The Tragic Last Flight of Airship R-38 (ZR-2)

On 24 August 1921, one of the most tragic air disasters in U.S. naval history, as well as one of the most forgotten, occurred in Hull, England. The day started out celebratory as thousands of onlookers came out to witness the British R-38 airship (U.S. Navy airship ZR-2) leave its hangar on Royal Air Force Base Howden for its fourth and final flight trials preceding its transatlantic voyage to Naval Air Station Lakehurst in New Jersey. The celebratory mood changed to horror, however, when the ship broke in half and caught fire. Almost all personnel onboard perished either onboard or in the fire that covered the surface of the water below the burning airship. Forty-four of the 49-person British and American crew, as well as a cat that was the ship’s mascot, died when R-38 exploded over the Humber estuary that day.

R-38 was an ambitious project to construct a Zeppelin-type airship that would be the largest ever built at that time. The completed airship was 695 feet long and cruised at a speed of up to 60 knots (nearly 70 miles per hour), but was built with structural modifications to make it more appropriate for use as a military aircraft. These modifications included an extended bay to accommodate larger gas bags, and longer bracing wires between the airship’s frames as well unsupported keel sections. The ship’s nose was reinforced to allow the airship to be more easily moored, which added significant weight to the ship, but additional support was not added to the airship’s frame to accommodate the extra weight. The position of the mid-ship engine cars was changed to reduce the overall height of the airship and made it easier to maneuver in and out of a hangar, but the frame was not reinforced for the extra weight of these engines. The post-World War I airship was one of only four of its kind to be built by the British Royal Airship Works due to post-war austerity measures that shut down the British airship program. However, R-38 was designated to be sold to the United States since a German Zeppelin that had been claimed by the U.S. as a war reparation had been destroyed before it could be confiscated. Thus, the project continued even after the British military program had been discontinued.  

A U.S. Navy detachment, the Howden Detachment, was assigned to train on R-38 prior to its handover. The first detachment personnel arrived at Royal Air Force Base, Howden, East Yorkshire, on 10 April 1920. They were led by Commander Louis A. H. Maxfield, USN, and included both officers and enlisted sailors.
 
R-38 went through several flight trials conducted by both British and American personnel, overseen by British Flight Lieutenant Jack Pritchard. Pritchard had recommended a series of rigorous trials to ensure the airship could withstand the long trip across the Atlantic Ocean. Pritchard’s original recommendation for longer trial hours was reduced by the Airship Experimental and Research Division of the Air Ministry, partially due to the British government’s impatience to shut down their airship program following the handover of R-38. Pritchard also voiced concern over performing turning tests at a lower altitude than 7,000 feet, citing German airship safety protocol, but R-38 turning tests were still performed at 2,500 feet despite his objections. Commander Maxfield and the U.S. ambassador were in agreement with the British decision to hasten trials and alter Pritchard’s recommendations, as the handover of R-38 was also behind schedule on the American side due to the delayed construction of the airship station at Naval Air Station Lakehurst. The final agreement was that R-38 would be transferred to the U.S. Navy before the completion of all of the planned trials on the condition that the U.S. Navy would share trial data with Britain.

The airship was highly anticipated by the American press, and its construction was closely followed by the American public. The first transatlantic airship crossing by the British R-34 occurred on 6 July 1919, when Pritchard rather theatrically parachuted from the airship to the ground in Long Island in front of a crowd of thousands to become the first person to reach American soil by air from Europe. According to the later book Takeoff into Greatness by Grover Loening, Pritchard “landed lightly and unconcerned in full beribboned uniform, carrying a swagger stick.” Loening remarked that the landing was performed “with a chic that only the English can put over.” Against this background, the R-38 was to become America’s moment of airship glory.

An article on the construction of R-38 in The New York Herald called it the “new craft to break all records” and stated, “The ship will be the largest and fastest ever built. Greater craft may have been conceived in fancy, or even designed, but the R-38 will have the premier place.”

Captain Maxfield elaborated to the Herald on the handling of a Navy airship, comparing an airship more to a battleship than an airplane. “There is no comparison between flying a rigid airship and airplane,” he told the newspaper, “The average aviator doesn’t need to know anything about meteorology, while airshipmen must be familiar with that science. In fact, we handle a rigid exactly as we would handle a battleship. The control car is so much a bridge that we now call it a bridge.”

The new airship had officially been designated U.S. Navy airship ZR-2 as it departed from Howden for its fourth test flight on 23 August 1921. The tests would include rudder turns and a mooring mast test with a ship at sea, but low cloud cover and stormy weather would delay them. While he waited for the weather to improve, Pritchard wrote a letter in which he described his anxiety as he stood by for updated meteorological reports before he could resume the test flight.

The flight proceeded the next day on 24 August, and R-38/ZR-2 had a successful trial at the full speed of 60 knots. The airship then proceeded to a rough weather simulation with high-speed rudder maneuvers at an altitude of 2,500 feet when, according to witnesses, a wrinkle appeared on the airship’s outer fabric skin. Immediately after this, R-38/ZR-2 began breaking into two pieces over the Humber estuary. Two explosions caused by a mixture of hydrogen, air, and fuel from the damaged airship knocked onlookers to the ground, broke glass in nearby buildings, and could be heard 25 miles away. It only took 15 seconds for the two hull sections to fall into the estuary; only five members of the airship’s crew survived the disaster (four British and one American). Flight Lieutenant Pritchard and Commander Maxfield were among the 44 British and American crewmembers lost to the disaster. 

In September 1921, a memorial service in Westminster Abbey was held for the lost crewmembers, and a monument was erected in a cemetery in Hull. It reads:
To the glory of God and in memory of officers and men of the Royal Air Force and of the Rigid Air Detachment United States Navy, members of the staff of the National Physical Laboratory, and of the Royal Airships Works lost in airship R.38 Z.R.2 August 24th 1921.
The U.S. Navy crewmembers lost on R-38/ZR-2 are listed on the right side of the monument as:
The Howden Detachment survivors returned to NAS Lakehurst to drastic cutbacks in budget and personnel as newspaper editorials criticized the Navy’s decision to collaborate with England on the project, and Navy leadership focused on damage control. Rear Admiral William A. Moffett, chief of the newly formed Bureau of Aeronautics, ceased foreign collaboration in the development of U.S. Navy aviation technology. The former Howden Detachment personnel who remained at Lakehurst were assigned to the construction of the next U.S. Navy airship, USS Shenandoah (ZR-1), which launched in September 1923, and would be the next U.S. Navy airship fatality when it crashed in Ohio on 3 September 1925. One of the lost R-38/ZR-2 U.S. Navy crewmembers, Lieutenant Charles Gray Little, was married to U.S. Navy trailblazer Joy Bright Hancock. Tragically, a few years later, Hancock would lose her second husband, Lieutenant Commander Lewis Hancock, Jr., in the Shenandoah crash, which claimed the lives of 14 crewmembers.

Despite the setback of the R-38/ZR-2 and Shenandoah disasters, the U.S. Navy’s airship program continued with five different airship classes in World War II. After World War II, the Navy retained two airship squadrons that were primarily used for training and for search and rescue missions. The service announced the termination of its airship program on 21 June 1961. The last flight of a U.S. Navy airship (ZPG-2) occurred on 31 August 1962.
—Colleen A. Carrigan, NHHC Communication and Outreach Division, August 2024