Tag Archives: USS Shenandoah (ZR-1)

What amazing times…

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100 years ago this month. Drawing of the USS Shenandoah (ZR-1) from the January 1925 issue of The National Geographic Magazine. With a 25-man crew, the airship was designed to carry a half-dozen .30 caliber Lewis machine guns and eight 500-pound bombs.

The first rigid airship to be designed and built by the United States Navy, Shenandoah was designed by the Bureau of Aeronautics; fabricated at the Naval Aircraft Factory, in Philadelphia, and assembled at the Naval Air Station, Lakehurst, the latter famous for being the site of the “Oh the Humanity,” Hindenburg disaster in 1937.

While not filled with flammable hydrogen, the 680-foot-long Shenandoah suffered a disaster all her own just 23 months into her career as a floating battleship of the air.

Via DANFS:

On 2 September 1925, Shenandoah departed Lakehurst on a flight to the Middle West for training and to test a new mooring mast at Dearborn, Michigan. While passing through an area of thunderstorms and turbulence over Ohio early in the morning of the 3rd, the airship was torn apart and crashed near Marietta. Shenandoah’s commanding officer, Cmdr. Zachary Lansdowne, and 13 other officers and men were killed. Twenty-nine survivors succeeded in riding three sections of the airship to Earth.

Warship Weds July 4

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steampunk navies of the 1866-1938 time period and will profile a different ship each week.

– Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday,  July 4

Here we have the Patoka. This funny looking (the one in the water) ship was laid down about six weeks after the end of WWI as an oiler  at Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock, Co., Newport News, VA. Commissioned as Fleet Oiler No. 9, 13 October 1919, she soon became a balloon tender and was the service’s only one for tw decades.  Patoka was modified as a tender for the Navy’s rigid airships, receiving a distinctive mooring mast on her stern and facilities for handling seaplanes. She was subsequently used as an operational and experimental base by three of the Navy’s great dirigibles, USS Shenandoah (ZR-1) in 1924-1925, USS Los Angeles (ZR-3) in 1925-1932, and USS Akron (ZRS-4) in 1932.

Decommissioned, 31 August 1933 after the loss of her airships, she spent six years without a mission. Redesignated Seaplane Tender (AV-6), and commanded by CDR. Clifton Sprague (later Rear Admiral of Taffy-3 Fame) in 1939. She spend most of the war as a oiler, mine craft tender and was reclassified Miscellaneous Auxiliary (AG-125), 15 August 1944. Decommissioned, 1 July 1946 she was sold for scrapping, 15 March 1948 by the Maritime Commission to Dulien Steel Products, Co.

Note how big the Zepplins were…..Patoka herself is over 400-feet long…

Specifications:
Displacement 5,400 t.(lt) 16,800 t.(fl), 17,820 t.(lim)
Length 447′ 10″
Beam 60′ 3″
Draft 27′ 8″(lim)
Speed 11.2 kts.
Complement
Officers 29
Enlisted 272
Largest boom capacity 40 t.
Cargo Capacity
Navy Standard Fuel Oil 62,300 bbls
Gasoline 309,000 gals
Armament
two single 5″/38 dual purpose gun mounts
four twin 40mm AA gun mounts
four twin 20mm AA gun mounts
Fuel oil capacity 4,780 bbls.
Ships’ service generators
four turbo-drive, 60kW 120V D.C., 1 75kW 120V D.C.,
two diesel-drive, 100kW 450V D.C.
Propulsion
one Newport News vertical quadruple expansion engine
two Yarrow boilers, 265psi Sat°
single screw, 2,800 shp.