Fifteen years before the crash of the Hindenburg galvanized the nation and effectively put an end to lighter-than-air commercial travel, the fate of the
Roma made headlines – and then was forgotten.
Built in Italy in 1919, the Roma's speed, payload and range had drawn attention throughout Europe before the airship was purchased in 1921 by the United States Army Air Service for $200,000, the equivalent of $2.6 million in 2015 dollars.
The Roma was enormous - 410 feet long, 92 feet tall – and capable of carrying 100 passengers and cargo at speeds of up to 80 miles per hour. The airship was designed for trans-Atlantic crossings and was the largest semi-rigid airship in the world at the time.
The semi-rigid airship was a cross between a zeppelin, those cigar-shaped airships with a light metal skeleton beneath a fabric skin, and a blimp, which depends on pressurized gas within its skin to maintain its form. The
Roma lacked a skeleton, but its 1.193 million cubic foot gasbag was held somewhat in shape by a metal-ribbed nose cap and an articulated keel that ran along the bag's underside, from nose to tail. Within the keel were housed the control room, navigation space, passenger cabin, the outriggers on which the engines rode, and, fastened to the back, a box kite-like construction that served as the ship's rudder and elevator.
In addition to the eleven cells of hydrogen within its skin, the airship housed six cells of air into which additional air could be pumped if the gasbag were to droop or flatten.
The Roma made its first flight in the United States from Langley Field, in Norfolk, Virginia, on November 15, 1921.
Three months later, at 12:45 p.m. on February 21, 1922, 45 men, including the crew, a few civilian mechanics, and government observers, boarded the Roma at Langley for a short demonstration flight.
One hundred fifty men gripped lines holding the airship to earth as the airship’s six engines were fired up. The lines released, the Roma pitched upward then leveled off.
At an altitude of 500 feet, Captain Dale Mabry of the Army Air Service, the airship’s skipper, ordered cruising speed and the Roma began making for Chesapeake Bay. Upon reaching the Bay, Mabry ordered the ship south along the shoreline. The crew waved to people below at Fort Monroe and at a crowd of spectators watching the awesome spectacle from the government pier.
At Willoughby Spit, the Roma headed out over the water toward the Norfolk Naval Station. One thousand feet above the Naval Station, crewmembers noticed that the upper curve of the gasbag's nose was flattening.
The nose of the Roma began to pitch downward at a 45-degree angle. As the stress on the airship increased, the keel began to buckle, and the tail assembly began to shake loose.
Captain Mabry turned the Roma away from the Naval Station and toward the open water. The passengers and crew tossed a shower of equipment and furniture from the keel’s windows to lighten the ship’s load. But nothing could stop the Roma’s rapid descent.
The airship plummeted toward an open field alongside the Station’s depot - and a high-voltage electric line.
As the Roma’s nose struck the ground, the enormous gasbag brushed the electric line, and in an instant the skin of the enormous airship was engulfed in flame. The eleven gas cells, loaded with more than a million cubic feet of hydrogen, exploded in a colossal fireball.
Amidst a rain of fire and debris, sailors and depot workers rushed to the wreckage, only to be driven back by the heat and flames. Three fire companies spent five hours battling the blaze. When the smoke cleared and the twisted metal wreckage cooled, thirty-four bodies were recovered from the remains of the Roma. Amazingly, eleven individuals on board survived, three of them completely unharmed.
The crash of the
Roma marked the greatest disaster in American aeronautics up to that time. The Army launched an inconclusive investigation into the accident, and a great public debate arose about the safety of flight and the
Roma's reliance on hydrogen.
Although there were photographs, there were no newsreel cameras on hand to capture the moment the
Roma exploded. Dazed survivors and shaken witnesses told their stories to the press, but there was no on-the-spot radio coverage to bring the death and destruction into listener’s homes. Newspapers covered the story for a few weeks, but eventually the
Roma slipped to the back pages, then out of the news altogether. In time, the
Roma disaster faded from America's consciousness.
There are few reminders of the disaster today. Langley, now a major Air Force base, still refers to a parking lot where the Roma's hangar stood as the ''LTA area,'' an acronym for ''lighter than air.' Roma Road runs nearby.
At Norfolk International Terminals, the commercial port of Norfolk, not far from the site of the crash, stands a small monument, its perfunctory inscription telling little of the Roma and its fate, and nothing of the lives lost aboard it.