The Newsmagazine of Long Beach Island and Southern Ocean County

By Anita Josephson | on July 06, 2022

With the coming of summer 1922, the world’s largest hangar sat empty and unused at Lakehurst, N.J. It had been constructed the year before, anticipating the arrival of the ZR- 2, which had been purchased from England.

Unfortunately, as the hydrogen-filled airship prepared for its transatlantic flight, it exploded, killing all but five of the 49 people on board.

Another foreign-made dirigible, the Roma, burned in February 1922 at Langley, Va., fueling the drive for an American-made airship that would use nonflammable helium.

In the meantime, the June 20, 1922 Asbury Park Press, dateline Trenton, announced a strange use for the big hangar.

“The state forest fire service has just opened a look-out tower on top of the huge naval airdrome at Lakehurst. The tower, made possible thru cooperation of the United States naval air service, is the highest in New Jersey and overlooks Lakewood, Toms River, New Egypt to the ocean on the east and well across …  the state to the west. It embraces the territory recently the scene of disastrous forest fires in Monmouth and Ocean counties and its use is expected to do much in preventing such loss in the future.”

Hangar No. 1 would soon start to fulfill its original purpose. The Navy had decided its aircraft factory in Philadelphia would manufacture a new airship, the ZR- 1, but there wasn’t room there to assemble anything that big.

On June 27, the Press reported, “Construction of the cradle to hold ZR-1, the next addition in the American dirigible fleet, has been started at the Naval Air Station here. It is expected that the keel of the airship, which will be 700 feet long, 85 feet in diameter, with a gas capacity of 2,700,000 feet, will be laid within a few weeks and that the dirigible will be ready for trial flights in about 10 months.”

Locally, the Lakewood Citizen announced on the 30th of the month, “The Lakehurst station has been the scene of considerable activity ever since the parts which are to be used in constructing the dirigible began to come in. It is expected that the work of construction will be over in about ten months and the ship in actual operation by the early part of next summer. … Rear Admiral W.A. Moffet, chief of naval aeronautics has ordered a special committee of experts to check up every possible phase of the building. It is the determination to avoid another such accident as that which occurred in England last summer. Lakehurst in the very near future will be a highly interesting place for people to visit.”

The paper was correct. The nation was catching airship fever. In 1922, a road had just been opened to Barnegat Light on Long Beach Island. There was no Route 72 through the Pines. Charles Lindbergh’s flight was five years away.

According to the Asbury Park Press on July 12, in the middle of the Jersey Pines, “The ZR-1 which is under construction on this station is to be about 700 feet long, 85 feet wide, with 2,000,000 cubic feet capacity. The rate of travel is expected to be approximately 9,000 miles without having the gas bag refilled and the total lifting capacity will be approximately 170,000 pounds. It will be propelled thru the air by six 350 horse power motors, at a speed from 60 to 75 miles an hour. This ship will be the largest airship in the world.”

“The mooring Mast, to which the hose of this ship will be attached, is practically completed, and ready for the elevator to be installed. Trucks are leaving this station almost daily to bring the material for this ship from the Naval Aircraft Factory, at Philadelphia, Pa.”

The next day the Montréal Gazette had picked up the story.

“A monster dirigible, the ZR-1 is being built in the aircraft factory of the Philadelphia Navy Yard. It is to be fully as big as that ill-fated leviathan of the air, the ZR-2, which collapsed and fell flaming into the Hull River in England last summer, bringing a terrible death to more than a score of its crew. As fast as the parts are completed here, they are sent to the hangar at Lakehurst, N.J., which will be the home port of the giant airship factory. … When the ZR-1 is completed, experts say it will have power to cruise one-third of the distance around the world without having to descend.”

The same day, the Philadelphia Ledger told its readers history was being made.

“Not many are aware that the aircraft factory at the Navy Yard has been for some weeks, and will be for several months to come, the scene of the greatest enterprise so far in American aeronautics; namely, the building of the first American Zeppelin.”

The paper tried to describe the design, saying, “The frame to be used will consist of a series of rings of decreasing diameter that will give the ship, at a sufficient perspective, the shape of slightly tapered cigars smoked by traditional stock brokers and theatrical producers. … The inside of the rings will be strengthened by a multiplexed framework, and in every second ring this framework will be tied with high tensile steel wire – some seventy miles of it in all. … The whole framework, and that is to say practically the whole ship, is to be duraluminum, an alloy of copper and aluminum, the best metal in point of both lightness and durability that could be discovered. The resistance of duraluminum is said to be stronger than even steel.”

When the monster took to the air “under a careful pilot, it is said, the ZR-1, as the new ship is to be designated, can cruise for more than a month without descending. Its average speed will be about fifty miles an hour. For short cruises it will need a crew of twenty, for extended cruises about thirty.

“None of the sections, as they are shipped from League Island weigh more than ten pounds or is more than about seven feet long.”

If you ever built a model as a child, played with an erector set or put together an entertainment center from IKEA, close your eyes and imagine a project 700 feet long with almost 1 million parts and hundreds of tourists watching. Welcome to Hangar No. 1 in Lakehurst, N.J, in the summer of 1922.

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