L-8

L-8, later renamed America and popularly known as the Ghost Blimp, was a United States Navy L-class airship, one of the small non-rigid blimps taken over from the Goodyear fleet in the Second World War and used for training and coastal antisubmarine patrol. On 16 August 1942 it lifted off from Treasure Island in San Francisco with two crewmen, Lieutenant Ernest DeWitt Cody and Ensign Charles Adams, and later that morning drifted back over the coast with nobody aboard before crashing in Daly City. The men were never found and a Navy board could not establish what happened. The airship was repaired and returned to service, the gondola was later sold back to Goodyear and flown as an advertising blimp until 1982, and it is now on static display at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida.