Lakewood Lore

Stormy demise of dirigible shocked many Ohioans

Sixty-five years ago an Ohio air disaster shocked the fledgling world of aviation.

The Navy dirigible Shenandoah with 43 aboard was ripped apart during a thunderstorm on Sept. 3, 1925, splitting into three sections near Caldwell in the southeastern part of our state. Fourteen men were killed; 29 survived.

The violent storm, with its 70-mile-per-hour winds, tore loose the airship’s control cabin, which plummeted earthward like a boulder. Lt. Cmdr. Zachary Lansdowne and seven crew members in it were killed. Others died in the tail section.

The bow section, still buoyant and carrying seven men, remained aloft. Authority Lew Gray, who is scheduled to address the Lakewood Kiwanis Club next month, had this to say about it:

“As the ship’s broken bow passed over farmland near the small Ohio town of Sharon, the men in it yelled down to a farmer, Ernest Nichols, to grab the trail ropes. There were two attached to the nose.

“Nichols caught one of them and snubbed it around two tree stumps. When the crewmen jumped out of the nose to safety, they asked the farmer to fetch a rifle so they could puncture the bow’s helium gas cells to bring down the remainder of the section.”

According to Nichols’ son, Stanley, who today is a retired chiropractor in Caldwell, his father got two shotguns and the deed was done.

Gray also cited an incident that happened just before the derelict bow section reached the Nichols farm.

“It clipped the top of a tree, yanking off a Navy rigger from Massachusetts named Frank McCarthy,” he said.

“McCarthy broke two collar bones and was knocked unconscious when he fell to the ground. He woke up in a Marietta hospital two days later and eventually recovered.”

Gray, a former Columbus school teacher who has authored a book about the crash called “Ill Wind,” will speak to the Lakewood Kiwanians at their non luncheon on Nov. 6 as part of a Veterans Day observance.

A week after the 1925 tragedy, the Lakewood Post ran an editorial supporting World War I flight commander William (Billy) Mitchell’s remarks relative to the disaster. Fearless Mitchell, a colonel then, blamed old-fogey, non-flyer generals in Washington for not knowing anything about aviation and caring less.

Many Lakewood old-timers remember the widespread newspaper publicity. To this day, small pieces of the wrecked airship, salvaged at the site by curiosity seekers, still can be found together with other Shenandoah memorabilia at farm auctions and flea markets down-state.

Oldsters recall the beauty of the craft after it was launched in 1923. Covered with an aluminum-painted fabric, it looked like a huge silver whale in the sky. It was 680 feet long and weighed 36 tons. It could 55 tons and carry enough fuel to cruise 5,000 miles at an average speed of 65 miles per hour.

The Shenandoah took its name from an Indian word meaning “Daughter of the Stars,” and was the first airship to use non-flammable helium instead of flammable hydrogen.

This article by Dan Chabek appeared in the Lakewood Sun Post October 25, 1990. Reprinted with permission.

More information from the Web:

USS Shenandoah (ZR-1)

Postcards of the U.S.S. Shenandoah

The USS Shenandoah in the Hangar at Lakehurst

The USS Shenandoah in Flight (Photo: Goodyear collection)

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