Weeksville Dirigible Hangar

Last updated April 28, 2019

Coordinates: 36°13′44″N76°08′06″W / 36.229°N 76.135°W / 36.229; -76.135 (Weeksville Dirigible Hangar) The Weeksville Dirigible Hangar (former NAS Weeksville) is an airship manufacturing, storage and test facility originally built by the US Navy in 1941 for servicing airships conducting anti-submarine patrols of the US coast and harbors. It is located on the former Naval Air Station Weeksville in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, approximately 2 miles southeast of the present day Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City.

Geographic coordinate system Coordinate system

A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are often chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position and two or three of the numbers represent a horizontal position; alternatively, a geographic position may be expressed in a combined three-dimensional Cartesian vector. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation. To specify a location on a plane requires a map projection.

An airship or dirigible balloon is a type of aerostat or lighter-than-air aircraft that can navigate through the air under its own power. Aerostats gain their lift from large gasbags filled with a lifting gas that is less dense than the surrounding air.

Elizabeth City is a city in Pasquotank County, North Carolina, in the United States. As of the 2014 census, it had a population of 18,047. Elizabeth City is the county seat and largest city of Pasquotank County. It is the cultural, economic and educational hub of the sixteen-county Historic Albemarle region of northeastern North Carolina.

Background

At the beginning of World War II, Naval Air Station Lakehurst, established in 1921, was the only active lighter-than-air (LTA) naval air station operated by the US Navy.^[1] In 1940, the US Navy proposed to the US Congress the development of a lighter-than-air station program for anti-submarine patrols of the coast and harbors. This program proposed, in addition to the expansion at Lakehurst and the reestablishment of NAS Moffett Field as a naval LTA station, the construction of new stations in the Boston, Cape May, Cape Hatteras, southern Florida, southern Georgia, Louisiana, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Puget Sound, and Hitchcock near Galveston TX areas. The original contract included a steel hangar, 960 feet (290 m) long, 328 feet (100 m) wide and 190 feet (58 m) high, helium storage and service, barracks for 228 men, a power plant, landing mat, and a mobile mooring mast.^[1] In June 1941, shortly before Congress completed action on the Navy's proposed LTA program, work began at NAS Lakehurst on a project which included the construction of two airship hangars.^[1]

World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. The major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China. It included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war.

Because of Archimedes' principle, a lifting gas is required for aerostats to create buoyancy, particularly in Lighter-than-air aircraft, which include free balloons, moored balloons, and airships. Only certain lighter than air gases are suitable as lifting gases. Dry air has a density of about 1.29 g/L at standard conditions for temperature and pressure (STP) and an average molecular mass of 28.97 g/mol, and so lighter than air gases have a density lower than this.

A naval air station is a military air base, and consists of a permanent land-based operations locations for the military aviation division of the relevant branch of a navy. These bases are typically populated by squadrons, groups or wings, their various support commands, and other tenant commands.

The Second Deficiency Appropriation Bill for 1941, passed July 3, 1941, authorized the construction of 8 facilities to accommodate a total of 48 airships, as requested in 1940.^[1] Due to steel rations, a total of 17 large wooden hangars were built among 10 LTA bases.

As finally developed in 1943, LTA facilities (with wooden hangars built) in addition to NAS Lakehurst (2) and NAS Moffett Field (2), included NAS South Weymouth (1), NAS Weeksville (1), NAS Glynco (2), NAS Richmond (3), NAS Houma (1), NAS Hitchcock (1), NAS Santa Ana (2) and NAS Tillamook (2). In the initial program, accommodations were provided for six airships at each station. This was later increased to twelve at seven of the stations and to eighteen at NAS Richmond as a result of an increase in the authorized strength to 200 airships.^[1]

Naval Air Station South Weymouth, was an operational United States Navy airfield from 1942 to 1997 in South Weymouth, Massachusetts. It was first established as a regular Navy blimp base during World War II. During the postwar era the base became part of the Naval Air Reserve Training Command, hosting a variety of Navy and Marine Corps reserve aircraft squadrons and other types of reserve units. Like most BRAC sites, environmental contamination was detected in 1986, and since 1993 numerous remedies and long term monitoring of ground water are in place. Since 2005, over 600 acres have been transferred to the affected towns for reuse, and in 2011 the Navy signed a $25 million contract to transfer its remaining land.

Naval Air Station Glynco, Georgia, was an operational naval air station from 1942 to 1974 with an FAA airfield identifier of NEA and an ICAO identifier of KNEA.

Hitchcock Naval Air Station was a Naval Air Station built by the United States Navy during World War II to accommodate lighter-than-air aircraft, more commonly known as blimps. It was located in the small town of Hitchcock, Texas, about fifteen miles (24 km) northwest of Galveston. Construction began in 1942 and the base was commissioned on May 22, 1943. The most prominent feature of the base was the 1,000-foot (300 m) long, 200-foot (61 m) tall largely wooden blimp hangar. The blimp hangar, which held six aircraft was built at a cost of $10 million. The purpose of the base and its aircraft was to search for Axis power submarines in the Gulf of Mexico. Beside the hangar there were auxiliary buildings including barracks, warehouses, a mess hall, gymnasium, auditorium and an Olympic-size swimming pool which was used to teach swimming and water-rescue.

Description

In September 1941, work started on what was to become the Naval Air Station South Weymouth. The pattern of projects there was followed, with little modification, at the seven new stations during the ensuing year. The construction of the Weeksville hangar, which aimed to serve the Cape Hatteras area, followed and works started in October 1941. These two stations were the only new ones begun before the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.^[1]

Cape Hatteras is a thin, broken strand of islands in North Carolina that arch out into the Atlantic Ocean away from the US mainland, then back toward the mainland, creating a series of sheltered islands between the Outer Banks and the mainland. For thousands of years these barrier islands have survived onslaughts of wind and sea. Long stretches of beach, sand dunes, marshes, and maritime forests create a unique environment where wind and waves shape the topography. A large area of the Outer Banks is part of a National Park, called the Cape Hatteras National Seashore. It is also the nearest landmass on the US mainland to Bermuda, which is about 563 nautical miles to the east-southeast.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941. The attack led to the United States' formal entry into World War II the next day. The Japanese military leadership referred to the attack as the Hawaii Operation and Operation AI, and as Operation Z during its planning.

The US Navy started the construction of the Weeksville LTA air station on August 6, 1941, which lasted until 1942.^[1]^[2]^[3] It is the only remaining steel airship hangar built during World War II and is based on the Goodyear Airdock in Akron Oh designed by Karl Arnstein.^{[ citation needed ]} Due to steel rations, an additional hangar was built out of wood, which would in following decades become known as the world's largest wooden structure ^[4]^[5] before its destruction by fire in 1995.

Naval Air Station Weeksville was operational from 1941 to 1957. NAS Weeksville's airships played a vital role in German U-boat spotting during World War II, helping to minimize losses to East Coast shipping.^[2] However, budget cuts to the Navy's LTA program in the mid-1950s resulted in the closure of NAS Weeksville as an active naval installation in 1957. In 1959 the facility was used for design testing of communications satellites as part of NASA's Project Echo.^[6]

On August 3, 1995, a welder's torch started a fire in the wooden hangar. Response from numerous area fire departments was swift but all attempts to control the blaze were unsuccessful due to the hangar's southern yellow pine construction and massive size. The wooden hangar was engulfed, and burned to the ground.^[7]

The remaining steel hangar was used by several manufacturing firms following the base's decommissioning in 1957, including Westinghouse and IXL Cabinetry. In 1986, an aerostat manufacturing company, TCOM Corporation, relocated to Elizabeth City, conducting temporary operations in a former Kmart while the hangar was refurbished and eventually returned to active service once again as a manufacturing and test facility.^[8]^[9] Today, TCOM is corporately head-quartered in Columbia, Maryland, while the former NAS Weeksville site is now known as the TCOM Manufacturing, Production and Test Facility ^[9] for airships and aerostats and an active airfield for lighter-than-air aircraft operations.

Related Research Articles

Moffett Federal Airfield, also known as Moffett Field, is a joint civil-military airport located in an unincorporated part of Santa Clara County between southern Mountain View and northern Sunnyvale, California. On November 10, 2014, NASA announced that it would be leasing 1000 acres of the airfield property to Google for 60 years.

Hangar closed structure to hold aircraft or spacecraft in protective storage

A hangar is a closed building structure to hold aircraft, or spacecraft. Hangars are built of metal, wood and concrete. The word hangar comes from Middle French hanghart, of Germanic origin, from Frankish *haimgard, from *haim and gard ("yard").

Charles Emery Rosendahl was a highly decorated Vice Admiral in the United States Navy, and an advocate of lighter-than-air flight.

Lakehurst Maxfield Field, formerly known as Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst , is the naval component of Joint Base McGuire–Dix–Lakehurst, a United States Air Force–managed joint base headquartered approximately 25 miles (40 km) east-southeast of Trenton in Manchester Township and Jackson Township in Ocean County, New Jersey, United States. It is primarily the home to Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division Lakehurst, although the airfield supports several other flying and non-flying units as well. Its name is an amalgamation of its location and the last name of Commander Louis H. Maxfield, who lost his life when the R-38/USN ZR-2 airship crashed during flight on 24 August 1921 near Hull, England.

The N-Class, or as popularly known, the "Nan ship", was a line of non-rigid airships built by the Goodyear Aircraft Company of Akron, Ohio for the US Navy. This line of airships was developed through many versions and assigned various designators as the airship designation system changed in the post World War II era. These versions included airships configured for both anti-submarine warfare and airborne early warning (AEW) missions.

The Goodyear Airdock is a construction and storage airship hangar in Akron, Ohio.

Naval Air Station Rockaway adjoined Fort Tilden on the western portion of the Rockaway Peninsula in the New York City borough of Queens. It was established on transferred municipal property in 1917 during American involvement in World War I, and was demolished in 1930 to make way for Jacob Riis Park. Operations were moved across the inlet to a hangar in the municipal Floyd Bennett Field, which itself was sold to the federal government in 1941 and made Naval Air Station New York. NAS New York was decommissioned in 1972 and is now a part of the Gateway National Recreation Area, as are Fort Tilden and Jacob Riis Park.

The American Blimp MZ-3A is a blimp owned by the United States Navy from 2006 to 2017. It is a modified American Blimp Corporation A-170 series commercial blimp and given the USN type/model/series (T/M/S) designation MZ-3A and Bureau Number (BuNo) 167811. After delivery to the Navy, the airship began operations as an advanced flying laboratory used to evaluate affordable sensor payloads, the development of new lighter-than-air (LTA) technologies and general flight support for other related research and development/science and technology (R&D/S&T) projects. It is currently the only airship operated by the U. S. military.

Hangar No. 1 is an airship hangar located at Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst in Manchester Township, in Ocean County, New Jersey, United States. It is best known as the intended destination of the rigid airship LZ 129 Hindenburg prior to the Hindenburg disaster on May 6, 1937, when it crashed and burned while landing.

Hangar One (Mountain View, California) Moffett Field building

Hangar One is one of the world's largest freestanding structures, covering 8 acres (3.2 ha) at the Moffett Field airship hangars site at Moffett Field, California, in Santa Clara County of the southern San Francisco Bay Area, California.

Airship hangars are specialized buildings that are used for sheltering airships during construction, maintenance and storage. Rigid airships always needed to be based in airship hangars because weathering was a serious risk.

Bartolomeu de Gusmão Airport was a Brazilian airport built to handle the operations with the rigid airships Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg. The airport was named after Bartolomeu Lourenço de Gusmão (1685–1724), a Portuguese priest born in Brazil who did research about transportation with balloons.

The U.S. Naval Air Station, Sunnyvale Historic District, also known as Shenandoah Plaza is a historic district located on 62.48 acres (25.3 ha) at Moffett Field, California.

Weeksville in an unincorporated community in Pasquotank County, North Carolina, United States. It lies roughly midway on NC 344, at an elevation of 3 feet. The community is home to Weeksville Elementary School, a Methodist church, gas station, volunteer fire department, Lions Club chapter and county recycling center.

A hangar is a structure built to house aircraft. "Hangar" may also refer to:

In the nation's quest to provide security along its lengthy coastlines, air reconnaissance was put forth by the futuristic Rear Admiral William A. Moffett. Through his efforts, two Naval Air Stations were commissioned in the early 1930s to port the Naval Airships (dirigibles) which he believed capable of meeting this challenge.

The United States Navy proposed to the U.S. Congress the development of a lighter-than-air station program for anti-submarine patrolling of the coast and harbors. This program proposed, in addition to the expansion at NAS and Lakehurst, the construction of new stations. The original contract was for steel hangars, 960 ft (290 m) long, 328 ft (100 m) wide and 190 ft (58 m) high, helium storage and service, barracks for 228 men, a power plant, landing mat, and a mobile mooring mast.

There are three historic airship hangars at Moffett Field, in Mountain View in the southern San Francisco Bay Area, California. Hangar One is based on a structure of steel girders, while Hangars Two and Three are of wood. They are among the world's largest freestanding structures.

References

Notes

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Bureau of Yards and Docks, US Navy 1947 , pp. 253-254, Volume I - Part II: The Continental Bases
1 2 Chalker, Stephen D. "U. S. Naval Air Station (LTA) Weeksville".
↑ "Dirigible Hangar- TCom-Weeksville, NC".
↑ http://www.blimpinfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/NASLTAWeeksville-Comm.pdf
↑ http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/32442
↑ Hansen, James R. Spaceflight Revolution: NASA Langley Research Center From Sputnik to Apollo. Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration. p. 181.
↑
↑ Stein, Kenneth J. (July 14, 1986). "Westinghouse/Airships Industries joint venture targets Navy program". Aviation Week & Space Technology : 144, 145, 147, 149.
1 2 "TCOM Facilities". TCOM Corp. Retrieved 2019-03-04.

Bibliography

Bureau of Yards and Docks, US Navy (1947). Building the Navy's Bases in World War II; History of the Bureau of Yards and Docks and the Civil Engineer Corps, 1940-1946. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. OCLC 568748097 . Retrieved 29 December 2011. (Public domain)