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USS Macon ZRS-5 Navy Airship Under Construction
Akron Airdock 1933 Photo 8x10
Goodyear-Zeppelin Hull Frame... Official Navy PrintDESCRIPTIONThis is an official U.S. Navy photograph of the airship USS Macon (ZRS-5) under construction inside the Goodyear-Zeppelin airdock at Akron, Ohio. The reverse caption reads "USS Macon under construction. Navy Recruiting Bureau, 1933," with Navy photo number NRL(M)19294. The view looks along the bare duralumin hull, with ring frames, long girders and work scaffolding lit by banks of floodlights, a wooden barricade in the foreground, and small figures standing on the hangar floor that show how enormous the structure was. At 785 feet long, Macon was one of the largest flying machines ever built, and this is what she looked like before she had flown.Macon was built by the Goodyear-Zeppelin Corporation to the design of German-born engineer Karl Arnstein, with construction beginning in May 1931. The Akron airdock that housed her was 1,175 feet long, 325 feet wide and 211 feet high, and when it was completed it was described as the largest building in the world without interior supports. Macon and her sister ship USS Akron were the first two airships built inside it. She was named for Macon, Georgia, which lay in the congressional district of Carl Vinson, chairman of the House Naval Affairs Committee. Macon was christened on March 11, 1933 by Mrs. William A. Moffett, wife of Rear Admiral Moffett, the Navy's Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics and the leading champion of its rigid airship program. Less than a month later, on April 4, 1933, Moffett was lost when the Akron crashed off the New Jersey coast. Macon made her first flight on April 21, 1933 and was commissioned into the Navy on June 23, 1933.Macon carried twelve helium gas cells, eight engines mounted inside the hull, and a hangar in her belly that launched and recovered Curtiss F9C Sparrowhawk fighters on a trapeze while in flight, and she cost $2.45 million to build. She served the fleet for less than two years before a storm off Point Sur, California on February 12, 1935 damaged her tail structure and brought her down. Of the 83 officers and men aboard, only two were lost, a result credited to the life jackets and rafts that were added after the Akron disaster. Her loss effectively ended the Navy's rigid airship program. Her wreck was located in 1990 about 1,500 feet down in what is now the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, with four of her Sparrowhawks still at the site, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2010.This is an official Naval Photographic Center print, identified by the Naval District Washington, D.C. 20374 address in the reverse stamp, which means it was printed from the Navy's file image well after 1933 rather than pulled at the time. It is offered as exactly that. The print measures approximately 8 x 10 inches. Images were scanned at 600dpi. Every effort is made for fact checking and provenance, including background research through news and historical archives. If any listing is incorrect in any way and you're unsatisfied with the item, please connect with me and I'll make it right. Orders placed before Noon CDT ship same day via Ground Advantage with tracking, so you know exactly when it will arrive. Returns accepted on all items exceeding $25 in cost. All shipments receive rigid, professional packaging, sealed and protected in acid free sleeves. Shipping is free and already built into the price, so the BIN price is exactly what you pay, no surprise shipping costs at checkout.CONDITIONOfficial Naval Photographic Center print on photographic paper with a clean white border and sharp, square corners. The front shows no tears, no creases, no writing and no stamps. The image is soft and grainy with strong contrast and bright bloom around the floodlights, as photographed, and a few tiny dark specks sit in the floor area of the foreground. A small white mark appears in the lower right corner of the image area. The reverse is a clean, evenly toned off-white. It carries the violet ink Naval Photographic Center stamp with the caption "USS Macon under construction. Navy Recruiting Bureau, 1933," the number NRL(M)19294, the initials WB, and a RELEASED stamp that overlaps the line reading NOT FOR PUBLICATION UNLESS OFFICIALLY RELEASED. The caption, number and RELEASED stamp are fully legible, while a few letters in the top header lines are lightly inked. The unit, date and photographer fields are blank.
