Jinxed, snake-bit, accident-prone. The USS Akron was all of those, and a widow-maker as well. A rigid helium airship launched in 1931, the Akron flew for less than two years and took 75 lives. The lone bright spot in the airship’s career, had it not taken the ship’s first two victims, would have been its transcontinental mail flight.
In May of 1932, the Akron sailed from Lakehurst, N.J., across the U.S. to San Diego, carrying mail, including many postal cachet covers from Albert C. Roessler of East Orange, N.J., a stamp and cover dealer who delighted in creating collectibles, even when the items he sold had nothing to do with the actual events they commemorated. Variously described as a rogue and a forger, Roessler did produce the genuine item on this occasion, printing his own “Akron” stamps in four colors, for letters to be carried by the airship. You can see a collection of these cachets here.
Having used 36 tons of fuel on its way to San Diego, the Akron was considerably lighter and as the sun warmed its helium that morning, it became overly buoyant and harder to control. Nor was any of the necessary mooring equipment available to handle an airship 785 feet long and 14 stories high.
A group of untrained Navy men were sent out to tether the ship with a rope, but the rope got away from all but three of them, and those unfortunates were carried back up into the skies with the Akron. Two of them—Robert Edsall and Nigel Henton—fell to their deaths. The third—Bud Cowart—clung to his line and made himself fast before he was hoisted aboard the Akron one very long hour later.
The Akron’s final flight was into an ill-chosen storm front at sea in April of 1933. Tossed on updrafts and downdrafts, the Akron plunged tail-first into the Atlantic and broke up. Of the crew of 76 officers and enlisted men, only three survived. Its final distinction: the deadliest air crash up to that time.
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