Gorgeous painting depicting USS Macon (ZRS-5) over US fleet about 1933. The carrier might be the Lexington (CV-2) if not, it would be the Saratoga, her sister. Macon was the largest airship of the Navy at the time and was 785 feet long and 144 feet wide (with the fins!) and was just 20 feet shorter than the infamous Hindenburg.
The more “colorful” airplanes in the picture with the funny looking hooks and no landing gear (fuel tanks having substituted for landing gear) were the Macon’s Sparrowhawks, she would drop them/pick them up using its trapeze and the planes would hook on for drop off and retrieval. The Macon is in the act of dropping a sparrowhawk in the picture. USS Langley (CV-1) is in the foreground. USS Alden (DD-211), a Clemson-class destroyer, is to the left.
All of these ships were sunk or scrapped by 1945, with the Macon being the first to go, in 1934.
