Sky-High Ceilings

The converted Crissy Field airmail hangar just received a $1M appropriation to develop the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) Historic Learning Center. The MIS school was responsible for training the Army’s Japanese-American linguists and intelligence specialists before and during World War II. From the Nichi Bei Times:

Attached to every combat unit in the Pacific War, these MIS soldier linguists translated documents, intercepted intelligence, impersonated the enemy in battle, gathered key intelligence from prisoners of war, and ultimately helped American and Allied forces win the war in the Pacific. Their intimate knowledge of the language and culture helped gain a tactical and strategic advantage over their opponents.

More info can be found at the National Japanese American Historical Society (NJAHS) site and this National Park Service page.

Photo courtesy of the National Trust for Historic Preservation

This 2002 Brian Hawley photo is incredible – note how the two trucks are dwarfed by the structure.

More photos and an excellent write-up on the hangar (and its wooden counterpart which burned down in 1995) can be found by following the above link to the NE North Carolina page of Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields.

Update: It looks like TCOM, an airship and aerostat manufacturer, is using this structure as its Elizabeth City Manufacturing and Flight Test Facility.  It can house six fully-inflated aerostats and includes a clean room for dust- and pollutant-free fabrication.

Oldest military aircraft hangar in the U.S.

Location: San Antonio

Architect: Albert Kahn

Built:1917

Status: Edward H. White II Museum of Aerospace Medicine; National, State of Texas, and City of San Antonio Historic Landmark

From the above link (Brooks City-Base Fact Sheet, Air Force webpage):

Hangar 9 was constructed between 1917 and 1918 as one of twelve wood airplane hangars on the hangar line at the new Brooks Field. The curved line of twelve wood hangars and four metal hangars (now marked by Inner Circle Drive) defined the northern edge of a large dirt airfield, built without paved runways in order to allow take-offs into any wind direction. Both the site plan for Brooks Field and the original buildings were designed by the office of Detroit, Michigan architect Albert Kahn. Kahn was a German-born architect who supplied standardized plans for a number of U.S. Army Air Corps installations, including Langley Field in Virginia and Arcadia Field in California. Kahn later achieved fame as the designer of numerous industrial facilities worldwide, including the Ford Model-T factory in Detroit, Michigan (1909), the Goodyear Airdock dirigible hangar in Akron, Ohio (1929), and the Dodge Half-Ton Truck Plant in Detroit, Michigan (1938). Kahn’s industrial designs are characterized by the use of complex truss systems to span vast spaces, as well as the adaptation of modular architecture to production processes.

Although little is known of the historic uses specific to each of the sixteen hangars, Hangar 9 would have been an essential part of all flight training programs at Brooks Field, from the Primary Flight School of the World War I period to the Advanced Flying School of the 1940s. Historic photos show phalanxes of Curtiss Jennys lined up outside each hangar on the line, pointed south in preparation for takeoff. Later photos show that the ‘temporary’ wood hangars were still housing BC-1 aircraft in the 1940s.

With the end of pilot training at Brooks came neglect for the delicate wooden hangars. In 1962, two years after the last flight departed from Brooks AFB, Hangar 14 caught fire and burned, leading the base commander to call for the demolition of all the remaining wooden hangars as possible fire hazards.

The intervention of the Order of Daedalians aviators’ group, Representative Henry B. Gonzalez, and local historical societies caused Secretary of the Air Force Harry Brown to consent to the salvation of Hangar 9.

In 1968, the Bexar County Historical Survey Committee assumed sponsorship of the restoration of the dilapidated hangar, which would be used to house an aviation museum. Today, Hangar 9 houses the Edward H. White II Museum of Aerospace Medicine. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1970 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976. Hangar 9 is also a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, and a City of San Antonio Historic Landmark.

Author’s note: It never ceases to amaze how buildings, aircraft, and other items that will come to be venerated almost always must avoid some intent to tear them down or otherwise dispose of them once their original use has passed.

More info and photos at this National Park Service page: http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/aviation/bro.htm

From CPN:

Honda Aircraft Co. said today it is building a 215,000-square-foot world headquarters, which includes 68,000 square feet of office space and a 147,000-square-foot airplane hangar for its new HondaJet, at the Piedmont Triad International–PTI–Airport in Greensboro, N.C.

From The Boston Globe:

Brona Simon, the commission’s executive director, sent a letter Jan. 12 to Massport senior planner Thomas W. Ennis noting that Massport has targeted the historic hangar for demolition, to make way for the redevelopment of the site “for general aviation use.”

Pioneering navigation and radar systems were developed in the hangar from 1948 to 2001. The hangar was called the MIT Instrumentation Flight Facility and, later, the MIT Lincoln Laboratory Flight Facility….

The Concord commission’s chairwoman, Barbara Lynn-Davis, said she and the other four members “are every excited about a museum concept” for the hangar. “A museum focusing on the 20th century would complement nicely other local museums featuring earlier periods,” she added.

The idea for a Massachusetts Air and Space Museum was proposed last November by the Massachusetts Aviation Historical Society; Save Our Heritage, a Concord-based historic preservation group; and a number of individuals interested in this state’s contributions to aviation advancements.