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Vintage USS Akron / Macon Navy Airship Over Manhattan NY, Official 8x10 Photo
Caption Card Says Macon... Navy\'s Catalog Says AkronDESCRIPTIONAn official U.S. Navy photograph of a giant rigid airship gliding over the southern tip of Manhattan, with Battery Park in the lower left, the Hudson River piers along the shoreline, and the skyscrapers of the Financial District stretching toward the top of the frame. The airship\'s long shadow falls across the rooftops to the right, which makes the scale of the ship easy to judge, since she measured 785 feet from nose to tail. This is an 8 x 10 inch print with white borders.A typed caption card on the reverse, issued by the U.S. Naval Historical Center (the Navy\'s history office from 1971 to 2008, now the Naval History and Heritage Command), identifies the airship as USS Macon (ZRS-5), \"over Southern Manhattan Island, New York City, circa 1933-34,\" with negative number NH 43900 and a RELEASED notation. The Navy\'s current online photo catalog lists that same negative number under USS Akron (ZRS-4), dated circa 1931-1933. Akron and Macon were sister ships built to the same 785 foot design, and from this angle they are nearly impossible to tell apart, so the item is described exactly as the card and the catalog each present it. Both ships are documented over New York: the Navy catalog has Akron over Manhattan in the early 1930s and Macon over New York Harbor in the summer of 1933. Either way, this is a Navy photograph of one of the two largest airships the United States ever flew, over the city that watched them.Akron and Macon were built as flying aircraft carriers, with an internal hangar and a trapeze that launched and recovered small Curtiss Sparrowhawk fighters in flight. They were among the largest flying objects ever built, and the Navy hoped they would serve as long range scouts for the fleet. Their story is tied together by one man. Rear Admiral William Moffett, the Navy\'s champion of the rigid airship, died aboard Akron when she went down in a storm off the New Jersey coast shortly after midnight on April 4, 1933. Seventy three of the 76 men aboard were lost, and the ship carried no life vests and only one raft. Three survivors were pulled from the sea by a German tanker. Less than a month before the crash, on March 11, 1933, Moffett\'s wife had christened Macon.Macon flew for less than two years. She was lost in a storm off Point Sur, California, on February 12, 1935, after her upper fin structure failed, and this time rescue ships were close at hand, so all but two of the 83 men aboard survived. Her loss effectively ended the U.S. Navy\'s big rigid airship program. Her wreck was located on the seafloor in 1990, with four of her Sparrowhawk fighters still lying nearby. A photograph of one of these ships crossing the Manhattan skyline captures the short time these giants spent in the sky.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 protectors. Shipping is free and already built into the price, so the BIN price is exactly what you pay, no surprise shipping costs at checkout.CONDITIONBlack and white photographic print with strong contrast and sharp detail across the skyline, piers and park, and deep shadows on the right side of the frame as shown in the scans. The white borders are clean and bright. The corners are clean, with a very slight bend at the lower right corner of the border that does not reach the image. A few tiny specks show in the white border and one or two in the dark areas of the image, visible only on close inspection. No tears, no creases through the image, and no writing on the front. The reverse carries the typed Naval Historical Center caption card, with a strip of aged tape at the top edge and light residue and paper traces from prior mounting. All of the typed text, the NH 43900 negative number and the RELEASED notation are fully legible, and none of the residue affects the image side.
