L-class blimp

The L-class blimps were small training airships flown by the United States Navy during the Second World War. They grew out of the small non-rigid airships the Goodyear Aircraft Company had built in the mid-1930s to advertise the Goodyear name and carry passengers. The Navy ordered the first, L-1, in 1937 alongside the K-2, and it was delivered in April 1938 to the Lakehurst air station. When the United States entered the war, the Navy also took over Goodyear's five commercial blimps and renumbered them L-4 to L-8, and ten more L-class ships were ordered from Goodyear in 1943. About 147 feet long with a crew of two and two Warner radial engines, they were too small for much patrol work, and after the war several went back to Goodyear.