She lies in 1,450 feet of water three miles off the coast of California, just south of Point Sur. The Navy’s research submersible Sea Cliff found her there 24 June 1990.
After more than half a century in sea water, her outer cover is gone, there’s no semblance of any hull, and what lies on the bottom are mostly some corroded girders, fuel tanks, engines, a mooring cone, and the remains of a control car. Sticking up on edge from the sea floor are plastic plates from her galley. The wing ribs and skeletons of four F9C-2 Sparrowhawk hook-on airplanes lie nearby.
She was once 785 feet long and 133 feet wide. She was kept aloft by 6.5 million cubic feet of helium. Her eight Maybach engines, which drove three-bladed metal propellers, gave her a cruising speed of 55 knots and a range of about 6,000 miles. Her maximum speed was 75. An airship, she was the USS Macon (ZRS-5).
The Navy had other rigid airships—the kind with an internal frame—before her. All had been called, as was the Macon, “Queen of the Skies.” The Shenandoah (ZR- 1) had been wrecked over Ohio in 1925. The Los Angeles (ZR-3) had been decommissioned in 1932. The Akron (ZRS-4) had gone down in the Atlantic in 1933. The Macon was the only one still flying.
She was built in 1932-33 in Akron, Ohio, by the Goodyear-Zeppelin Corporation, a subsidiary of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Goodyear had acquired the patent rights of Germany’s Luftschiffbau-Zeppelin Company and the services of 13 of its technical experts. Goodyear-Zeppelin’s vice president for engineering, Dr. Karl Amstein, was one of them.
One of a pair of airships (the other was the Akron), the Macon was built under a competed, fixed-price contract from the Bureau of Aeronautics (BuAer). The Akron cost $5,375,000, the Macon $2,450,000. Both were assembled in the world’s largest hangar, erected for that purpose by Goodyear-Zeppelin at Akron’s municipal airport. It’s still standing.
The two ships were twins. They were constructed of four-sided, box-type, duralumin girders instead of the conventional German triangular type. To eliminate transverse wiring, they had “deep section” frames, or rings, to give them an inherently stiff built-up structure.
Three keels ran fore and aft: one along the top center line of the ship, the other two port and starboard, about 45° between the bottom line and the equator. Not only did these strengthen the structure, they also provided access throughout, particularly to the helium valves at the tops of the gas cells.
The Maybach engines—reversible and 560 horsepower each—were located four to a side along the port and starboard keels. Because the ship was inflated with fireproof helium, these gasoline-fueled power plants could be mounted inboard along the keels. This resulted in the engines being in line, a feature that would cause reduced propeller efficiency and considerable vibration toward the stern. Procured in Germany because no U.S. aircraft engine had comparable performance, the Maybachs faced outboard. Their drive shafts emerged from the side of the hull and were connected to the propellers by Allison gearing that could tilt them through 90°. The Macon had vectored thrust!
On each side she had four rows of condensers that cooled her exhaust gases to collect their water vapor and compensate for the weight of the fuel being burned. In this way she maintained her balance and kept from getting too light. The condenser panels, one of her most visible features in flight, are now among the most recognizable on the ocean floor.
A 75x60-foot hangar in the underside, about a third of the way aft, housed her F9C-2s. Equipped with a hook atop their upper wing, they flew on and off via the airship’s retractable trapeze.
The Macon had been built by assembling her frames on the hangar floor, hoisting them to hang from the overhead, and connecting them with longitudinals. Then the structure was covered with cotton cloth that would be painted with aircraft “dope,” aluminized to reflect solar radiation. The four stabilizing fins were bolted on. The helium cells were installed and inflated.
On 11 March 1933 the ZRS-5 was christened Macon by the wife of Rear Admiral William A. Moffett, BuAer’s chief. The Akron had preceded the Macon by about a year and a half and was in service at the Lakehurst, New Jersey, Naval Air Station. The name Macon had been chosen partly because Macon, Georgia, was in the congressional district served by Carl Vinson, chairman of the House Naval Affairs Committee, and partly because Akron and Macon seemed to go well together.
The night of 3-4 April 1933, just days after the Macon's christening, the Akron was caught in violent thunderstorms that crashed her into the sea off the New Jersey coast. Of the 76 on board, 73 lost their lives, including Moffett and the commanding officer, Commander Frank C. McCord.
Against this backdrop of the worst disaster yet in aviation history, the Macon made her first flight 21 April from the Goodyear-Zeppelin air dock. Three more followed. On 23 June the Navy gave the contractor a receipt for the airship, and she was placed in commission. Later that day her captain. Commander Alger H. Dresel, undocked her, took her off, and headed her for Lakehurst, where she would complete her trials.
In October she departed Lakehurst for her permanent station, the new lighter-than-air base at Moffett Field on the San Francisco Peninsula. It was to have been called Sunnyvale, but was named in honor of the late BuAer chief instead.
Flying the Macon to California meant crossing the Southwest. Taking a rigid airship over the mountains and through the passes in that part of the country could be unmitigated hell. In the warm air, the ship had less lift. To clear the heights, she had to fly at altitudes where her automatic pressure-relief valves opened, venting helium to the atmosphere. To stay in the air, she had to support herself dynamically with bow up and engines running at full speed. Thermals, turbulence, and blowing sand added to the experience.
Dresel brought the Macon safely through this obstacle course to find quite a different challenge awaiting him at Moffett. He had to demonstrate her value to a skeptical fleet. It was uphill all the way. Built to be a long- range strategic scout, she had range and endurance no other naval aircraft could equal or even approach. She was made-to-order for open-ocean, far-offshore reconnaissance. But the assignments given her were tactical, too limited in range, and too close to coastlines, anchorages, and “enemy” ships and aircraft.
While flying cross-country to Opa-locka (near Miami), Florida, in April 1934 to join the fleet in Caribbean maneuvers, she suffered structural failure in the stem. Near Van Horn, Texas, the Macon shuddered in violent air as she took an exceptionally sharp gust. A telephone call to the control car reported that part of frame 17.5—near where the port fin was attached—had failed. Chief Boatswain’s Mate Robert J. “Shaky” Davis and others of the crew made temporary repairs using lumber that had been put on board for just such a structural emergency. Dresel took the Macon on to Opa-locka, where she remained masted for two weeks while Goodyear-Zeppelin made more permanent repairs. In early May she was able to participate in the maneuvers and, after a somewhat unimpressive performance, returned to California on the 16th. Her trip home over the mountains and desert was bumpy, but she suffered no more damage.
Two girders in frame 17.5 (frame numbers reflected their distance in meters from a reference point in the tail) had failed. BuAer, while finding that “the present structure is considered to be amply strong for any operations over the sea,” did recommend that part of the frame and parts of the fins be reinforced so that the Macon could carry out any mission. “Because the work is not urgent,” it added, “it is considered that it can be accomplished from time to time, as opportunity offers, at the discretion of the commanding officer, and, therefore, will not interfere with operating schedules.”
The great silvery ship continued flying. From 11 July 1934 onward she did so under a new commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Herbert V. Wiley. Formerly captain of the Los Angeles, and executive officer and one of the Akron’s three survivors, he was fresh from sea duty. He knew firsthand the poor opinion the fleet had of the Macon, and he was determined to give a convincing demonstration of her ability to scout, using her planes to do the scouting. To do this, as airship historian Richard K. Smith has aptly put it in The Airships Akron & Macon: Flying Aircraft Carriers of the United States Navy (Naval Institute Press, 1965), he let his airplane pilots off the leash.
The Macon’s heavier-than-air unit (that is, the pilots and mechanics) were a spirited and innovative bunch. Their planes were decked out in bright colors, and on their fuselages was a logo showing two acrobats: a fat one represented the Macon and a thin one represented an F9C-2, working with a trapeze. The Curtiss-built Sparrowhawk had a wingspan of only 25 feet, a length of 20. The aircraft’s gross weight was 2,700 pounds, cruising speed 125 miles per hour, and service ceiling 19,000 feet. Originally developed for shipboard carrier use, the F9C design had failed to be accepted for that role. When BuAer was looking for a hook-on airplane small enough to pass through the Akron/Macon hangar door, the F9C just happened to be available.
Wiley gave pilots Min Miller and Knappy Kivette a chance to show what they could do when, a week after assuming command, he took the Macon out on his own scouting mission: to find the cruiser Houston (CA-30) with the vacationing President Franklin D. Roosevelt on board. Miller suggested he remove the wheels from the two Sparrowhawks and add a belly tank to decrease drag and increase range. Wiley agreed.
The Macon's planes intercepted the Houston about 1,500 miles from San Francisco. Then the Macon herself appeared. Newspapers and specially canceled souvenir mail were dropped by the planes for the President. It was a proud day for Navy Lighter-Than-Air. Finally, the Macon had vividly demonstrated her talent for long-range scouting.
But to Navy brass the flight had been a stunt. Wiley’s navigation and scouting may have been remarkable, but to them his judgment had been poor. His operational bosses found it difficult to forgive that he had planned and executed the flight without their permission (which they never would have given if he had asked them for it). He was never disciplined for his brashness, however, which, like the Macon’s achievement, would be forgotten in time.
During the remainder of 1934 “the men on the flying trapeze” worked to develop coordinated airplane/airship operations, which included radio techniques to control the planes and bring them home. The Macon was fast evolving a command and control system, an airborne version of what was under way for aircraft carriers. Hooking on and swinging out on the trapeze became routine, easy to do both by day and by night.
Then came 12 February 1935.
Reinforcement of frame 17.5 at its port, starboard, and lower-fin areas had been completed, but not yet at the upper vertical. That had been postponed because it meant deflating some gas cells and grounding the ship. Besides, BuAer had said that there was no urgency, that the structure was “amply strong” over water, which is where the Macon had been and would be operating.
At 1700 the Macon was at 1,250 feet, making her way north at 63 knots through rain clouds off the coast of California, with Point Sur off her beam. At 1705, just after Wiley had ordered left rudder, she was struck by a gust that drove her bow to starboard and downward and put her into a roll. The men on the rudders and elevators tried to respond, but the wheels were wrenched from their hands. The gust had swung the bow against the left rudder and broken the ship’s structure at the top of—you guessed it—frame 17.5. When it failed, the fin, no longer supported, went over the side.
With three of her helium cells deflating in the stem, the airship quickly took on a nose-up attitude of about 25°. Water ballast and fuel tanks were jettisoned aft of midships. Thousands of pounds of disposable weight fell into the sea.
Wiley, who had the most flight hours (about 5,000) of any of the nine officers who commanded the Navy’s large airships, tried everything, from ordering men forward to weigh down the bow and using the engines and swiveling propellers to level off the ship to valving helium from her forward cells. Nothing worked. The Macon was still pointed skyward and rising, uncontrolled, farther into the cloud cover, perhaps caught in an updraft related to the gust.
At 2,800 feet her pressure-relief valves began opening to release helium. Still the ascent continued. Up she climbed to 4,850 feet. Then, without the lift lost by helium blowing off through the valves, she began to fall back. An attempt was made to drop her four F9C-2 aircraft (the number on board varied according to the availability of pilots and planes), but the ship’s angle was too great.
At about 1,700 feet the Macon emerged from the clouds. Ballast and loose gear continued to rain down. At 1739 she put her stern into the Pacific; the whole airship then followed. She floated for about 40 minutes and then sank.
Eighty-three officers and men were on board; two crewmen were lost. Unlike the Akron, the Macon had had time to radio an SOS that brought naval vessels quickly to the scene.
Thus ended the story of the USS Macon. Or so it appeared until she was found 55 years later. Will it be practicable to recover any of the Sparrowhawks, as the National Museum of Naval Aviation at Pensacola reportedly wants to do? Can one or more of her Maybach engines be brought up? And what else? The answers are yet to be learned.