As part of this ten "lighter-than-air" (LTA) bases across the United States were built during World War II as part of the coastal defense plan a total of 17 hangars were built. The US Navy established expanded airship operations during WWII. Six helium-filled blimps stored in one of the two hangars at the former Marine Corps Air Station Tustin Wood construction Hangar One at Moffett Federal Field (formerly Naval Air Station Moffett Field), is located in Mountain View, California. The Airdock was used for the construction of the USS Akron and her sister ship, the USS Macon. The structure was completed on November 25, 1929. The Goodyear Airdock, is located in Akron, Ohio. The largest hangars ever built include the Goodyear Airdock measuring 1,175x325x211 feet, and Hangar One (Mountain View, California) measuring 1,133x308x198 feet.
The hangar also provided service and storage for the airships USS Los Angeles, Akron, Macon, as well as the Graf Zeppelin, and the Hindenburg. Hangar No.1 at Lakehurst was used to construct and store the American USS Shenandoah. The site is best known for the Hindenburg disaster where on May 6, 1937, the German airship Hindenburg crashed and burned while landing. The structure was completed in 1921 and is typical of airship hangar designs of World War I.
Hangar 1, Lakehurst, is located at Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst (formerly Naval Air Station Lakehurst), New Jersey. Steel rigid airship hangars are some of the largest in the world. Sheds built for rigid airships survive at Moffett Field, California Akron, Ohio Weeksville, North Carolina Lakehurst, New Jersey Base Aérea de Santa Cruz (Rio de Janeiro):pt:Hangar do Zeppelin and Cardington, Bedfordshire. The British government built a shed in Karachi for the R101, the Brazilian government built one in Rio de Janeiro, the pt:Hangar do Zeppelin for the German Zeppelins, and the US government constructed Moffett Field, Akron, Ohio, and Lakehurst Naval Air Station, Lakehurst, New Jersey Steel construction For this reason, most hangars for hydrogen-based airships were built to house only one or two such craft.ĭuring the "Golden Age" of airship travel (starting in 1900), mooring masts and sheds were constructed to build and house airships. Hangars that held multiple craft of this type were at risk from chain-reaction explosions. Most early airships used hydrogen gas to provide them with sufficient buoyancy for flight, so their hangars had to provide protection from stray sparks in order to prevent the flammable gas from exploding. Airship hangarsĪirship hangars (also referred to as "airship sheds") are generally larger than conventional aircraft hangars, particularly in terms of height. During World War I, other standard designs included the RFC General Service Flight Shed of 1916, the Admiralty F-Type (1916), the General Service Shed (featuring the characteristic Belfast-truss roof and built in various sizes), and the Handley Page aeroplane shed (1918). Examples of the latter survive at Farnborough, Filton and Montrose airfields. British aviation pioneer Alliott Verdon Roe built one of the first aeroplane sheds in 1907 at Brooklands, Surrey, and today full-size replicas of this and the 1908 Roe biplane are displayed at Brooklands Museum.Īs aviation became established in Britain before World War I, standard designs of hangar gradually appeared with military types too such as the Bessonneau hangar and the side-opening aeroplane shed of 1913 - both of which were soon widely adopted by the Royal Flying Corps. These were built in 1910 for the Bristol School of Flying and are now Grade II* Listed buildings. In Britain, the earliest aircraft hangars were known as aeroplane sheds and the oldest surviving examples of these are at Larkhill, Wiltshire. At the time, Bleriot was in a race to be the first man to cross the English Channel in a heavier-than-air aircraft, so he set up his headquarters in the unused shed. In 1909, Louis Bleriot crash-landed on a northern French farm in Les Baraques (between Sangatte and Calais) and rolled his monoplane into the farmer's cattle pen. Carl Richard Nyberg's hangar for his Flugan (fly) from 1908, Täcka udden in Lidingö, SwedenĬarl Richard Nyberg used a hangar to store his 1908 Flugan (fly) in the early 20th century.