The airship was first flown on August 19, 1929, and transferred to
Naval Air Station Lakehurst,
New Jersey, in October 1929. The airship was nicknamed "the Tin Blimp". Its first Navy skipper was Red Dugan, who expressed reluctance at operating the airship, believing it unsafe. Dugan's concerns were proven wrong, though he later lost his life in the crash of another airship,
Akron. The ZMC-2 was operated with a zero internal pressure at speeds up to , sufficient for it to be considered a 'rigid' airship. With its low
fineness ratio of 2.83, the ZMC-2 was difficult to fly. By 1936, the airship had travelled over with little sign of corrosion. In its lifetime the ZMC-2 logged 752 flights and 2265 hours of flight time. In its final years its use had dropped significantly. Between December 1938 and April 1941 it only logged five hours of flight time. Considered by the Navy as too small for anti-submarine patrols, the aging ZMC-2 was decommissioned and scrapped in 1941 after nearly 12 years of service. ==Operators==