USS Akron’s final flight from Lakehurst (1933)

A calibration flight into a storm

Akron departed on the evening of April 3 to help calibrate radio direction-finding stations along the coast. The flight encountered deteriorating weather and ended in the Atlantic during the early hours of April 4. The German vessel Phoebus found survivors in the water. The Navy’s ship history describes the rescue and the loss of an aircraft conceived as a long-range fleet scout. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Akron.

The second accident

The Navy’s casualty register records 73 killed and three injured in Akron’s destruction. It separately lists the blimp J-3, which crashed while searching for survivors that same day. Lieutenant Commander David Ervin Cummins and Aviation Chief Metalsmith Pasquale Bettio were fatally injured in that search accident. Combining the two crews without explanation obscures what happened: the rescue effort itself cost two additional lives. NHHC casualty chronology, April 4, 1933.

The local connection is both the departure station and the New Jersey waters where the airship was lost. This was a separate disaster from the Hindenburg fire at Lakehurst four years later.