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DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY -- NAVAL HISTORICAL CENTER
805 KIDDER BREESE SE -- WASHINGTON NAVY YARD
WASHINGTON DC 20374-5060

Kite Balloons to Airships...the Navy's Lighter-than-Air Experience

Cover(112 kb file, download as a .pdf)

Inside cover (Contents, Introduction, The Early Period, 
and The Navy's First Airship) (Pages 1-5, 1.2 mb file, 
download as a .pdf)

The B-class and Early LTA Training (Pages 5-10, 1.3 mb 
file, download as a .pdf)

World War I and The C-class (Pages 11-18, 1.3 mb file, 
download as .pdf)

New Airship Classes in the Post-WWI Period, The Demise 
of the Kite Baloon and The Switch to Helium (Pages 18-23, 
1.0 mb file, download as .pdf)

The Development of LTA's Home Base and the Rigid Airship 
Program (Pages 23-34, 1.9 mb file, download as .pdf)

Pre-WW II Blilmps and the Evolution of the K-class and 
WW II Airships and Their Operations (Pages 34-46, 1.4 mb 
file, download as .pdf)

ZP-32 Operations and ZP-41 in South America (Pages 46-51, 
1.3 mb file, download as .pdf)

ZP-21 in the Caribbean and ZP-14 in the Atlantic and 
Europe (Pages 51-60, 1.4 mb file, download as .pdf)

ZP-12 Operations, Final LTA Operations in WW II and the 
Amazing Statistics They Compiled and Post WW II 
Developments and Operations (Pages 60-66, 1.1 mb file, 
download as .pdf)
 
Airship Types in the Postwar Period and LTA Records Set in
the 1950s (Pages 67-75, 1.8 mb file, download as .pdf)

The Demise of LTA and a Possible Revival (Page 75 to back 
cover, 1.7 mb file, download as .pdf)

NOTE: This monograph has been out of print for several years and paper copies are no longer available through the Government Printing Office. This electronic version has been placed on the Naval Historical Center's homepage because it is an excellent reference source for information about the Navy's lighter-than-air experiences and history. As an electronic document, there is a compromise between picture quality and the capability of the optical-character-reader software to correctly identify the text in the monograph, which results in the picture quality being less than optimum.

These files are saved and made available to you in Adobe's "Portable Document Format" (.pdf) which preserves formatting and greatly compresses their size for quicker downloading. You will need the Acrobat Reader, downloadable free from Adobe, to view them.