Detroit ZMC-2

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Use American English Template:Infobox aircraft

The ZMC-2 (Zeppelin Metal Clad 200,000 cubic foot capacity)<ref name=Morrow>Morrow, Walker C. and Carl B. Fritsche. The Metalclad Airship ZMC-2. 1967.</ref> was the only successfully operated metal-skinned airship ever built.<ref>The 1897 airship of David Schwarz was the first airship that was metal-skinned, although Schwarz's ship had an internal framework rather than a monocoque design.</ref> Constructed at Naval Air Station Grosse Ile by The Aircraft Development Corporation of Detroit,<ref name=Morrow /> the ZMC-2 was operated by the United States Navy at Naval Air Station Lakehurst, New Jersey, from 1929 until its scrapping in 1941. While at Lakehurst it completed 752 flights, and logged 2265 hours of flight time.<ref name="Outlaw p. 7">Outlaw 2004, p. 7</ref>

OperationsEdit

The airship was first flown on August 19, 1929, and transferred to Naval Air Station Lakehurst, New Jersey, in October 1929.<ref>Pace, Montgomery, and Zitarosa 2003</ref> The airship was nicknamed "the Tin Blimp". Its first Navy skipper was Red Dugan, who expressed reluctance at operating the airship, believing it unsafe.<ref name="Morrow p. v">Morrow and Fritsche 1967, p. v.</ref> Dugan's concerns were proven wrong, though he later lost his life in the crash of another airship, Akron.<ref name="Morrow p. v" />

It was considered very successful as a sub-scale test vehicle, but the company that built it went bankrupt during the Great Depression, and by the time a successor might have been built, there was little interest in pursuing it. In the year before the Depression, the United States Army was seeking funding for an airship based on the ZMC-2, that would have been larger than the German Graf Zeppelin, and powered by eight engines of Template:Convert. The U.S. Army planned to use it as a tender for air-launched aircraft, similar to plans the U.S. Navy had for future dirigibles. The $4.5 million need for construction was never approved by Congress.<ref>"Metal Covered Airship To Carry Twenty Tons" 1931 , p. 552.</ref>

The ZMC-2 was operated with a zero internal pressure at speeds up to Template:Convert, sufficient for it to be considered a 'rigid' airship.<ref>Van Treuren 2007, p. 90</ref> With its low fineness ratio of 2.83, the ZMC-2 was difficult to fly.<ref>Robinson, Douglas H. Giants in the Sky: A History of the Rigid Airship (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1979), p. 225.</ref> By 1936, the airship had travelled over Template:Convert Template:Clarify with little sign of corrosion. In its lifetime the ZMC-2 logged 752 flights and 2265 hours of flight time.<ref>Vaeth 2005, p. 69</ref> In its final years its use had dropped significantly. Between December 1938 and April 1941 it only logged five hours of flight time.

Considered by the Navy as too small for anti-submarine patrols, the aging ZMC-2 was decommissioned and scrapped in 1941 after nearly 12 years of service.