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hard to believe the Navy had flying aircraft carriers, but they did.

The first flying aircraft carrier, USS Akron (ZRS-4), was commissioned in 1931 – and after several incidents in two years, the airship crashed and sank off the coast of New Jersey in 1933, killing 73 of 76 men onboard, including Rear Adm. William A. Moffett, the first chief of the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics and the chief proponent of bringing LTA aircraft to the fleet.

Macon was commissioned a month and a half after the USS Akron crash. The airship was commanded by one of the only USS Akron survivors, Lt. Cmdr. Herbert Wiley, and was based in California.

One of the remaining 2 survivors of the USS Akron, Wiley, went on to be the CO of the battleship West Virginia, which was sunk in Pearl Harbor on Dec 7th

 The second-in-class dirigible had a slightly longer service life. The airship stayed mission-ready and participated in many fleet exercises in its two years.

Macon demonstrated its concept of operations, launching and recovering as many as five single-seat Curtiss F9C Sparrowhawk biplanes via a “trapeze” that the crew used to recover the planes. The planes sometimes had their landing gear removed while operating from the airship, leaving little room for error for the pilots.   https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/numerical-list-of-images/nhhc-series/nh-series/NH-77000/NH-77434.html shows a Sparrowhawk without the landing gear


View of the airship's lower starboard side, amidships between frames 125 and 147.5, taken during her commissioning ceremonies at Lakehurst, New Jersey, 27 October 1931. This section was left uncovered until after the ceremonies so the Public could see into Akron's interior. Important design features are labeled.

https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/numerical-list-of-images/nhhc-series/nh-series/NH-80000/NH-80776.html

http://www.navsource.org/archives/02/99/02990419.jpg
http://silodrome.com/uss-macon-airship/

Start at the 1:15 moment, for the opening of the big doors to the hanger of the carrier











http://anyskin.tumblr.com/post/121344371762/side-corridor-on-a-dirigible-uss-akron#notes
http://anyskin.tumblr.com/post/121343577857/emergency-control-station-of-a-dirigible-uss#notes