On the starboard side of the ship is located the chart table and the lockers for the navigation equipment. The ship’s clock is located immediately above the table. Overhead will be found the engine telegraphs. . . . The ship’s telephone is located on this side of the car immediately aft of the engine telegraphs.6
By mid-June only the power plants remained outstanding. Various hangar tests were conducted, and the aircraft was ready at long last for inflation.
A helium repurification plant had not yet been installed at Lakehurst. Instead, about eighteen thousand cylinders arrived by rail from the plant at Fort Worth and were stacked north of the hangar, near the siding. The first shipment reached the station in early February, each rail car holding about six hundred 140-cubic-foot cylinders. The long-awaited inflation began at 0930, 13 August 1923. Over the next three days thirteen thousand cylinders were manifolded together, bank by bank, and emptied into the inflation line to the hangar, thence into the airship’s gas cells.7
Installation of these cells had been an exceedingly delicate operation, due in part to the fragile nature of the cell material and to the inexperience of the erection crew.8 Each cell had been carefully removed from its packing, laid out on a ground cloth, and test-inflated with air. Then, folded into accordion pleats, they were bundled and hauled up into the ship above the keel. The cells were unbundled, and overhead lines were secured to handling patches on them. As helium was slowly introduced into the bottom, the cells were floated very carefully into position. Gassing continued until the desired percentage inflation was reached. Purity readings were taken. The ship’s initial inflation was conducted in progressive steps from cell to cell to avoid undue stresses or deformations to the ship’s structure. As total lift increased, the aircraft was painstakingly ballasted to compensate and to keep the ship slightly heavier than air. On 16 August, the inflation of ZR-1 was completed. Each cell had been gassed to 85 percent fullness for a total inflow of 1,783,000 cubic feet of helium. The first ship’s watch was posted.
ZR-1 had been designed for hydrogen, not helium. But the R-38 tragedy in August 1921 had generated concern about the use of hydrogen, with BuAer recommending to Moffett that the new ship be inflated instead with inert helium. One week after the loss of R-38, three blimps were destroyed in a hydrogen fire at the Rockaway Naval Air Station, Long Island, NY. As one result, the department began experimenting with helium in blimp C-7. On 21 February 1922, the Army’s semirigid airship Roma burned in a hydrogen fire that killed thirty-four of the forty-five men on board. This was enough. Official as well as public sentiment to use helium as the lifting gas became overwhelming.
Washington’s decision was hardly an easy one. The gas was frightfully expensive, about $120 per 1,000 cubic feet in 1923. It possessed only 92 percent of the lift of hydrogen and was still in short supply. In March 1922, for example, the entire U.S. supply of helium amounted to about 2,400,000 cubic feet—barely sufficient to inflate ZR-1, let alone maintain a reserve. Substitution of the heavier gas, moreover, reduced the cruising range of ZR-1 by roughly 40 percent—a serious liability for an aircraft being promoted to the fleet as a long-endurance aerial scout.
Four days after her inflation, on 20 August, ZR-1 was officially launched. After sounding general quarters on the power house whistle, and with her full flight crew on board, 278 ground crewmen took their stations along the hull at the handling lines. The suspensions to the overhead were cast off, water ballast was dropped forward, and the ship’s bow rose off the shoring, which then was removed. Ballast was released aft, and the men inside ordered forward along the keel corridor. When the stern was sufficiently light, the deck force at the after power car lifted her free of the shoring aft. At 1434 hours, ZR-1 was floating free.9 The 680-foot aircraft was walked to the south side of the big room and placed onto cradles beneath the control car and after power car. The first U.S. rigid airship had been launched.
In the late afternoon of 4 September, with fifteen thousand spectators, dignitaries, reporters, and newsreel people on board the base, ZR-1 was “walked” out for the first time. This demanding operation required 420 sailors, Marines, and station civilian employees. Primitive mechanical equipment assisted the struggling ground crew, as significant improvements in ground handling were five years in the future.
When well clear of the hangar on the West Field, and after being allowed to swing into the wind, the new ship lifted off the field at 1720 with twenty-nine aboard. This local flight was the first ever by a helium-inflated rigid airship. Only four of her engines were used, and these were run at half speed. The airship was landed after fifty-five minutes aloft.
Big-ship operations were almost entirely new to the Navy. Given this dearth of experience, ZR-1 of necessity became a training vehicle for working out practical problems and operating doctrine. A careful familiarization and flight trials program had been recommended prior to the first flight, but this was rather quickly subordinated by BuAer and its preoccupation with public relations. The public was becoming air-minded, a development keenly appreciated by the Navy Department and its young BuAer. Admiral Moffett, its first chief, was keen on publicity. Unfortunately, his penchant would influence operations from the beginning: few opportunities were missed to foster an enthusiasm for naval air power.
The christening ceremony took place on 10 October. Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby, his wife, and a party of dignitaries, including Admiral Moffett, were received on board by the commanding officer with full naval honors. At 1630, Mrs. Denby, as sponsor, christened the new ship USS Shenandoah. The christening party was then taken on board for a one-hour flight along with reporters and newsreel cameramen. Shenandoah now was an operating unit of the Navy. Two days later, the CNO advised all commands that “Shenandoah is added to the Navy list and assigned for special duty to the Naval Air Station, Lakehurst, New Jersey.”10
It was the exuberant 1920s. Among the many obsessions of American culture, science had quickened its seductive hold. The technology of automobiles, radio, and aeronautics aroused a special interest in the public. In this optimistic atmosphere, ZR-1 quickly became the darling of the American press and public. Publicity flights—“County fair stuff instead of real work”11—to show off the new ship to the Northeast and Midwest tended to dominate Shenandoah’s schedule. Indeed, the airship’s seventh flight (1–3 October) was an ambitious forty-eight-hour, twenty-two-hundred-mile adventure to the St. Louis air races. Regrettably, these “handwaving” flights were well removed from the fleet where, inevitably, the ship and those to follow would have to prove themselves.
Operations involved a number of local flights to train with Lakehurst’s new mooring mast. Construction of a permanent mast had begun late in 1921. An area about 4,000 feet from the hangar’s west doors was cleared, and construction commenced on a 165-foot steel tower to receive and replenish Shenandoah. By September 1922, the installation was in its final stages. The machinery house at the base held the main and auxiliary winches for the mooring lines, along with electric pumps for fuel and for water ballast, a workbench, an office, and an entrance to the elevator to the masthead. Quarters for a “mast watch” were provided for four officers and a dozen enlisted personnel (enlarged in 1925).
USS Shenandoah (ZR-1) is undocked, 4 September 1923. Note the sailors and Marines grouped on the after-car rails and the ship’s eighteen-foot propeller. Lakehurst is miserably located with respect to storm tracks; winds often are cross-hangar. Mechanical gear was a signal advance; until its introduction, ground-handling was primarily via manpower. One repercussion: few flight hours per unit time. U.S. Naval Institute photo archive
This first mast was impressive. The tower was equipped with three platforms, an elevator, communication systems, electric lighting (including floodlights for night operations), and piping for gasoline, oil, helium, and water ballast. A small elevator ran up the middle of the triangular tower to the first platform, 136 feet above the field. From there a ladder reached the operating platform, 12 feet higher. Communication between this level and the machinery house was via electric winch telegraphs, voice tubing, and by telephone. Push-button controls for the pumps were provided. The third platform, at 160 feet, held the