The USS Shenandoah, America’s first lighter-than-air rigid airship, made its maiden flight on September 4, 1923, after being built for the U.S. Navy as a scouting vessel and flying laboratory. Designated ZR-1 and christened Shenandoah by Mrs. Edwin Denby on October 10, 1923, it was the first rigid airship constructed in the United States, the first inflated with non-inflammable helium, and the first moored to a mast mounted on the surface ship USS Patoka. Built from components made in Philadelphia and Akron and assembled at the Naval Air Station at Lakehurst, New Jersey, the airship became both a participant in naval maneuvers and a widely admired showpiece, traveling to places including Virginia, Buffalo, New York City, and St. Louis, and making a celebrated 1924 transcontinental flight to San Diego and Seattle before returning home. Commanded by Lieutenant Commander Zachary Lansdowne of Greenville, Ohio, a Naval Academy graduate and trained aviator, Shenandoah began its final flight on the evening of September 2, 1925, on a six-day tour arranged to visit 40 cities and five state fairs. Early on September 3, over the hills of southeastern Ohio, a violent thunderstorm tore the ship apart. The control car crashed on a farm east of present-day Interstate 77, the stern section landed less than one mile west in the valley, and the bow drifted about 13 miles to a farm east of Sharon, where Ernest Nichols tied it down. Fourteen crew members, including Lansdowne, died, while 29 survived, and the disaster largely ended the Navy’s lighter-than-air program as military emphasis shifted to airplanes.