The name, to some, means "Daughter of the Stars" and the U.S.S. Shenandoah (ZR-1) for most of her short life seems to have been guided by those heavenly creatures. Work began on her complex interior frame at the Naval Aircraft Factory in Philadelphia, with assembly at the huge Lighter Than Air (LTA) Hangar at Lakehurst, New Jersey. Construction of the hangar at the Naval Air Station was completed just a year before the contract was signed for the navy's new airship. It had to be massive to accommodate her new occupant. Shenandoah was 680 feet in length with a diameter of nearly 80 feet. Her gas cells were to hold hydrogen, giving the mammoth vehicle enough lift to carry 25 tons of payload. The volatile gas was rejected in favor of the inert gas helium, after the destruction of the British airship R-38 in the Humber River. The British had been contracted to build a rigid airship for the U.S. Navy, and with acceptance by the Navy officers aboard the R-38, she would be designated the ZR-2, and join the fledgling American fleet. She broke apart during trials with her forward section bursting into flames. Sixteen American (only one of the contingent survived) and twenty-eight of the British crew died.

On 20 August, 1923 Shenandoah became airborne for the first time (a matter of a few feet as she was moved within the hangar), after it took nearly a week to fill the cells with precious helium. The gas was produced only in the United States and at that time, only in Texas. Christened 10 October, she undertook a series of maneuvering tests at Lakehurst NAS (the site remained the home of the navy's LTA program until it was transferred to NAS Sunnyvale, California in 1933), for nearly a month. The training and air trials including securing and detaching the ship from the 160-foot high mooring mast. It was a delicate procedure requiring tremendous skill aboard the ship and brute strength from the sailors manning the landing lines.

Rear Admiral William Moffett, Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, had ambitious plans for Shenandoah, including a flight over the North Pole the following year. She was designed (as were her sisters), to be scouts, traveling far ahead of the fleet to search for enemy vessels. Such cold weather training, Moffett suggested, would be beneficial to craft and crew. Shenandoah never got the chance -- in mid January 1924 she was torn from her mooring mast by a fierce gale, suffering severe damage. It was an omen of things to come and probably an indication that she may not have survived a journey to the North Pole.

What the navy needed now was Shenandoah aloft. After repairs, she returned to the skies under command of Lieutenant Commander Zachary Lansdowne in late May 1924. Through the late summer of 1924 she participated in fleet maneuvers, fulfilling her role as scout. She could travel faster and farther than any cruiser (her range was 3,980 miles at 41 knots), but she needed the capabilities of a mooring mast for re-supply. The U.S.S. Patoka, which started life as an oiler, was converted into the first airship tender, complete with a 125-foot mast. Shenandoah, it appeared, was now able to accompany the fleet. 

After spending the last months of 1924 in a cross-country flight, and the first half of 1925 under going maintenance, Shenandoah returned to the fleet. In early September 1925, Shenandoah left on her last voyage. She was to show the flag to American taxpayers, and convince them the navy needed a fleet of these majestic ships to defend her borders. It was an ill-conceived plan, even more so because Lieutenant Commander Lansdowne, who grew up in the mid-west, warned his superiors about the treacherous storms in the area that time of year. 

The next day was Shenandoah's last. Seeking her way around a violent weather front, the air ship was trapped between two massive storms. As lighting boiled with a wall of clouds, illuminating the huge craft, giant hands flung Shenandoah far into the black sky. Trapped in the clutches of the fierce storm, her bow twisted one way and her stern the opposite, the airship's frame failed. She broke into three pieces. Twenty-nine of the forty-three crewmen survived. Zachary Lansdowne was not among those.

They were Castor and Pollux in a sense, the two airships authorized by Congress on June 26, 1926--ZR-4, and ZR-5. They were U.S.S. Akron and U.S.S. Macon, and when Rear Admiral Moffett drove a golden rivet in ZR-4's main ring, it, ironically, pierced his own heart. Akron would kill him just a few years later. But there was hope for the big ships, each buoyed by 6,000,000 cubic feet of helium, their interior skeletons strengthened -- Shenandoah's death serving as a lesson. Now these huge ships had a new task -- they became aircraft carriers.

The navy experimented with a trapeze arrangement (pioneered aboard U. S. S. Los Angeles) that caught aircraft in mid-flight, and hauled them into the airships cavernous interior. Navy N2Y and F9C bi-planes, equipped with hooks, were flown into position, snagging the arm suspended below the ships belly. Once in position, the biplane was lifted through an opening in the ships hull. The plane's landing gear (useless when the aircraft attached herself to the dirigible for service) was removed, and a belly tank installed. The biplanes not only extended the scouting range of the airships, but they could defend the immense but relatively slow airships from enemy attack. There was some discussion about creating true airship aircraft "carriers," equipping dirigibles with more bi-planes than her scouting contingent, but that was a concept overtaken by traditional, seaborne carriers.

Akron served the navy as a scout over both oceans, achieving a laudable record in locating "enemy" fleets, and as a communication's center of sorts. The big ship was breath-taking in size, and impressive in range and the speed she achieved, but there was something very fragile about her. It would take the sky to remind the men who flew airships, that there silver ships were never, entirely free of danger. On April 3, 1933, Akron was destroyed by a storm off the New Jersey coast. There were just three survivors. Rear Admiral William A. Moffett, the man whose faith and vision guided the LTA program, died aboard Akron.

Macon joined Akron less than two years later, going down off Point Sur, California. The loss of life, fortunately, was significantly less. Only two of the eighty three men aboard Macon died in the tragedy. The incident effectively ended the dirigible program. The only airship that remained in the navy's airborne arsenal was the Los Angeles.

She born LZ-126, in Friedrichshafen, Germany, and handed over to the United States in war reparations. On 25 November 1924 she was commissioned U.S.S. Los Angeles. She was originally built to carry hydrogen (it had a greater lifting capacity than helium), but when the navy accepted her, she was switched to the inert gas, despite the fact it was difficult to come by. Shenandoah and Los Angeles had to share the valuable lifting agent; when one soared, her sister was grounded. It was a demeaning existence.

She was better suited as a scientific and scouting platform than her sisters, cruising from Michigan to Texas, to Florida, and throughout the Caribbean. Los Angeles made the east coast her home, making 331 flights, and surviving more than seven year amid the capacious skies that had claimed her sisters. When her life ended in 1939 it was to the ignominious din of the scrap hammer. Los Angeles and her sisters were born anachronisms, and died wondrous failures. They existed in the brief twilight between wars, and lived only so long as technology was held in abeyance by peace.  

A few men dreamed about re-creating the time of the airships, one even powered by atomic energy, but what remain of these great ships are their nimble cousins, non-rigid airships -- blimps. They lack the grandeur of Macon, Akron, Shenandoah, and Los Angeles, but if one catches a glimpse of a graceful blimp amid a field of white clouds, they can imagine a time of giants.