Daughter of the Stars
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

In 1931, the Empire State Building’s managers announced that dirigibles, enormous airships, would moor at its stainless steel, wing adorned finial, embarking passengers from the 102nd story. But only one airship even made contact with the windswept mast, on September 16, 1931: Docking free-floating airships 1,000 feet above the pavement proved unworkable. The airport never sold a ticket.
New Yorkers had first seen men fly when Charles Durant’s hot-air balloon rose from Battery Park on September 9, 1830. But once aloft, such a craft could only drift with the winds. German inventor Ferdinand von Zeppelin achieved controlled flight with his dirigibles in 1899. They were cigar-shaped, fabric-covered frames, enclosing clusters of gasbags containing hydrogen to hold them aloft, while motors propelled them. Twenty years later, the Navy began building the first American made dirigible at Naval Air Station Lakehurst, N.J., 60 miles from Manhattan. The ZR-1 was 680 feet long – about two Midtown blocks – and held in the air with helium rather than flammable hydrogen. Galleys, berths, ballast, and fuel tanks rested inside the hull while the bridge crew worked in a control car below it.
On September 7, 1923, 320 sailors and Marines walked ZR-1 from her hangar. On the command, “Up ship!” they released her. After rising to 1,000 feet, her motors kicked in and she ascended to 7,000 feet to test her gas valves. As helium expands with altitude, the gasbags would burst unless gas was released; ZR-1’s valves opened automatically at 6,000 feet. Around 10 a.m., she set off for New York. At about 11:20 a.m., ZR-1 sailed over Todt Hill, Staten Island. Her six Packard 300 horsepower engines thundering, the largest aircraft the city had ever seen charged up the Bay at 65 knots, passing the Statue of Liberty and Governor’s Island as steamers whistled and coastal batteries fired salutes. Tens of thousands of people jammed the streets to watch her triumphant flyby: nothing like her had been seen outside the newsreels. Later that month, the Navy secretary’s wife christened ZR-1 “Shenandoah,” which, she said, means “Daughter of the Stars.”
On September 2, 1925, Shenandoah set off at 2:52 p.m. for the Midwest. At 2:30 a.m. on September 3, she was 1,700 feet over Cambridge, Ohio, heading west by southwest at 35-40 knots when lightning was observed to the north and west. At 4:23 a.m., bridge officer Lieutenant Charles Rosendahl recorded an updraft shoving Shenandoah helplessly upward at 200 feet a minute. No one in the world, as Rosendahl later learned, had anticipated anything like this. At 4:30, she stopped rising but could not descend in the turbulent air. An overheated engine failed at 4:34. Another updraft, moving at 2,100 feet a minute, lifted Shenandoah higher than 6,000 feet, triggering the gas valves. At 4:46, another engine failed. At 4:47,a cold air mass caused her to plummet 1,500 feet, with the crew dumping ballast to slow her fall. At 4:48, another updraft wrenched her up again.
The valves had released nearly 10,000 pounds of lift. Only 2,500 pounds of ballast remained. Captain Zachary Lansdowne ordered his crew to stand by to drop fuel tanks to save the ship if she descended again. At 4:52, he ordered Rosendahl up into the hull to check the crew’s readiness. As Rosendahl reached the keel, a burst of wind violently twisted the airship’s bow upward. Her frame failed. She broke in two, nearly a mile over Ohio.
For about 90 seconds, control cables held the wreckage together. Then her tail sank, tearing the control car from the ship and hurling Lansdowne and the bridge crew into the sky. The altimeter survived: Its readings show the ship being tossed up and down as the crew fought for her life, until a sudden break shows Shenandoah overcome, followed by a long, jagged, downward line as the altimeter plummeted through the night.
Rosendahl, clinging to the nose with nine men, realized they could use the remaining ballast and gasbags to free balloon to a landing. He crawled to the ruptured end for visibility and began giving orders. At 5:45 a.m., about 30 feet above Sharon, Ohio, Rosendahl saw farmer Ernest Nichols plowing his fields. Rosendahl bellowed, “Grab the ropes.” Nichols, who had not noticed the 210-foot long wreck drifting just overhead, snubbed a line around two tree stumps. Miles away, the tail, its gasbags intact, gently sank to a safe landing with 20 more survivors.
A court of inquiry found no negligence or culpability. In 1928, the Navy ordered two new airships, Akron and Macon. Gigantic flying aircraft carriers, 785 feet long, each carried its own fighter squadron. But like Shenandoah they proved to be enormous eggshells, each lost at sea within two years of launching, and neither was replaced. The dirigible era ended in 1937 when the Hindenburg burned at Lakehurst.