Hangar

A hangar is a metal, wooden, or concrete structure designed to hold one or many aircraft in protective storage. Hangars may be used to protect aircraft from weather or enemy attack (if in a wartime environment), when undergoing repairs, or are simply not in use. Any type of aircraft can be housed in a hangar—some very large ones were constructed to house dirigibles during refueling and boarding. The word hangar comes from a northern French dialect, and literally means "cattle pen."

History

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. 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 headquarters in the unused shed. After returning home, Bleriot called REIDsteel, the maker of the cattle pen, and ordered three "hangars" for his personal use. REIDsteel continues to make hangars and hangar parts to this day.

The Wright brothers were the first to store and repair a functional airplane in a protective structure. They constructed a wooden hangar in 1902 on Kill Devil Hill in North Carolina for their glider. After completing design and construction of the Wright Flyer in Ohio, the brothers returned to Kill Devil Hill only to find their hangar damaged. They repaired the structure and constructed a new workshop while they waited for the Flyer to be shipped. After every disappointing run they returned to the hangar to carry out any repairs.

Airship hangars

Airship hangars are generally larger than conventional airplane hangars (particularly in terms of their overall height), which subjects them to different design constraints. Many early airships used hydrogen gas to provide them with sufficient buoyancy for flight, so their hangars therefore had to provide protection from stray sparks in order to to prevent the flammable gas from exploding. Hangars that held multiple craft of this type were at risk from chain-reaction explosions. For this reason, most hangars for hydrogen-based airships were sized to house only 1 or 2 such craft.

With World War I on the horizon, hangar design had to keep pace with advances in aviation technology. Airships were becoming a standard for transoceanic travel. The Germans used Zeppelins to bomb Paris and London, while the British used blimps (non-rigid airships) to patrol their coasts. The US Navy established two "lighter-than-air" bases on the West Coast during World War II as part of the coastal defense plan, which required the construction of some of the world's largest freestanding wood structures.

External links

• Aircraft Hangars at BuildingsGuide.com
• Marine Corps Air Station, Tustin at the California Military Musem official website
• Nick Challoner's photo history of British Hangars
• REIDsteel company website

See also: Hangar, 1902, 1909, 1935, Airbase, Aircraft, Airship, Airships, Aviation