The British wanted to connect their great empire with airship routes.
For this purpose they constructed two large helium-filled airships.
The USS Macon flying over New York Harbor, circa summer 1933.
The US Navy was not interested in ferrying passengers.
They wanted to see if the airship could carry fighter planes instead.
It sounds likealien technology, except, it had been already tried before.
The British came up with the idea first during the Great War itself.
Because airships were essentially large floating balloons, they were vulnerable to enemy attacks.
The British sought to address this weakness by suspending a parasitic fighter under the belly of the airship.
When required this aircraft could detach from its harness while still airborne and defend the airship from enemy planes.
Although initial tests were successful, the airships were found to be too bulky and the program was cancelled.
A Sopwith 2F.1 Camel secured under the British HM Airship 23r.
These early systems were not designed to recover an aircraft once it was released.
In 1929, the US Navy designed a trapeze system that could launch and recover an aircraft mid-air.
The trapeze system was first tried on theUSS Los Angeles.
TheUSS Akronwas launched in 1931, and the USS Macon in 1933.
Both were humongous ships, 785 feet in length and a hull diameter of 133 feet.
The airships were lightly armed, with just eight .30 caliber machine guns.
The heart of the ship was the airplane hangar and trapeze system.
The pilot tripped the hook and the airplane fell away from the ship.
The trapeze and airplane were then raised into the hangar.
Furthermore, if the trapeze got damaged it would leave any airborne scouts stranded with nowhere to land.
As a solution, a second fixed trapeze was attached to the bottom of the ship.
A Curtiss F9C Sparrowhawk attached by a “skyhook” to USS Macon.
The crew lost control of the craft and it plunged into the ocean.
The accident left 73 dead, and only three survivors.
On February 12,USS Maconwas over the Pacific ocean when a storm caused the upper fin to fail.
Macon had suffered damage to the fin months earlier, but the Navy had failed to repair the damage.
The ships gas cells got punctured and as the helium leaked out, the ship descended into the ocean.
The loss of both airships effectively ended the flying aircraft carrier program.
