At one time the Navy had an airborne aircraft carrier. Although it wasn’t quite as large as today’s aircraft carriers, it was still a behemoth. I’m speaking of a rigid airship (dirigible) that was built to carry, launch and land aircraft. You say you’ve never heard of such? Let me enlighten you.

In my aviation career, I went to many naval air stations, one of which was NAS Moffett Field, Calif. Located just south of San Francisco Bay and just north of San Jose, this base has a landmark structure that can be seen for many miles, especially in the air. It is a huge dome shaped hangar that was built to house one aircraft, the USS Macon, which was designated as ZRS-5.

Only when you actually walk inside the hangar can you be overwhelmed by the immense size of it and how large the airship was to virtually fill the whole structure. The Macon was 785 feet long – as long as three Boeing 747s end-to-end.

Compare that to the Essex class aircraft carrier of World War II, which ran around 880 feet long. It was 146 feet high, and when loaded with its 5 F9C-2 Sparrowhawk two-winged fighters, it weighed in at approximately 400,000 pounds (200 tons) and could accommodate a crew of 100 officers and men. It took 150 ground handlers to launch and retrieve it. A rigid airship, or dirigible, is one in which the gas envelope is supported by a framework, while the blimp – a non-rigid) airship – relies on the gas inside to support the envelope.

I have seen pictures at the hangar, which recapped the brief history of Macon. The photos included air operations, launching and recovering the Sparrowhawks, which were intended for protection of the airship and advanced scouting. The speed of the fighters allowed a much greater coverage of the surrounding area than was possible from the slow (87 mph maximum) dirigible.

I recall watching an old movie when I was a kid about the Navy, which included outside and inside shots of the dirigible during flight operations. The planes would be suspended from an apparatus called a “trapeze” by a hook on the top of the plane. The crew would roll the plane out of the gondola on a rail, and after the engine was running, the pilot would release the hook and fly out on his mission. Upon return, the pilot would fly up and thread the hook back to the trapeze and be pulled back inside the airborne hangar.

Unfortunately, like all airships, it was very fragile in adverse weather and was lost in a storm off the coast of California, near Big Sur. Her career was all too short. Launched on April 23, 1935 – two weeks after her sister ship, the Akron, crashed – she was lost Feb. 12, 1935.

The senior aviation officer in the Navy, Rear Adm. William Adger Moffett, a South Carolina native, lost his life in Akron and NAS Sunnyvale was renamed NAS Moffett Field.

After the loss of Macon, the lighter-than-air facet of Naval Aviation never recovered, although non-rigid airships (blimps) were used until 1962. They were used extensively during World War II in roles, where a slow, sustained presence was required. They could patrol for many days on station with no need to return to base. Unfortunately, the fragile nature of the gas-filled craft did not provide the durability that was needed for sustained military service.

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