For a time, Thomas Benton Slate seemed poised to make Glendale the airship capital of the West. In 1926, he began to build his pride and joy, the City of Glendale dirigible, at Grand Central Airport.

Slate invited fathers to bring their kids and watch him assemble the innvoative design: corrugated sheet metal riveted together into a rigid skin. Tens of thousands came to take a look.

A crowd of hundreds gathered Dec. 19, 1929 for the first test flight. The ship floated out of the hangar to oohs and ahs, then everything went wrong. Under the heat of the sun, the skin began to bulge and rivets popped, sounding like gunfire. When the ship began to list toward the ground, spectators took off running, fearing a fireball.

Instead, the City of Glendale fell to the ground with a clank. A relief valve was the culprit, but the ship's poor design -- virtually the entire skin would have to be disassembled to fix the damage -- made any repairs too expensive. The dirigible era at Glendale was over.