Originally published in 1990, Sky Ships is easily the most comprehensive history of U.S. Navy airships ever written. The Naval Institute Press is releasing this new edition— complete with two hundred new photographs—to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the book’s publication. Impressed by Germany’s commercial and military Zeppelins, the United States initiated its own airship program in 1915. Naval Air Station Lakehurst in New Jersey was homeport for several of the largest machines ever to navigate the air. The success of the commercial rigid airship peaked in 1936 with transatlantic round trips between Central Europe and the Americas by Hindenburg and by Graf Zeppelin— ending with the infamous fire in 1937. That setback, the onset of war, and the accelerated progress of heavier-than-air technology ended rigid airship development. The Navy continued to use blimps to protect Allied shipping during World War II. Following the war, the Navy persisted with efforts to integrate the airships, but the program was finally discontinued in the early 1960s.

From the book's Foreword: In the early 1970s, the U.S. Army Center of Military History contracted with BDM Corporation for a history of U.S. efforts to counter Soviet air and missile threats during the Cold War. The resulting two-volume History of Strategic Air and Ballistic Missile Defense covers the years 1945-1972 when the strategic arms competition between the United States and the Soviet Union was at its height. The study was first published for limited distribution in 1975 and recently declassified with minimal redaction. These volumes address the passive and active defense strategies, technologies, and techniques adopted by both U.S. and Soviet defense planners. Much of their actions centered around three common questions: How might we be attacked? How shall we defend our country? What can technology do to solve the basic problems of defending against this new intercontinental threat?