Throughout the summer of 1923, the country watched as the time for the first test flight of the ZR-1 neared.
The airship claimed many firsts. It was to be the world’s largest and the first to be totally constructed in the United States; finally, it would test for the first time the use of helium as a lifting gas for a large airship.
Nowhere did interest in the project run higher than at the Jersey Shore, where the ZR-1 had been assembled inside the world’s largest hanger, located at Lakehurst in…
Subscribe to keep reading
This story is from our archive. Get your SandPaper Annual Pass for access to our digital archive, plus everything else a pass includes. Details below.
Annual Pass — $18 Details
365-day access to:
- The complete SandPaper digital archive (stories date back to 2012).
- Full photo galleries from our photographers.
- The entire catalog of SandPaper games, puzzles and quizzes.
How it works
- Enter your email below and click to pay the one-time $18. Card details are entered on Stripe’s secure page.
- You’re in straight away — no password to create, and nothing to set up or manage.
- You stay signed in. If you’re ever signed out, or you read on a new phone or computer, we’ll email you a code to get you back in.
- Never auto-renews. Your pass is good for one year. We will email you when it expires so you can renew if you’d like.
See our site policies for more information.
Already a subscriber? We’ll email a code to get you back in.
