The Worlds 7 Largest Aircraft Hangars

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Bailey Rory

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I stumbled across this page about the Worlds 7 Largest Aircraft Hangars the other day and thought it was interesting. Granted, most of the biggest hangars were for airships (blimps) but the hangar for the Spruce Goose is listed there too - and some others.
 
Bailey Rory said:
I stumbled across this page about the Worlds 7 Largest Aircraft Hangars the other day and thought it was interesting. Granted, most of the biggest hangars were for airships (blimps) but the hangar for the Spruce Goose is listed there too - and some others.
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Unless I missed it, no size figures were given. I wonder how the Goodyear Airdock (where the Akron and Macon were built) compares: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodyear_Airdock

It's in Akron, Ohio - my home town.

Dave
 
Mason said:
Apparently, it is! Right by the Queen Mary.
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That big round dome next to the Queen Mary was built in the 1980s to house the HK-1 ("Spruce Goose"). But the airplane was moved to McMinnville, Oregon, a number of years ago, and the dome in Long Beach is now the Carnival Cruise Lines terminal.

Family-1980s-01013.jpg
 
It looks like the Goodyear Airdock in Akron, Ohio was built in 1929 by the Goodyear-Zeppelin Corporation. Hangar One in Mountain View, California was built in 1933 and was designed by Dr. Karl Arnstein, Vice President and Director of Engineering for the Goodyear-Zeppelin Corporation.
According to Wikipedia, the Goodyear Airdock is 1,175 x 325 feet in length and width. And Hagar One is 1,133 x 308 feet.
So, it looks like the Goodyear Airdock is slightly larger.
 
That "Hangar B" at Tillamook is an impressive structure. That's a DC-3 way down at the end on the left side.

P1010672.JPG


BTW, the oldest wooden hangar in the country is at my home field. It's the smaller of the two in the photos below; the larger one burned down many years ago and was replaced with a modern building. It's said that a young student pilot rented a room in that back of that old hangar while he sold hamburgers at the airfield to finance his flying lessons ... a kid from a Danish farming family from Hood River, Oregon, named Elrey B. Jeppesen.

old_photo.jpg


IMG_0567.JPG
 
That list is missing a lot of stuff. The Goodyear Airdock being one. Moffett also has THREE enormous hangars. 2 and 3 are only slightly smaller than 1, and they are still in use. One even held a Zeppelin until a few years ago. And the UAL heavy maintenance facility at KSFO qualifies as a big-*** hangar, bigger than anything that was ever at KBUR (Lockheed).

While the Spruce Goose dome might once have held the Spruce Goose, is it correct to call it a hangar if it was never at an airfield and it wasn't ever designed to hold an airworthy aircraft? Isn't it just as incorrect as calling the NASM main building a hangar? Lots of airplanes in there.
 
The Vehicle Assembly building at Kennedy Space Center -- that's a hangar, isn't it?
 
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