It filled the skies of Tacoma in 1924 and now one man wants it memorialized
It was the biggest man-made object to ever fill the skies of Tacoma, and even Babe Ruth couldn’t compete with it.
On Oct. 18, 1924, a 680-foot long silver airship appeared in the skies of the South Sound.
The year-old dirigible USS Shenandoah was visiting the West Coast from its home port of Lakehurst, New Jersey. The airship was the first of four that would make up the Navy’s airship fleet. This was its first transcontinental journey.
“A good portion of the population of Tacoma came down to see it at that time,” said military historian Lee Corbin. “Everybody was astounded because they had never seen a rigid airship before.”
Baseball slugger Ruth was playing in an exhibition game at Stadium Bowl that day.
“Unfortunately, just about the entire population of Tacoma was down at Camp Lewis to watch the Shenandoah come in,” Corbin said.
The period between the two World Wars was the era of lighter-than-air aircraft, and the public was captivated by their size and the breathless predictions for travel, freight and military might.
Airship promoters, such as U.S. Navy Admiral William Moffett, heralded the crafts for their reconnaissance and scouting abilities. Some could launch and retrieve fighter aircraft mid-air. Moffett aimed to use the Shenandoah to explore the Arctic.
The golden era of airships wouldn’t last long.
The Shenandoah would fatally crash just a year after its Tacoma trip, and a larger airship, the USS Akron, would sink into the Atlantic Ocean in 1933, killing 73 people. The public would finally lose its appetite for airship travel with the explosion of the Hindenburg in 1937.
The only remnant of the Shenandoah’s visit to Tacoma are crumbling concrete pads on Joint Base Lewis McChord. It’s the site of the 165-foot-tall mooring mast that was constructed for the airship’s quick visit in 1924.
Corbin would like the site to be commemorated.
“Here, we have some hard evidence where this mast existed, and it was a historical event,” he said.
The military doesn’t share Corbin’s enthusiasm.
Leviathan of the skies
Blimps, like the kind used to promote Goodyear, are different from rigid airships like the Shenandoah.
Blimps are basically large helium-filled balloons with a gondola and engine. Like an airplane, it has horizontal and vertical stabilizers and rudders.
A semi-rigid or rigid airship has those control features but also contains an internal structure. If degassed, it won’t deflate. The Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg were both rigid airships.
The Shenandoah was built at the Naval Aircraft Factory in Philadelphia in 1922 and then assembled at Lakehurst. The Packard Motor Co. made its six engines, and Goodyear made the 20 bags that held 2 million cubic feet of helium gas.
The 78-foot-wide diameter airship was made of Duralumin — the now disused trade name for an aluminum alloy.
The standard crew would have consisted of 9 officers and 22 enlisted men. The airship was controlled from a gondola.
The Shenandoah’s approximately 8,000-mile round trip to Tacoma would last 17 days and visit Fort Worth, Texas and San Diego.
Because the airship could not land, a mooring mast was built at Camp Lewis, near today’s McChord Field. The structure would attach to the nose of the airship and demonstrate that hangars weren’t needed.
Tacoma’s newspapers updated their readers daily with progress of the “leviathan of the sky.” Civic leaders organized a committee to welcome the airship.
On Oct. 7, the Shenandoah left Lakehurst, bound for Forth Worth.
On Oct. 10, The Tacoma News Tribune announced that the airship’s arrival would be heralded across the city by three minutes of fire sirens.
The airship’s final leg to Tacoma was delayed while the crew waited for bad weather to clear in the Pacific Northwest. It left San Diego just after midnight on Oct. 16.
The 44 people on board included Moffett, 11 officers, 27 crew members and three journalists.
Also on board was Archie Hahn, described as the Navy’s only aerial cook.
By 6 a.m. the next day, the Shenandoah was off shore from the Golden Gate and headed north. Strong headwinds slowed its progress to 24 miles per hour. The captain skipped a planned flight over San Francisco and continued to Tacoma.
“Thousands of disappointed early risers watched from house tops for the expected initial appearance here of the giant aircraft,” a journalist reported from San Francisco.
At Camp Lewis, two riggers climbed to the top of the mooring mast and then shimmied down the guy wires while attaching blue pennants.
“If you fall, you don’t know about it afterward, anyway,” one of the riggers, W.A. Deloach, told the newspaper.
Telephone operators gave callers the latest updates on the airship.
By the evening of the 17th, the airship’s expected arrival time, a crowd of 10,000 people was gathered at the mooring site. Hot dog vendors set up shop.
Practical jokers would occasionally shout, “There she comes,” the newspaper reported.
About 8 a.m. the next day, a fog bank that had settled on Camp Lewis suddenly lifted. The crowd looked up.
The U.S.S. Shenandoah floated above them.
“A tremendous volume of cheers broke from the throats of the great crowd that had gathered to see her moor,” the newspaper wrote.
‘Gigantean bubble’ arrives
If you lived in Tacoma on Oct. 18, 1924 you couldn’t miss the Shenandoah.
The ship hadn’t moored yet, and it was already on the front page of the early edition of The Tacoma News Tribune.
“Tacoma sees big airship” the headline screamed. A story said work in factories and offices ceased as people rushed into the streets.
“Hatless and coatless men, women who had just left typewriters and sewing machines, automobilists, street car passengers, throngs in streets and groups in backyards, children who gaped upward with toys in their hands, all saw the marvel of the hour,” the newspaper wrote.
The writer laid it on thick, calling the airship a “gigantean bubble blown into the shape of a whale.”
Telephone operators couldn’t cope with the number of calls they had to connect.
The Shenandoah sailed around Camp Lewis and Tacoma for most of the day. As the day warmed, the helium in its bags expanded, sending the airship higher.
As the air cooled, the ship descended and made slow circles around Camp Lewis.
At 7:12 p.m., the big ship was tied to its mast. Its crew descended.
During the night, the ship was refueled and resupplied.
Some 17 hours after the airship had moored, it cast off for its return trip to San Diego.
A blast of water from its bow ballast tanks sent the nose into the air. Another blast from its stern tank leveled off the ship.
The Shenandoah flew to Seattle and then turned toward the naval shipyard at Bremerton before beginning its voyage back to San Diego.
Although it was never used again, the mast was kept operational until 1936, Corbin said.
“They kept a Navy guy stationed at Fort Lewis for the sole purpose of maintaining this mast,” he said.
Admiral Moffett envisioned dirigible hangers at San Diego, San Francisco and Camp Lewis. He saw a future where airships twice as large as the Shenandoah would be an integral arm of aviation, with both military and commercial applications.
On Sept. 3, 1925, the Shenandoah was torn apart in a violent thunder storm over Ohio. While 14 people were killed in the crash, 39 survived by riding sections of the airship to the ground. Looters made off with log books and other important artifacts.
Moffett would die in 1933 in the crash of the Akron.
Denied
In October, Corbin applied with the state Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation to have the mooring site placed on the state Historical Registry.
Because the site is on JBLM, the state office deferred to the military.
The Army denied the request on Dec. 13.
The site is near a restricted area and not suitable as a venue for public visits, JBLM Commander Col. Skye Duncan wrote to Corbin.
“As a one-time lay-over location for the dirigible, the site is not equal in significance to the beginning and the ending mooring mast locations which are the most appropriate sites for recognition, listing and interpretation,” Duncan wrote.
Duncan also pointed out that the Shenandoah was a Navy asset and thus a Navy-related site would be more appropriate to tell the airship’s story.
Corbin said he isn’t asking for much.
“All I would like to see is a small kiosk or even a pedestal with a plaque on it that would show people what took place here,” he said. “To me, it’s a significant site.”
This story was originally published January 6, 2020 at 5:35 AM.
