The myriad details regarding the new base were approved and executed. A branch to the main rail line had been built; now separate spurs were graded into the hangar and to the power house and hydrogen-plant area for delivery of coal, gas cylinders, and stores. Wells were drilled, a sewage system installed. Roads were graded, the existing entrance road improved, and a Marine sentry box built at the southeast corner of the hangar. Distribution systems for water, hydrogen, steam, electricity, and compressed air were completed. Reliable weather information was essential to air operations, so an aerological building was constructed on the perimeter of the landing field. A dispensary, CPO club, headquarters building, pigeon house, fire engine house, several garages and storehouses, in short, all the accommodations and facilities attendant to a shore-side naval base were included.9
Radio was an integral component of the new air station. The original wireless operator’s house was placed in an isolated clearing to the northwest, well removed from the main complex. Little more than a small wooden shed, this station would be used until about 1928, when the transmitter and receiver equipment were reestablished in the Aerological Building. An antenna was erected for the vacuum transmitting set in 1922—“the latest and best radio equipment capable of development.” Designed and built by the Naval Aircraft Radio Laboratory, the new aerial was long and low to the ground in order to eliminate high towers and aerials near the field. This antenna was supported on poles only 60 feet high that together formed a rectangular network nearly 800 feet long and 120 feet wide.10 A radio compass station also was built in the pine woods but soon moved to the roof of the hangar. Its goniometer, or direction finder, was intended to help airships determine their position within a radius of about two hundred miles from base and to locate the field in poor visibility. But the system was little used, perhaps because no other sets were then available for triangulation and computing a “fix.” The “tuning house” was converted to a shortwave station about 1924.
The finishing touches were applied to the new station. By June 1921, total expenditures amounted to some $4–5 million.
On 6 June 1921, Lt. Cdr. Joseph P. Norfleet, USN, reported on board and assumed temporary command from the naval engineers. He was accompanied by a handful of officers and men. Three weeks later, on 28 June, Capt. Franck T. Evans, USN, became the naval air station’s first commanding officer (CO). And in July Evans and the Fourth Naval District were notified officially that the designation of their new base was U.S. Naval Air Station, Lakehurst.
The United States’ first base for ZRs was operational. A sense of urgency had been building since spring. The British-built rigid authorized in 1919 had flown in late June. At the conclusion of her trials, R-38 (American ZR-2) would be turned over to an eager American crew. The timing of the transatlantic delivery had to await completion of the Lakehurst hangar. Finally, in mid-August, the Bureau of Yards and Docks advised the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) that it was ready for arrival of the ship. This did not include a permanent mooring mast. The American officers in England had been deeply impressed by the operational flexibility a mast seemed to offer their British colleagues, the inventors of the system. This led to a mooring mast at Lakehurst. Plans were initiated in April 1921, but the necessary drawings were not completed in time. Consequently, since delivery of ZR-2 appeared imminent, a temporary British-style three-point mooring system was erected that August on the field west of the hangar.
On temporary duty, the prospective crew for the new ship had been training in England since early 1920. Commander Maxfield, the commanding officer of the training detachment and prospective CO for ZR-2, had been dispatched first on 20 February. Four reserve officers followed in March, then eighteen enlisted personnel of the first draft. Despite the prospect of overseas duty and the chance to fly the largest airship in the world, the Navy Department experienced some difficulty assembling a crew for ZR-2. Many qualified aviators had left the service following the war, and those on duty were attached to the few coastal air stations still in commission. But after soliciting for “excellent men,” a second group arrived in England in June.
The U.S. Navy Rigid Airship Detachment (or Howden Detachment) was formed and began its course of instruction. This included ground school lectures on operational doctrine, hangar inspections of British rigids, and observer flights. The Americans had little choice but to rely on the British standard of performance. The Americans were novices to the intricacies of the airship arts. German operational experience was as yet largely unknown.
British R-38 (ZR-2) at Bedford, England. Large airships required a weaving of young sciences, notably aerodynamics and aerology—including the “structure” of gusts and wind shifts so as to compute the forces imposed. The first ZR intended for Lakehurst, R-38 failed structurally during its fourth performance trial, 24 August 1921—56.5 hours logged. The Navy Department’s fledgling program lost one aircraft and the talent and experience of personnel on board for training. Progress on large airships was set back two years. U.S. Naval Institute photo archive
Meanwhile, the engineering staff in Washington was developing misgivings about British design methods for large airships, particularly the calculation of aerostatic and aerodynamic forces acting on the hull. Nonetheless, construction of ZR-2, which had begun in February 1919, proceeded apace; the new ship was completed in the spring of 1921. R-38 made her maiden flight 23–24 June with four American observers on board. A second flight was made five days later and a third trial flown 17–18 July. The ship’s performance was far from satisfactory: she handled poorly and suffered, moreover, significant structural damage on the third flight under less than full power. Doubts about the aircraft and the upcoming transatlantic attempt deepened. Yet the ship’s trials were being rushed, and the crossing was scheduled to occur after about fifty hours of experience with the new ship.
At 0710, 23 August, R-38 lifted off the field at Howden on her fourth and final flight. On board were a British crew of twenty-five, five military and civilian passengers, six American officers, including Maxfield, and eleven American enlisted men. The ship lingered overnight out to sea. The next day a full-speed run was made and then high-speed rudder maneuvers. Over the city of Hull, rudder hard-over, R-38 failed structurally and broke her back. A mix of hydrogen, air, and fuel exploded. Forty-four of the forty-nine crewmen were killed; only one of the seventeen Americans on board for training survived.
The U.S. Navy’s fledgling program had lost one aircraft and the talent and experience of sixteen officers and men. Progress with large airships, moreover, had been set back two years. Newspaper editorials quickly protested the LTA program’s cost in lives and dollars, a litany that would be repeated in the decades to follow. The death of Commander Maxfield so early in the experiment was a tragic irony since “it was due to his enthusiasm and energy that the Navy Department (and the General Board) agreed to approve a rigid airship program and the Lakehurst station.”11
One historian summarized the harsh lessons of the ZR-2 episode and their influence on the future of the rigid airship in the United States.
The U.S. Navy learned a great deal from the mistakes made in the ZR-2 program. The ship had been accepted on faith as a product of superior design knowledge and technology; the disaster had proved that the forebodings of the design staff in Washington were justified, and henceforth the Americans placed full trust and confidence in their own experts. . . . In the future the U.S. Navy would lay down its own specifications, and ensure that they be met by private contractors of its choice. [Rear Admiral] Moffett [the first chief of the new Bureau of Aeronautics] was not about to deal with foreign governments for expensive craft not built to his requirements, whose design history he was not familiar with, regardless of giveaway prices. . . . Henceforth the foreign influence in American airship design and operations would be German.12
Survivors of the Howden Detachment returned in October 1921 to a gloomy air station. NAS Lakehurst had reverted for the time being to the status of a construction and experiment station for rigid airships, with its energies focused on the erection of ZR-1. A reduction in both personnel and operating expenses was ordered; those men attached to the station for