On this day in aviation history, February 12, 1935, the United States Navy’s scouting airship and “flying aircraft carrier” USS Macon (ZRS-5) was lost in a storm of the California coast. Having once been among the largest flying objects in the history of aviation, the loss of USS Macon spelled the end not only to the airship’s brief career but to the US Navy’s experiment in rigid dirigibles as well.
During the First World War, the German Army and Navy both used huge airships popularly referred to as Zeppelins for the aristocratic engineer Graf (Count) Ferdinand von Zeppelin. While the Zeppelin as a bomber terrified civilians who, for the first time in the history of warfare, now faced bombardment from the air far from the battlefield, they caused only minor damage in the grand scheme of WWI, and methods to intercept these giants of the air were perfected. Yet the Zeppelins were still highly sought after by the victorious Allied powers after the Armistice that ended the war. The German airships, along with smaller, non-rigid designs employed by the Allies with the nickname “blimps,” had demonstrated that they could be used for maritime reconnaissance in order to scout ahead of the battleship fleets and transmit the coordinates of an enemy fleet while the two opposing sides were out of visual range of each other. With carrier aviation still in its infancy, airships could fly further than many airplanes of the day and remain in the air for days on end without the need to land to refuel and replenish their supplies.
After the hard lessons learned from the failure of the USS Shenandoah (ZR-1) that was lost in a thunderstorm in 1925, and the success of the USS Los Angeles (ZR-3) (built in Germany by Luftschiffbau Zeppelin as part of Germany’s war reparations to the USA)), the US Navy ordered the construction of two, even larger airships on June 24, 1926, to be carried out the Goodyear Zeppelin Corporation, a joint venture between Luftschiffbau Zeppelin in Germany and the aeronautical department of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company of Akron, Ohio. Among the biggest supporters for the new airships was Rear Admiral William Moffett, Chief of the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics.
Unlike the USS Los Angeles, however, these new airships would be built in Akron, with engineers from Germany working with their American counterparts in the design of the rigid framework of the airships. Both airships were powered by eight Maybach VL II V-12 engines, each capable of producing 570 hp. To improve the aerodynamics of these airships, the Maybach engines were housed in internal engine compartments, with shafts leading to the externally mounted propellers on rotatable mounts.
Though the German Zeppelins were inflated with hydrogen, which was a more readily available and lighter lifting gas, it was flammable when mixed with oxygen, which doomed many a Zeppelin to a fiery end. The American airships Shenandoah and Los Angeles were inflated with helium, which was a heavier lifting gas and was much rarer to refine than hydrogen, yet it lacked hydrogen’s flammability. It also helped that the United States was the world leader in the refining and storage of helium gas.
With a length of 785 feet, a diameter of 132 ft 11 in, a height of 146.5 feet, and an internal volume of 6,500,000 cubic feet, the Akron-class airships were the largest flying objects in the world until the creation of the Hindenburg and her sister ship Graf Zeppelin II. Unlike their German cousins, both the USS Akron and the USS Macon were designed to have a 75-by-60-by-16-foot hangar amidships. These were designed to accommodate a specially designed fighter and scouting aircraft, the Curtiss F9C Sparrowhawk, which would be launched and recovered through a trapeze system lowered from the hangar and were intended to protect the Akron and Macon from enemy carrier aircraft. In service, the USS Macon would carry up to five Sparrowhawks in its internal hangar.
The USS Akron was launched (floated free of the hangar floor) at its namesake airport on August 8, 1931, and christened that day by First Lady Lou Henry Hoover before making its first flight on September 23 and was commissioned into the US Navy on October 27. Meanwhile, the equally massive structure of the USS Macon took shape in Goodyear’s hangar in Akron. On March 11, 1933, USS Macon was launched and christened by Jeanette Whitton Moffett, the wife of Rear Admiral Moffett, who was making preparations to fly aboard the USS Akron during an exercise to calibrate radio direction finders along the New England coast. On the evening of April 3, 1933, as USS Macon was undergoing final preparations for its first flight, USS Akron slipped from her moorings at Naval Air Station Lakehurst, New Jersey with Rear Admiral Moffett and seventy-five other crew members and passengers.
As night fell over the Jersey shore, the USS Akron cut a path through thick fog and severe weather, unknowingly flying into a violent stormfront. Surrounded by rain and lightning, the Akron plunged toward the Atlantic at a nose-down attitude in the pre-dawn hours of April 4. The airship initially recovered, dumping ballast and stabilizing at 700 feet above the sea to return to its cruising altitude of 1,600 feet, but the ship was sent into another plunge, falling a rate of 14 feet per second tail-down. Then the tail struck the sea, and as the Akron‘s eight Maybach engines strained to keep the nose up, water entered through the ventral fin, and dragged the ship under, causing the nose to stall and crash into the Atlantic. Of the Akron‘s complement of 76 men, only three survived, with Rear Admiral William Moffett, the airship’s greatest advocate, among the 73 men lost, largely due to the frigid waters and the lack of onboard life preservers. To this day, the loss of USS Akron represents the greatest loss of life in airship history.
On April 21, 1933, just two weeks after the Akron tragedy, the USS Macon made its first flight, and was commissioned on June 23, 1933, and was placed under the command of Commander Alger H. Dresel, who had previously commanded both USS Los Angeles and USS Akron before the loss of the latter airship.
Several lessons learned in prior incidents with USS Akron were incorporated into the operating parameters of the USS Macon. During the summer of 1933, Macon participated in fleet exercises off the East Coast of the United States while operating out of NAS Lakehurst. Many of these tests, however, were organized by staff officers that did not take the airship’s strengths and weaknesses into account and often stipulated that the Macon had to visually spot the “enemy” fleet itself, exposing it to mock anti-aircraft fire, which frequently shot it down in the simulated tests. By October 1933, the USS Macon was flown across the North American continent and reassigned to what was until September 1933 NAS Sunnyvale but was now named Moffett Field, which also featured the massive new Hangar One, which was built for the Macon and still stands to this day.
On July 11, 1934, a new commander was assigned to USS Macon, Lieutenant Commander Herbert V. Wiley. Wiley was perhaps the most experienced living airship commander in the US Navy. He had served onboard USS Shenandoah, and USS Los Angeles as the airship’s executive officer and later its commanding officer, and while serving aboard USS Akron as the airship’s executive officer, he was the only officer to survive the loss of the Akron. If anyone was qualified to command USS Macon, it was Wiley. Lt. Cmdr. Wiley was also a maverick who chaffed at the restrictive parameters set for Navy airships and sought to demonstrate the true capabilities of the USS Macon and the US Navy’s airship program.
In July 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who previously served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy during WWI, was traveling aboard the cruiser USS Houston (CA-30). After diplomatic visits in the Caribbean and Latin America, the Houston transited through the locks of the Panama Canal and was sailing west to Hawaii before steaming north for Portland, Oregon. Wiley had the Macon lift off under the pretense of another routine exercise but with the unstated motive of intercepting the Houston and President Roosevelt while evading detection. Despite the Houston making a detour at Clipperton Island, the Macon and her complement of Curtiss F9C Sparrowhawks discovered the USS Houston on July 19. The Sparrowhawks even dropped current newspapers and magazines for the President to read.
Fleet Commander Admiral Joseph M. Reeves and other high-ranking naval officers were furious with Lt. Commander Wiley’s neglect to inform them of his intentions, though they would have certainly prevented him from doing such a stunt. However, both President Franklin Roosevelt and Rear Admiral Ernest J. King, then serving as the Navy’s Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, were highly impressed by the ability of the Macon to find the Houston‘s position, with the Macon receiving the following communication from the Houston after the Macon‘s Sparrowhawks dropped the newspapers and magazines: “from Houston: 1519 The President compliments you and your planes on your fine performance and excellent navigation 1210 and 1519 Well Done and thank you for the papers the President 1245.”
However, even at the USS Macon‘s moment of triumph, it hid an Achilles heel. On April 20, 1934, the Macon was ordered to fly across the US from Moffett Field to Naval Air Station Miami at Opa-locka, Florida (now the site of both Coast Guard Air Station Miami and Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport). However, the ship was over forced to fly at or above its recommended service ceiling (or pressure height) to clear the mountains and plateaus of the American Southwest. While flying high over West Texas, the sun heated and expanded the helium lifting gas, forcing the Macon to rise up. Though the Macon and the Akron both had automatic vents to release expanding helium, the ship had to maintain full engine power to not exceed its pressure height. Then, following a severe gust of wind over Van Horn, Texas, two diagonal girders in a frame near the upper fin junction failed. Though immediate damage control efforts saved the Macon, and the Macon arrived at Opa-locka on April 22 for repairs, but the addition of reinforcing channels to the upper fin junction was deemed not serious enough for the Macon to pull from service before its next scheduled overhaul.
For the rest of 1934, it had seemed that the repairs completed thus far in Florida were enough, but unfortunately for the USS Macon, it was not sufficient. On February 12, 1935, the USS Macon was returning to Moffett Field after participating in fleet maneuvers. Then, off Big Sur, near Monterey Bay, the USS Macon was caught in a storm. In the midst of that storm, the weakened ring’s structure failed as the result of a wind shear, and the upper vertical stabilizer was torn from the airship. The failure of the vertical stabilizer also saw pieces of the tail structure puncture the rear gas cells, and the Macon began losing helium rapidly. Commander Wiley quickly ordered the Macon‘s ballast be discharged, but with the tail down, nose up, and engines running at full power, the Macon rose rapidly past its pressure height of 2,800 feet, and continued its uncontrolled ascent until enough helium escaped to cancel the ship’s lift at 4,850 feet. After this, Commander Wiley sent out what would be the Macon‘s last SOS call: “Will abandon ship as soon as we land on the water somewhere 20 miles off of Pt. Sur, probably 10 miles at sea.” Within 20 minutes, the Macon slowly descended from the heights it reached and settled into the sea off Monterey Bay.
Thanks to the warmer temperatures of the waters off California compared to those of New Jersey that the Akron had plunged into, and the implementation of life preservers and inflatable life rafts on the Macon after learning from the mistakes of the Akron, 81 out of the Macon’s complement of 83 sailors survived the loss of their airship. The only two casualties were Radioman 1st Class Ernest Edwin Dailey, who jumped too high from the Macon into the Pacific to survive the fall, while Mess Attendant 1st Class Florentino Edquiba swam back into the sinking airship to retrieve personal items but drowned in the attempt. Survival of the vast majority of the Macon‘s crew was also attributed to the quick response of the US Navy cruisers USS Richmond (CL-9), USS Concord (CL-10) and USS Cincinnati (CL-6).
The loss of the USS Macon resulted in the cancellation of further naval excursions into dirigibles, with the US Navy instead focusing on smaller blimps for maritime reconnaissance. Even without the loss of the Macon, however, the development of longer-range airplanes that could fly higher and faster than the Akron-class airships showed where the future of naval aviation lay. The end of the Macon was also the end of the Curtiss F9C Sparrowhawk, for although the Akron took no Sparrowhawks with her to the bottom of the Atlantic, the Macon took four of the approximately seven Sparrowhawks built (Bureau Numbers 9058-9061) down with her. By 1939, the last F9Cs were withdrawn from service.
Lieutenant Commander Herbert V. Wiley would continue his naval career into WWII, where he commanded Destroyer Squadron 29 (consisting of thirteen Clemson-class destroyers) with the Asiatic Fleet aboard his flagship, the USS Paul Jones (DD-230). On January 15, 1944, Captain Hebert Wiley was placed in command of the battleship USS West Virginia (BB-48), which was sunk during the attack on Pearl Harbor and refloated to be returned to service. He later earned the Navy Cross for his leadership during the Battle of Surigao Strait on October 25, 1944, and remained in command during the ship’s first deployment during the Battle of Okinawa. He retired from the Navy in 1947 at the rank of Rear Admiral.
The wreck of the USS Macon was discovered in February 1991 as part of an expedition of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI). In 2006, the wreck was extensively documented in high-definition photos, videos, and sonar imaging in a joint expedition between the MBARI, Stanford University, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries that assembled the footage into a photomosaic of the wreck. Since then, the wreck of the USS Macon has been added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
Besides those in the wreck of the USS Macon, only one Curtiss F9C Sparrowhawk remains today, which was donated to the Smithsonian Institution by the US Navy in 1939, and after a restoration during the 1970s and a period of being loaned to the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, FL, the last Sparrowhawk is on display at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles International Airport in Chantilly, VA, wearing the markings of the USS Macon’s Air Group.
Even today, the idea of a flying aircraft carrier, and that of the large airship in general, remains a popular one. While the career of the USS Macon may have been brief, it continues to be a source of fascination for aviation enthusiasts, and the wreck of the Macon provides an incredible example for marine archaeologists to study for years to come.
Today in Aviation History is a series highlighting the achievements, innovations, and milestones that have shaped the skies. All the previous anniversaries are available HERE
