![]() On September 16, two weeks after the crash, Justice Department agents and prohibition agents conducted a series of raids in West Virginia and Ohio to recover stolen artifacts from the Shenandoah. In what today might seem like a stunning display of disrespect to the fallen aviators, locals in the area started looting the crash site almost immediately. The Shenandoah disaster killed 14 navy aviators, including Lansdowne. The ship’s control car fell near Ava on what is now Ohio State Route 821. The stern section crashed near Ava, Ohio while the bow section was blown along the wind until it landed near Sharon, Ohio. Due to the violent destruction of the Shenandoah while it was still airborne, the ship’s crash site is actually three crash sites. On September 3, 1925, as the Shenandoah started on the publicity tour, she met a powerful squall line that tore the airship in half. The Navy would delay the Midwest flight to September, but refused to cancel it. When he passed his concerns along to his superior officers, they were only partially heeded. Lieutenant Commander Zachary Lansdowne was from Greenville, Ohio and was aware that late summer brought sudden, severe and unpredictable weather to the Great Lakes region. It was a mission that apparently did not sit well with the airship’s commanding officer. The Shenandoah was scheduled to spend the late summer of 1925 visiting state fairs in the Midwest. Due to this well-publicized adventure, the airship, once conceived as a scouting vessel, quickly became more useful to the Navy as a promotional tool. The Shenandoah gained notability in 1924 when it completed a transcontinental flight of North America. When completed, the Shenandoah was housed in Lakehurst, New Jersey. The Shenandoah would be the first dirigible in the world to use helium, instead of dangerous and highly volatile hydrogen, to keep it aloft. European countries had long used airships for military purposes, and so in 1923 the US Navy launched the nation’s first rigid dirigible, the USS Shenandoah. In the 1920s, dirigibles and airships populated the skies alongside airplanes. Fourteen crewmembers were killed, the wreckage was torn apart by local looters, and the whole disaster foreshadowed the beginning of the end for dirigibles. On September 3, 1925, the airship USS Shenandoah crashed in the hills of Southeast Ohio. ![]()
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