Airship Macon
2008
Directed by Marc Brasse
Customer: ZDF/Spiegel TV
Story
Her fuselage could blacken out the sun and only a whisper could be heard when she slid through the skies. A giant, 240 metres in length and as tall as a 15-storeybuilding. But the USS Macon was no ordinary air ship. Airplanes could take off and land inside her hull. A flying aircraft carrier. Together with her sister ship, the Akron, she was the only airship ever built for this purpose. The US Navy intended to commission the building of a fleet of ten of these aerial spies in order to strengthen its position as second biggest naval power of the world. But both ships crashed and went down into the sea and abruptly ended the era of the flying aircraft carrier. For a long time now these giants of the skies had been forgotten. Until one of them, the USS Macon, has been discovered, only a few kilometres off the Southern Californian coast. 450 metres below the water surface.
