摘要：In 1990 Sky Ships: A History of the Airship in the United States Navy established William Althoff as the expert on the United States ' rigid and non-rigid lighter than air naval aviation. This study shifts the focus from the broad range of airships and blimps to the iconic vessel of the rigid programme, the longest lived zeppelin of them all, and the only American rigid airship to end her career in one piece. Los Angeles was the most successful of three rigid airships procured by the Navy in the latter stages of World War One and the immediate post-war years. Her American and British sisters, developed from a 1916 vintage German design, suffered catastrophic structural failure. By contrast Los Angeles was designed after 1918, when the Germans had digested their extensive experience of lighter than air operations between 1914 and 1918. In consequence the new ship was significantly larger than her precursors, and much stronger. She was also the third aircraft, and second airship, to cross the Atlantic
