Yes, America Really Built Flying Aircraft Carriers — Giant Airships That Launched and Caught Fighter Planes in Mid-Air

Yes, America Really Built Flying Aircraft Carriers — Giant Airships That Launched and Caught Fighter Planes in Mid-Air

Summary and Key Points: It sounds invented, but it actually flew. In the 1930s, the U.S. Navy built two enormous airships — the Akron and the Macon — that doubled as flying aircraft carriers, each nearly 800 feet long and carrying its own fighter planes. The planes dropped away on a trapeze hook, then hooked back on in mid-flight. The Navy believed these leviathans would change warfare forever. Then they began falling out of the sky — and one cr…