Jersey Shore Magazine

58 1930, the airship returned to New Jersey and tested the launching of a glider over Lakehurst. The USS Akron (ZRS-4) and her sister ship, the USS Macon (ZRS-5), were among the largest flying objects ever built and the world's first pur- pose-built aircraft carriers. Each was 785 feet long and big enough to carry several F9C Sparrowhawk fighter planes inside that could be launched and recovered while the airships were in flight. National Marine Sanctuary, and the site is now listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. The Graf Zeppelin (LZ 127) was one of two German hydrogen-filled rigid airships that also visited Hangar One. In October 1928, the airship made its first intercontinental trip and arrived in Lakehurst on August 4, 1929. From July 1928 through June 1937, she ultimately travelled over one mil- lion miles on 590 flights, carrying 13,330 passengers. She earned the title of "the world's most impressive airship" by flying for 17,177 hours (717 days) without any injuries to or losses of passengers or crew. The Hindenburg (LZ-129), the larg- est aircraft ever to fly and the most notable of airships, was also housed in Hangar One with only eighteen inches of clearance at its bow and stern. Her commercial flights pio- neered the first transatlantic air service, with NAS Lakehurst becom- ing the country's first international airport. The ill-fated airship carried hundreds of passengers and trav- eled thousands of miles before the infamous evening of May 6, 1937, when, with ninety-seven people on board, she burst into flames while attempting to dock with its mooring mast. The hydrogen-fueled flames consumed the airship in thirty-seven seconds, and it crashed just west of Hangar One. The accident resulted in the deaths of thirteen passengers and twenty-two crew, and one fatality on the ground. The famous, emo- tionally-charged declaration "Oh, the humanity!" by radio announcer Herb Morrison as he described the disaster also made history by being part of the country's first coast-to-coast radio news broadcast. "While many draw an immediate connection to the Hindenburg when they hear 'Lakehurst,' what many do not realize is that nearly all of the Naval flying operations have their beginnings here," said James J. Warrick, who serves as the 87th Air Base Wing Historian. "The airships were the first, which continued into World War II with airship squadrons that escorted shipping across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe. Airship Squadron 12 has the distinction of escorting over 89,000 ships without one single loss to German U-Boats." Warrick also said that helicopter aviation for the Navy has its genesis at Lakehurst, with the first Navy heli- copter squadrons, HU-1 and HU-2, commissioned there. Hangars 5 and 6 When Hangars 5 and 6 were com- pleted in 1943, they were the largest, single arch wooden structures in the world at the time, each with 241,000 feet of floor space. The massive build- ings housed the Navy's expanding fleet of antisubmarine patrol blimps during the World War II era, which numbered just six in 1940 and rose to one hundred thirty by the end of the war. Such patrol blimps routinely JERSEY SHORE LANDMARKS MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE, continued from page 57 The USS Los Angeles (ZR-3) entering Hangar One for the first time, 1924. The Akron operated between September 1931 and April 1933, when she crashed off the New Jersey coast on April 4 during a thunder- storm, killing seventy-three of the seventy-six people on board. The inci- dent remains the greatest loss of life in any airship crash. The Macon operated between April 1933 and February 1935 until she was damaged in a storm and lost off Point Sur, California. Out of the eighty-three crew aboard, two Navy sailors lost their lives in the incident. In 1990, researchers discovered the Macon's remains 1,500 feet below the surface of the Monterey Bay The engine room on board the USS Akron (ZRS-4). The infamous Hindenburg disaster, May 6, 1937. Library of Congress Sam Shere / Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons

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