At 1,175 feet long, 325 feet wide, and 211 feet high it is no understatement to say the airdock is massive! There is 364,000 square feet of unobstructed floor space, or an area larger than 8 football fields side-by-side. The Airdock has a volume of 55 million cubic feet.
Postcard view of the colossus of engineering, the Airdock. The structure was built in 1929 for the building of the U.S. Navy’s rigid airships, the USS Akron (1931) and USS Macon (1933). The buildings eleven steel parabolic arches, cresting at 211 feet, create one of the largest open space interiors in the world and create…
The Air Dock, as it is known, was constructed in 1929. It was the largest building in the world without interior supports and provided a huge structure in which “lighter-than-air” ships (later known as airships, dirigibles, and blimps) could be constructed. The first two airships to be constructed and launched at the Airdock were USS Akron and its sister ship, USS Macon, built…
“Goodyear-Zeppelin Corporation’s Factory and Dock located on the grounds of Akron’s Municipal Airport (Akron Fulton International). This building is 1,196 feet in length, 325 feet in width and 211 feet high, equal to a 22 story building. There are 3,600,000 pounds of steel used in the doors and 5,350 tons of structural steel in the…
Building Airship ZRS-4 Construction of Airship ZRS-4 began on October 31, 1929 at the Goodyear-Zeppelin Airdock. wish was a purpose-built hanger for the construction of these massive airships. On November 7 that year, Rear Admiral William A. Moffett, the Chief of the U.S. Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics, drove the “golden rivet” in the ship’s first main ring. Erection of the hull sections began…
The Goodyear-Zeppelin Airdock was a purpose-built facility for the construction of large airships. The $2.2 million building is over 200 feet tall and more than 1,000 feet long. Most remarkable, the entire length of the building is free of interior supports like pillars or struts. At the time of its construction in 1929, the air dock was the…
Mistaken Identity The airship featured on this vintage Akron postcard was not the USS Akron ZRS-4. Pictured here is most likely the USS Los Angeles. Misidentifying these airships was not a one time an artist made this ][mistake. On another popular postcard of the day, the USS Los Angeles is shown flying over Washington D.C., but she was…
