Orders have gone out for a sharp reduction of the personnel at Lakehurst, N.J., the Naval Air Station for airships, as a result of the destruction of the ZR-2. In anticipation of the arrival of the ill-fated dirigible a crew in excess of 500 was being maintained to assist in getting the craft in and out of the hangar. It is expected to maintain about 100 men at the station, the remainder being transferred to other air stations or to ships of the fleet.13
NAS Lakehurst, would not witness its first flight of a rigid airship for another two years, until USS Shenandoah flew in September 1923.
Hauling stores, about 1922. Upon the loss of ZR-2, air station personnel were reduced to about sixty and the base placed on non-operating status during erection of the ZR-1. The Aerological Building is at left. One should appreciate the geographic and political isolation of NAS Lakehurst, well removed from major centers of population and from the mainstream Navy of the interwar years. Mrs. F. J. Tobin
The USS Shenandoah and the Early Years
The 1920 naval appropriations bill had allocated $4,000,000 for two rigid airships. A British ship, ZR-2, was to be delivered as early as practicable to train personnel and to gain operating experience, and $1,500,000 had been allocated for construction of an American airship. The ZR-1 was intended as a strategic scout for the fleet and represented, moreover, an effort to initiate an airship industry in the United States. During the next fifteen years, the Navy’s LTA program would break new ground in several ancillary fields: aluminum alloys for aircraft, the commercial production of helium, impermeable fabrics (for gas cells and outer cover), meteorology, and the study of aerodynamics. America was determined to be first in the air. Commercial transoceanic airships would carry the flag to every continent, exploiting the experience nurtured by the Navy and its airship program. ZR-1 was the vanguard.
The Navy Department will operate this ship to demonstrate its usefulness not only for naval and military purposes, but for its commercial uses. It is hoped that ZR-1 is the forerunner of great commercial air lines of similar ships, carrying passengers and freight between our great cities, across the continent and to our island possessions.1
Starr Truscott and his staff began work on the design in September 1919, the same month construction commenced on the Lakehurst station. The entire project, from an engineering point of view, was a novel challenge for the small American team. The project involved new materials and unfamiliar construction methods, exploration of new technologies, and a host of formidable engineering problems. The group was in no position to completely design a new airship. A wholly original design would have taken too long in any case. It was decided to imitate the Zeppelin model, using independent strength calculations to ensure structural adequacy, improvising along the way. A ship of less than 2-million-cubic-foot displacement was therefore selected, adapted to American power plants and materials. As one consequence, the new ship represented an amalgam of foreign design influences and was well out of date before being flown.
As with any prototype, there were design headaches and delays. Redesign of the power cars and associated equipment, introduction of full cantilever fins, and the addition of bow mooring gear, for example, were painstakingly evaluated, modifications proposed and finally approval given. In all, five alternate layouts of the basic design for “Fleet Airship No. 1” were prepared between 1919 and 1921. Indeed, the length of the ship’s hull and the number and placement of the power cars were discussed, tested, changed, and altered yet again before the final design was approved on 4 October 1921.
NAS Lakehurst. From its germinal years, Navy thinking as to large airships was concerned with ways and means for establishing the type for naval and for commercial applications. On 21 December 1922, an “All Ships and Stations” was circulated. Subject: “Officers for duty on board rigid airships.” Objective: to train naval aviators and to develop doctrine. All LTA activity—free and kite balloons, blimps, and the big ships—would be concentrated here. The village of Lakehurst is at the bottom left. NARA
Experiments relative to fabrication and construction methods at the Naval Aircraft Factory also consumed the calendar. Aluminum was one challenge. After considerable experimentation, the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) succeeded in developing processes for rolling and stamping the alloy into girders, lattices, and rivets.2 By February 1921, the firm was able to start preliminary deliveries for assembly into test girders. This was the first time that the factory had worked extensively with aluminum. The experience gained with ZR-1 soon would be applied to heavier-than-air aviation.3
Lighter-Than-Air Operations, U.S. Naval Aviation, for Fiscal Year Ending 30 June 1921
Source: Aviation magazine.
No ZRs were yet operational. For its part, HTA logged twenty-four times as many hours as LTA did, with flying boats the then-backbone of naval aeronautics. Still, the Navy was charged with development. A large investment for large airships was imminent.
Original estimates had the airship assembled by early 1922, but the hangar was completed behind schedule, and the airship erection work was not begun until that spring. In Philadelphia the sheet aluminum was worked into channels and lattices, which then were riveted into triangular girders for the ship’s main and intermediate rings, longitudinal members, and her keel structure. Finally, at the end of January 1922, the the factory announced that the first shipment to Lakehurst would commence in a few weeks.
The parts were transported to Lakehurst by truck and by rail. The first ring or frame, from midships, reached the base in late April. This was quickly assembled on the hangar deck and, on 24 April 1922, was hoisted into a vertical position and supported from below.
The ship’s frame now grew rapidly forward and aft. The hull of a rigid airship was composed of alternately spaced main and intermediate rings, or frames, connected by longitudinal girders. At the base of the framework a triangular cross section of girders formed the keel of the ship. The concentrated weights (fuel, ballast, and other useful loads) were distributed along the keel passageway, which ran through the aircraft. Radial and chord wiring strengthened the frames and kept the individual rings separated and aligned despite the various static and dynamic loads imposed on the structure.
Gradually, the long cylinder-like hull took shape. By mid-August, eleven of the frames were in place; by November the hull was about 75 percent complete. The ship’s gas cells were readied for installation. The transverse network of tensioned wires that gave strength and stability to the rings also provided bulkheads, which divided the hull into ten-meter bays. Her twenty gas cells were fitted into these, providing the lifting element of the aircraft. On 23 November, the first cell was lifted into its bay amidships and test inflated with air to 100 percent fullness.
Crews to man the new ship had become a matter of some urgency. Thus, on 21 December 1922, a request was issued by the Bureau of Navigation to “All Ships and Stations” relative to officer volunteers for rigid-airship training. Selected by Adm. William A. Moffett to command the ship was Cdr. Frank R. McCrary, USN, a naval aviator with LTA war experience. The choice would prove to be a poor one. He accepted the command against his will and was on record as favoring flying boats over the airship. Forty-one officers responded to the request for volunteers, and nine were selected for duty, among them an officer destined to become synonymous with Navy lighter-than-air, Lt. Charles E. Rosendahl. The thirty-year-old officer requested airship duty in January 1923, and on 7 April he reported “to the commanding officer