C-class blimp

The C-class blimp was a United States Navy patrol airship developed near the end of the First World War as an improvement on the B-type, which had suited training but was of limited value for patrol work. It was larger than the B-class and had two motors and a longer endurance. Envelope production was split between Goodyear and Goodrich, while the Burgess division of Curtiss built the control cars. The Navy first ordered thirty, cut the order to ten after the armistice of November 1918, and received all ten in late 1918, too late for wartime use. They served at Navy airship stations until 1922. In 1921 the C-7 became the first airship inflated with helium, and the C-5 was lost when a windstorm tore it from its ground crew in Newfoundland before a planned transatlantic attempt. The casing of the Fat Man atomic bomb was modelled on the shape of its envelope.