Some Navy blimps saw action in the European war theater . In 1944 – 45 , the U.S. Navy moved an entire squadron of eight Goodyear K class blimps ( K-89 , K-101 , K-109 , K-112 , K-114 , K-123 , K-130 , & K-134 ) with flight and maintenance crews from Weeksville Naval Air Station in North Carolina to Naval Air Station Port Lyautey , French Morocco . Their mission was to locate and destroy German U-boats in the relatively shallow waters around the Strait of Gibraltar where magnetic anomaly detection ( MAD ) was viable . PBY aircraft had been searching these waters but MAD required low altitude flying that was dangerous at night for these aircraft . The blimps were considered a perfect solution to establish a 24/7 MAD barrier ( fence ) at the Straits of Gibraltar with the PBYs flying the day shift and the blimps flying the night shift . The first two blimps ( K-123 & K-130 ) left South Weymouth NAS on 28 May 1944 and flew to Argentia , Newfoundland , the Azores , and finally to Port Lyautey where they completed the first transatlantic crossing by nonrigid airships on 1 June 1944 . The blimps of USN Blimp Squadron ZP-14 ( Blimpron 14 , aka '' The Africa Squadron '' ) also conducted mine-spotting and mine-sweeping operations in key Mediterranean ports and various escorts including the convoy carrying United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to the Yalta Conference in 1945 . Airships from the ZP-12 unit took part in the sinking of the last U-Boat before German capitulation , sinking the '' U-881 '' on 6 May 1945 together with destroyers Atherton and Mobery
Yalta Conference
Yalta Conference
Airship