Why the USS Akron Fell Out of the Sky

In April 1933 the USS Akron, a 785-foot Navy airship filled with helium that could not burn, came down off the New Jersey coast within sight of a tanker that turned to help at once, and 73 of the 76 men aboard died. This documentary follows the Akron from the Navy's plan for a Pacific scout through her construction at Akron, Ohio, her trapeze-launched Sparrowhawk fighters and the ground accident at Camp Kearny, then into the storm, the two falls and the tail-first impact. It explains in plain words how a ship that long, tilted nose-up in a deepening low, could put her tail in the sea while the altimeter still showed room to spare, and it is clear about which parts of that are documented and which are still argued. It also follows the testimony to the Court of Inquiry and the detail that decided who lived: no life jackets and a single rubber raft. It ends with her sister ship Macon, which fell into the Pacific two years later carrying life jackets and rafts, under the command of one of the Akron's three survivors. CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 0:47 Rescue Off the Phoebus 3:00 Why Build the Akron 5:14 Inside the Flying Carrier 7:31 A Dangerous Giant 8:44 The Final Flight 11:56 The Altimeter Problem 14:23 Inquiry and Missing Life Jackets SOURCES - U.S. Congress, Joint Committee to Investigate Dirigible Disasters, Investigation of Dirigible Disasters (hearings, 1933), HathiTrust: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001039874 - Naval History and Heritage Command, Akron (ZRS-4): https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs/a/akron.html - Naval History and Heritage Command, Macon I (ZRS-5): https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs/m/macon-i.html - NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, USS Macon: https://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/macon/ - Richard K. Smith, The Airships Akron & Macon: Flying Aircraft Carriers of the United States Navy (Naval Institute Press, 1965): https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001039873 - Associated Press via MPR News, Forgotten US airship crash recalled 80 years later (2013): https://www.mprnews.org/story/2013/03/31/forgotten-us-airship-crash-recalled-80-years-later - Dan Grossman, Airships.net, U.S.S. Akron (ZRS-4) and U.S.S. Macon (ZRS-5): https://www.airships.net/us-navy-rigid-airships/uss-akron-macon/ - Wikipedia, USS Akron: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Akron ARCHIVE FOOTAGE University of Akron Archives, British Pathé, Clips From the Past, National Aviation Hall of Fame, Internet Archive, US public-domain archive film, Periscope Film, Dan Grossman (airship historian), Universal Newsreels, California Pioneers of Santa Clara County. PHOTOS - Raimond Spekking, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Motortankschiff_Annika_auf_der_Elbe_in_Hamburg_(IMO_9628489,_ENI04809760)-4806.jpg Public domain: U.S. Navy / Naval History and Heritage Command; Harris & Ewing and National Photo Company (Library of Congress), via Wikimedia Commons. MUSIC Music licensed from Epidemic Sound. KEYWORDS uss akron, uss akron crash, akron airship disaster 1933, uss akron documentary, zrs-4 akron, uss macon, herbert v wiley, william moffett, navy rigid airship, flying aircraft carrier, curtiss sparrowhawk, goodyear zeppelin, lakehurst airship, helium airship crash, airship disaster, aviation disasters, engineering failures, failed machines