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Why Are There Fewer Gigantic Hangars Than A Century Ago?



For people who own or run an airfield or small airport, getting an aircraft hangar buildingĀ is easier than ever before.


With easy, fast kit-build steel buildings available designed specifically to accommodate the wingspan of planes, hangars are available for air shows, temporary airfields and anywhere where additional capacity is required.


With that in mind, however, whilst there is perhaps more net capacity for aircraft than ever before, there are fewer gigantic hangars available, of the kind that can safely store the largest flying vehicles ever made.


Since 1945, only one major hangar of that scale, Aerium, was ever made, and it is now home to aĀ tropical indoor theme park.


Why this is the case comes down to changing priorities, the changing shape of aeronautics and one of the most publicised disasters in the history of transportation.


Why Were Old Aircraft Hangars So Large?


From the establishment ofĀ Hangar Y at Chalais-MeudonĀ in 1879, aircraft storage hangars ballooned in size quickly, almost entirely the result of the rise of the dirigible airship as the flying vessel of choice.


These lighter-than-air craft were inherently gigantic and somewhat fragile, often filled with flammable gases such as helium and later hydrogen, which meant that whilst they were being constructed and serviced, they needed to be securely stored in a very large space.


This meant that anywhere where an airship, particularly the huge rigid Zeppelins, needed to have a huge hangar for them to be stored in, which is why buildings such asĀ Hangar do ZeppelinĀ in Brazil and an airship hangar in Karachi exist, despite the nation not having a history of constructing airships of their own.


As airships got progressively larger, so did the hangars, to the point that buildings such as theĀ Goodyear Airdock, the largest building ever made without interior supports when it was completed on 25th November 1929, humidity could lead to indoor rain.


The demand for airships, one of the fastest ways to travel across the Atlantic Ocean, intensified with the launch of the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin, which led to a growing number of hangars being made in any country that wanted what was at the time the largest flying craft ever made to dock in their country, used for both passenger and mail services.


It seemed to have a long and thriving future, but on 6th May 1937, the entire industry and the need for hangars to store them would literally go down in flames.


A Sudden Stop?


There were warning signs that the airship revolution may have some problems that would be difficult to fix. TheĀ British Imperial Airship SchemeĀ ended abruptly after their R101 airship crashed in the early hours of 5th October 1930.


Similarly, the Goodyear Airdockā€™s first two Zeppelins, The USS Akron and the USS Macon both crashed within two years of entering service, in 1933 and 1935 respectively.


However, the true end of the Zeppelin era came with the highly publicised crash of theĀ LZ 129 Hindenburg. Filled with hydrogen instead of helium, a fire started by causes still debated to this day caused the airship to catch into flames and slowly fall to the ground, killing 36 people.


Whilst not the greatest airship disaster in history, with the Akron and the R101 both suffering a greater loss of life, the fact it happened to an airship that had reliably flown across the ocean for over a year at that point and the highly distributed footage of the craft in flames was the end of the Airship.


This, alongside growing tensions in Europe that led to dwindling helium supplies, led to an abrupt end to the airship era and the need for hangars even close to the size of the Goodyear Airdock. Even the large hangars needed for planes such as the Airbus A380 were nowhere near this size.


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