Shipwreck Found
She was 785 feet long, could carry a crew of up to 100, carried four fighter planes for self defense and was the last of her kind. Battered by severe storm winds, she sank under the waves of the Pacific Ocean on February 12, 1935. After she fell from the sky. She was the USS Macon, the last rigid airship built by the US Navy. Her wreckage has been found in 1,000 feet of water off the California coast.
On September 17, 2006 researchers from NOAA's National Marine Sanctuary program and Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) will embark on an expedition off the Big Sur coast to conduct an archaeological investigation at the submerged wreck site of the rigid airship USS Macon, the nation's largest and last U.S.-built, rigid lighter-than-air craft.
The 785-foot USS Macon , a U.S. Navy “dirigible,” and its four Curtiss F9C-2 Sparrowhawk aircraft were lost on February 12, 1935 during severe weather offshore of Point Sur, California, on a routine flight from the Channel Islands to its home base at Moffett Field. The wreckage of the USS Macon provides an opportunity to study the relatively undisturbed archaeological remnants of a unique period of U.S. aviation history.
“A key mandate of the National Marine Sanctuary program is to explore, characterize, and protect submerged heritage resources and to share our discoveries with the public,” said Robert Schwemmer, West Coast maritime heritage coordinator for NOAA's National Marine Sanctuary Program and co-principal investigator for the expedition. “The USS Macon is a top research and stewardship priority in the Monterey Bay Sanctuary and we encourage the public to join in on the adventure via the sanctuary's web portal.”
Two of the Macon's crew of 83 died in the sinking, all the rest survived. The four Curtiss Sparrowhawk fighters the Macon carried were located as well as engines and other parts of the ship's structure. High resolution photographs of the wreck can be found here. A history of the Macon can be found here.
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Blue Crab Boulevard » Blog Archive » Naval Air Station Lakehurst — Friday, 29 September , 2006 @ 4:44 pm
By BubbaB, Friday, 29 September , 2006 @ 2:58 pm
This is awesome, Gaius!! I had no idea that the Navy had such a successful blimp program!! Again proving that you are an expert at separating the wheat from the chaff!!
—BubbaB
By Gaius, Friday, 29 September , 2006 @ 3:02 pm
Dunno as I’d call it “successful”. They crashed just about all of them I think. One way or the other, they all seemed to hit the ground - or water.