Akron-class airship

The Akron-class airships were a class of two rigid airships, USS Akron and USS Macon, built for the United States Navy in the early 1930s by the Goodyear-Zeppelin Corporation as scouts, described as eyes for the fleet, and as flying aircraft carriers. Their design used Karl Arnstein deep duraluminum rings and a triple keel, with twelve helium gas cells and eight Maybach VL-2 12-cylinder gasoline engines installed inside the hull. Each had a hangar for up to five small airplanes, launched and recovered on a trapeze, and a spy basket lowered on a long line. Akron crashed in a storm off New Jersey on 4 April 1933, killing 73 people, and Macon sank off Point Sur, California, on 12 February 1935, so each was lost less than two years after commissioning.