understanding: Helium was not used in the Hindenburg because the major supplier of Helium was the US. They considered it a strategic resource and would not let Germany have access to it. My understanding should be fact checked.
Tim, you are correct. The Hindenburg was designed to use helium. The United States at that time was the world’s largest producer of helium, and refused to sell helium to the German Nazi government. So the Germans had to use hydrogen in their fleet of dirigibles Graf Zeppelin & Hindenburg. The US did sell helium to England for their airships & during WWII for barrage balloons. US also wanted to keep a reserve of helium for the Navy’s fleet of K class blimps. Most helium at that time was from Texas.
When I was around 10 years old, in 1960, my family was taking a cross country trip (in our 1957 Ford Ranch Wagon) on route 66. Up ahead, flying not far above the power lines, was a Goodyear Blimp. He was following the highway in the same direction as we were. What a wonderful memory for a car full of bored kids.
We used to see The Goodyear blimp here in Houston, as there was a blimp base off of I45 North (Spring, TX). The blimp was always flying around the Houston area. Haven’t seen one since they moved the hangar in 1992….sad.
My husband’s family is from the area in Ohio where the Shenandoah was caught in that storm and broke apart. There are several memorials in the area where the wreckages were found. We have a picture of the Shenandoah wreckage in our house showing those who helped with the clean up. My husband’s family was part of this cleanup.
I grew up near Moffett Field and drove by the enormous hanger many times, before moving away in the 1970s. It’s nice to know that it is being refurbished.
Also, I attended Pacific Lutheran University in Parkland, Washington; where our college newspaper was called The Mooring Mast; in honor of the airships that had moored nearby during their days of fame.
My great uncle lived and worked nearby. He recovered a few pieces of the airship fabric. Many years later, he gave these pieces to me because he knew I was a history buff.
Somewhere among things of my mother’s is a piece of the Shenandoah. As a little girl, she and her family drove to the crash site. A lot of souvenirs were taken, apparently.
My Great Uncle John Horn was a survivor of the Shenandoah that broke up over Ohio.
If the Navy disbanded use airships in 1962, then I really missed out. The year before, we visited a friend of my mother who was married to the second in command of Lakehurst. We did get to to see the dirigible hangers, but he said if we had arrived an hour earlier, I could have gone on a blimp patrol over the Atlantic. Drat!!!
Visited Lakehurst Naval Air Station as a Marine helicopter crew member in 1971-72. Was stationed at MCAS Tustin, California in 1969 where we, also, had two large blimp hangers. The scale of those buildings was not truly impressed until they took the Goodyear blimp in one of them for maintenance. You could probably have fit a half-dozen blimps inside. They were said to have their own atmosphere as fog or rain could develop inside. Don’t know about the rain but I did see fog in one of them.
Adding another air ship to the list, the Roma flew out of Langley Base in Hampton, VA. 1922 with 44 souls on board. She developed a problem and crashed at what is now Norfolk International Terminals (NIT), at the west end of Little Creek Rd, and Hampton Blvd likking 34 of the 44 people on board.
In the late 1960’s I was stationed for four years at Naval Air Station, Lakehurst, HC-4, (Helicopter Support Squadron Four). Our Squadron was located in one of the hangars which was massive. No one could ever escape the thoughts we were working in the home of these behemoths, to say nothing of everyday passing the spot where the Hindenburg accident happened.
As a child, I was born in1939, blimps from an air base in Edenton, North Carolina,
would fly over the town in which I lived about 35 miles away. I still think I remember the pilots waving to us on the ground when they had a window open.
Some people look at me as if they are thinking I made it up, but we were not far from the coast where they patrolled. “Black outs” were a normal thing for us too.
Great article and I have enjoyed the comments. The last German submarine sunk by the US was sunk by the US Navy off Point Judith, Rhode Island in May 1945 after Germany surrendered. I did an article on it. I recall that a Navy airship flew up from Lakehurst Naval Station and fired some rockets at the underwater submarine. Everyone wanted to get in on the action.
Although now on private property, the 1941 LTA hangar remains in place at the former Naval Air Station Weeksville, 2 miles south of Elizabeth City, NC. 960 feet long, 328 feet wide, 190 feet tall, floor area the size of six football fields – it could hold a squadron of 9 or more K-Class airships.
I worked at Goodyear Aerospace in Akron, Ohio. They had a large hanger known locally as the Airdock. The Airdock was built to construct the USS Akron & USS Macon, largest airships The US Navy ever had. Along the inside north wall of the Airdock there was framing from the wreckage of USS Shenandoah. About 4 main sections of a partial spiral framing with 3 rows of longitudinal framing hangs on the wall. That was back in the 1980’s when I was employed there, not sure if the framing is still present, the Airdock has changed owners since Goodyear sold it years ago.
You can still see Airships in the sky, traveling from North Canton to Akron, Ohio. I was on a trip up in that area recently, and I saw one.
As a boy living in Oakland, CA, in the late 50’s I used to see (and hear) “blimps” frequently launched from the Alameda Naval Air Station. Always an awe-inspiring sight for a young boy.
Because my mom was a veteran we could go have lunch at the NAS. Fun memories!