Zeppelin Over New York

The German-made Zeppelin ZR-3 skims the tops of skyscrapers above foggy Manhattan on its way to Lakehurst, N.J., on October 19, 1924. The iconic Metropolitan Life Building can be seen below the airship, which had just flown across the Atlantic and logged 4,229 nautical miles on its journey.

More than 50,000 people from New York, Philadelphia and surrounding towns visited the zeppelin at its Lakehurst hangar later in the day. The Times reported that the next day about the scene in Lakehurst: “So great was the motor traffic that numerous tieups developed and thousands of visitors did not reach their homes until well after midnight.”

The transatlantic flight was considered an aviation triumph, and its captain and crew were given a parade up Broadway in New York City, and they were greeted at the White House. The Atlantic would not be crossed nonstop by air again until Charles Lindbergh’s flight in the Spirit of St. Louis in May 1927.

The airship was built in 1923-1924 by the Zeppelin Company in Friedrichshafen, Germany, as part of war reparations. It was delivered to the U.S. Navy in October 1924 and later renamed the USS Los Angeles ZR-3 (Zeppelin Rigid number 3).

On its arrival in the United States, its lifting gas was changed from hydrogen to helium for safety reasons. The airship, as the USS Los Angeles, logged almost 4,400 hours of flight, covering a distance of 172,400 nautical miles. It was decommissioned in 1932.