The US Navy’s most successful rigid airship, the USS Los Angeles (ZR-3), is covered in several of our DVDs, including “The American Zeppelins” and its raw footage DVD found on www.airshiphistory.com. This video contains select footage from four Navy Photographic Center source reels in the National Archives. We begin with film covering the construction of the LZ-126 in Germany, move to its delivery flight, and finally its christening as ZR-3, a unit of the American Fleet. This is the only time in history a sitting US President stepped aboard a rigid airship. The original footage was of course silent, but we supplied background music; narration is not necessary as the title cards explain what is seen in the movie.
