On September 3, 1925, the USS Shenandoah — a thousand-foot Navy airship — tore apart in a violent thunderstorm over rural Ohio. Fourteen crew members died, including the commander who had warned against the flight. A century later, the tragedy remains largely forgotten beyond Noble County, Ohio, where residents still wear the disaster as a badge of identity.
The crash taught early aviation a deadly lesson about weather that seems obvious today: never fly into a thunderstorm. But in 1925, just over two decades after the Wright brothers' first flight, that knowledge came at a terrible cost — one that forever shaped aviation safety and a small Ohio community.
After the First World War, it became obvious that aviation had become a huge element in how the world's militaries planned all of their strategies. The former enemy, Germany, turned into a supplier. Their efforts using enormous airships as bombers and reconnaissance aircraft did not go without being noted by the victorious Allies. Those thousand-foot zeppelins had terrorized the residents of London, and now the newer versions were USS Airships — a fleet of these Leviathans with the names Macon, Akron, Los Angeles, and Shenandoah cruising across the USA.
The airships were built of an aluminum frame with gas bags inside, and the whole thing was covered with a silvery gray rubberized fabric. Huge airship hangars were built along both American coasts as well as in the heartland. One of those remains here in Ohio in Akron. Another is at Wingfoot Lake.
In 1925, it was just over 20 years since the Wrights' first flight. Flying was not novel anymore, but it was pretty raw. The understanding of weather was just starting. For example, in 2025, we know better than to fly into a thunderstorm, much less in a thousand-foot-long gas bag.
The commander of the Shenandoah was Lieutenant Commander Zachary Lansdowne, who grew up in Greenville, Ohio. Many in the country were pushing for more demonstration flights, and the USS Shenandoah was ordered to make a flight across multiple cities throughout the Midwest. Lansdowne protested this flight as the weather in the summer was very unpredictable, so it was moved to September 1925.
As September approached, preparations were made to begin the cross-country journey, and on September 2, 1925, the USS Shenandoah left the hangar at Lakehurst, New Jersey, beginning its flight to Ohio.
Thunderstorms are columns of air — warm air rising and cold air descending. The warm and humid air in Ohio is the same fuel that creates hurricanes. The opposing columns of air also create friction and static electricity: lightning. The USS Shenandoah flew right into a large system of storms, which created enormous updrafts and then the opposite — violent winds going down. The thousand-foot airship became caught in and between both.
After an updraft, the crew could hear the aluminum framework creaking and groaning. Then the Shenandoah hit a very violent downdraft, and that was too much. The airship began to break up.
The airship came to Earth in several places in Noble County. The control car snapped off and plunged straight down. The commander and all of the crew in it did not survive. Other crew members rode the intact and huge sections to the surface and survived. The Shenandoah had crashed in three separate locations miles apart.
Noble County is still a very remote part of Ohio. The crash is the biggest single event to ever take place there. Residents swarmed to the crash sites and stripped the rubberized fabric from the framework. Legend has it that many of the Noble County folks were soon wearing silvery gray raincoats. The Navy took a few days to secure the crash site, but the scavenging had already happened.
Today, the high school football team is the Zeps, and the school flagpole has a zeppelin at the very top. There's a Shenandoah Museum and an Airstream trailer next to a local gas station.
The realities of violent weather were unfortunately learned the hard way, and that cost lives. In 2025 student pilots are taught, almost at the start, that thunderstorms are to be avoided at all times. If that kind of weather is in the area, go fly another day. Walking in the rain would be a safer choice.
Blue Skies and Tailwinds is presented by SNC, a global aerospace and defense firm, with support from the Wright State University Aviation Science and Technology Program. The series is produced at the Eichelberger Center for Community Voices at WYSO.
