Military innovation. It crashed on february 21, 1922, in norfolk, claiming the lives of most of the men of board. Todays speaker will reveal details and never before published imagery of the forgotten tragedy of one of the last great airships, and those who sacrificed for the promise of a new era in aviation. Nancy shepherd is a writer and historian of her native Hampton Roads, virginia. Her main interest is the history of Hampton Roads from 1890 to the present. After publishing short online history pieces, she has devoted her research and writing over the last four years telling the survey story of the roma and her crew. We join me in giving a warm welcome dhs welcome to make to nancy shepherd. [applause] thank you for that warm introduction. I would like to thank the Virginia Historical society for having me, and cspan for coming out here and taping. Very exciting. As andy said, my name is nancy e. Shepherd. I am a author from Hampton Roads. This has been my project for the last five years. To tell you about roma to get started, this is a forgotten piece of our printing your history virginia history. It was the deadliest disaster of a u. S. Hydrogen airship, one long forgotten. It has been my honor to bring it to the world and to you today. And so, i will take you back to 1921. This was a time of innovation, prosperity, hope for our new future. We had survived world war i, the spanish flu epidemic. Everyone wanted to leave behind all of that ugliness, i guess you could say, and move forward. They were looking for new inventions, ways to go about goat doing daytoday life, making the world a proverbial, smaller place. This is a postcard from that. From my hometown, norfolk. Back during world war i, germany proved the invaluable solidity of these airships. They had massive, rigid framed ships, which, while they committed unlimited image, created a sense of psychological or fair. Unlike their airplane counterparts, they were less fragile. They could carry they could go higher, faster, and seemed to be more practical. To give you an idea of how fragile these heavier than air airplanes were, the Army Air Service only had 2200 serviceable planes at 10,000 after our short. In world war i. Needless to say, instead of looking at bats as a way to move forward, the United States desperately wanted to get in on the lighter than air technology. The u. S. Navy was charged with their rigid ships. To give you an idea of what this a rigid ship was, the hindenburg. These were ships that were massive, they were 1000, sometimes larger, feet long. They had a skeletal structure inside the guest bag right here. And, they were based off the Zeppelin Corporation in germany. Not wanting to be outdone by the u. S. Navy, Brigadier General Billy Mitchell petitioned the War Department to have a large ship for the army. He wanted it for training purposes, but really to work on reconnaissance