Moffett Field has seen zeppelins before. Pictured here from is the U.S. Navy Zeppelin ZRS-5, also known as the Macon, which was berthed at Moffett starting in 1933. (Moffett is home to three of the remaining 13 airship hangars in the U.S., according to Airship Ventures.)
At 785 feet long, the Macon was about three times the size of a Zeppelin NT, and it needed eight 560-horsepower engines to push it along at up to 80 mph. It was designed to carry five single-pilot Sparrowhawk biplanes, with the mission of providing long-range reconnaissance for the Pacific Fleet; notably, the Sparrowhawks could be retrieved in flight by means of a skyhook-trapeze mechanism. The Macon crashed over the Pacific in 1935.
Photo by U.S. Navy, via NASA
Caption by Jonathan Skillings
