Goodyear is donating to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum an original Goodyear blimp gondola, or car C-49.
The C-49 car goes to the Smithsonian on the heels of last year’s donation of a lifeboat used on the 1911 airship, Vaniman’s Akron, which utilized Goodyear’s first airship envelope.
“The C-49 is a welcome addition to our collection as it fairly represents the scope of military and commercial roles played by the Goodyear blimps,” said Tom Crouch, the museum’s senior curator of aeronautics. It will have a place of honor, joining the control car of the first Goodyear blimp, Pilgrim, in the National Air and Space Museum.”
The C-49 gondola has a “rich history within the Goodyear blimp fleet and with the U.S. Navy and we are very proud it has been accepted by America’s most prestigious repository for aeronautical history,” said Nancy Jandrokovic, Goodyear’s director of global airship operations.
The C-49 was first put into service as the Goodyear blimp Enterprise in August 1934, and spent the next eight years as a part of Goodyear’s promotional fleet. In 1942, though, the C-49 was sold to the U.S. Navy and designated L-5 where it served until 1946. Goodyear made and supplied hundreds of airships to the U.S. Navy during World War II.
Following the war, Goodyear repurchased C-49 and stored it as a spare in the company’s airship hangar at Wingfoot Lake in Suffield, Ohio. The car was rebuilt in 1969 and put back into service as the Columbia N4A from 1975 to 1986, when it was finally retired.
