USS Akron

yeah so yeah exactly right so most people because of blimps you think of like this is the only spot that was occupied actually like the whole lower third of the airship was occupied and this one's you know being able to do a water rescue on it but they were about the size like the graph zeppelin for example was about the size of the u.s capital building standing end to end the whole thing this one was landing on an an airship, an aircraft carrier landing on top of an aircraft carrier.

Because this one was the USS Akron, and this one was a fully equipped aircraft carrier in the sky.

This is the mooring station on the Empire State Building.

Look at the engineering.

get zero.

Zero.

There was a couple other aircraft, airship disasters, but I will say every one of them, like I believe it's the USS Akron, it was pilot error, captain error.

The captain of the Akron flew right into a strong storm.

So they have a little tribute to the Hartzell Walnut Propeller Corps.

But, you know, Waco was in semi-illustrious things because the USS Akron and Macron had Hartzell propellers on the airships.

And it's a lot of fun to come and see the aircraft of a company that's kind of only remembered by a lot of people for the gliders.

So if you find yourself ever out and about in Ohio, as we have, I would highly recommend stopping off in Troy and checking out the Waco Museum because it is a fabulous little collection with lots of bits and pieces that we haven't had too much time to delve into.

Well, it was a very scarce natural resource.

You need a ton of helium to be able to fill even just the handful of airships that the United States Navy has, the USS Akron, the USS Macon, the USS Los Angeles, and a few other kind of smaller, lighter-than-air crafts.

There's also a domestic program with Goodyear based in Akron, which is building a lot of these for the United States Navy.

And so given the scarcity of the resource and how expensive it is to extract and export, the Congress decides that this is too valuable to allow any portion of it to go abroad.

I got that one right here though.

Biplane Lash from the USS Akron is this one.

The USS Akron, Macon, and I believe the Los Angeles were all flying aircraft carriers for America.

Never talked about in the history books really.

They met, they were one of the bigger, one of the, I think the Los Angeles or maybe the Akron both, they both crashed one of the bigger disasters in aircraft, airship history, asides from the Hindenburg.

But even then, far higher survivability rate than airplanes, even modern airplanes today.

But...

I told you guys about this a long time ago, and I couldn't find it back then, so definitely want to show you guys this.

But the thing that really kind of like got my attention, you know, if there's one fact that would...

i think really persuade people that what tompkins was saying was very real was was that um you know tompkins core argument was that in the 1950s and 60s he was working at douglas aircraft aircraft company in designing these future space carriers that will be become part of a secret space program run by the us navy The key fact that really supports that is that the guy that he says was running the program, Dr. Wolfgang Klemperer, was the same scientist that was involved in the design of the rigid dirigibles that Zeppelin Company had built in the early 1900s, and then in the 1930s the US Navy got Klemperer to design for them the USS Akron and the USS Macon, which were the first flying aircraft carriers.

I mean, a lot of people don't know this, that in the 1930s, the United States Navy had flying aircraft carriers.

And these were helium-filled dirigibles, rigid dirigibles, that would actually have these aircraft that would actually be able to launch or land on these flying aircraft carriers.