The Weeksville Dirigible Hangar (former Naval Air Station Weeksville) is an

airship 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 a lifting gas that is less dense than the surrounding air. In early ...

manufacturing, storage and test facility originally built by the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

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 Elizabeth City is a city in Pasquotank County, North Carolina, Pasquotank County, North Carolina, United States. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 18,629. Elizabeth City is the county seat and largest city of Pasquotank County. It ...

, approximately 2 miles southeast of the present day

Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City is a United States Coast Guard Air Station co-located at Elizabeth City Regional Airport in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, along the Pasquotank River near the opening of the Albemarle Sound. The base has ...

Background

At the beginning of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Naval Air Station Lakehurst A navy, naval force, or maritime force is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval warfare, naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral zone, littoral, or ocean-borne combat operations and ...

, established in 1921, was the only active

lighter-than-air A lifting gas or lighter-than-air gas is a gas that has a density lower than normal atmospheric gases and rises above them as a result. It is required for aerostats to create buoyancy, particularly in lighter-than-air aircraft, which include fre ...

(LTA) naval air station operated by the US Navy. In 1940, the US Navy proposed to the

US Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washingto ...

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

Naval Air Station Moffett Field Moffett Federal Airfield , also known as Moffett Field, is a joint civil-military airport located in an unincorporated part of Santa Clara County, California, United States, between northern Mountain View and northern Sunnyvale. On November 10, ...

as a naval LTA station, the construction of new stations in the

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

Cape May Cape May consists of a peninsula and barrier island system in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It is roughly coterminous with Cape May County, New Jersey, Cape May County and runs southwards from the New Jersey mainland, separating Delaware Bay fro ...

Cape Hatteras Cape Hatteras is a cape located at a pronounced bend in Hatteras Island, one of the barrier islands of North Carolina. Long stretches of beach, sand dunes, marshes, and maritime forests create a unique environment where wind and waves shape ...

, southern

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

, southern

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

Puget Sound Puget Sound ( ) is a sound of the Pacific Northwest, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, and part of the Salish Sea. It is located along the northwestern coast of the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected ma ...

, and Hitchcock near Galveston, Texas areas. The original contract included a steel hangar, long, wide and high, helium storage and service, barracks for 228 men, a power plant, landing mat, and a mobile mooring mast. 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 hangar Airship hangars (also known as airship sheds) are large 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 s ...

s. 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. 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 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 p ...

(1), NAS Weeksville (1),

NAS Glynco 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. Now known as Brunswick Golden Isles Airport ( IATA: BQK, ICAO: KBQK), it was prev ...

(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.

Description

In September 1941, work started on what was to become the NAS 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

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 The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of 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, Territory of Hawaii, j ...

. The US Navy started the construction of the Weeksville LTA air station on August 6, 1941, which lasted until 1942. It is the only remaining steel

built during

and is based on the Goodyear Airdock in Akron Oh designed by Karl Arnstein. 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 before its destruction by fire in 1995. NAS Weeksville was operational from 1941 to 1957. NAS Weeksville's

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

played a vital role in German

U-boat U-boats were naval submarines operated by Germany, particularly in the First and Second World Wars. Although at times they were efficient fleet weapons against enemy naval warships, they were most effectively used in an economic warfare role ...

spotting during World War II, helping to minimize losses to East Coast shipping. 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 The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

Project Echo Project Echo was the first passive communications satellite experiment. Each of the two American spacecraft, launched in 1960 and 1964, were metalized balloon satellites acting as passive reflectors of microwave signals. Communication sign ...

. 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. 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 An aerostat (, via French) is a lighter-than-air aircraft that gains its lift through the use of a buoyant gas. Aerostats include unpowered balloons and powered airships. A balloon may be free-flying or tethered. The average density of the cra ...

manufacturing company, TCOM Corporation, relocated to

Elizabeth City Elizabeth City is a city in Pasquotank County, North Carolina, United States. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 18,629. Elizabeth City is the county seat and largest city of Pasquotank County. It is the cultural, economic and educ ...

, conducting temporary operations in a former

Kmart Kmart Corporation ( , doing business as Kmart and stylized as kmart) is an American retail company that owns a chain of big box department stores. The company is headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, United States. The company was inc ...

while the hangar was refurbished and eventually returned to active service once again as a manufacturing and test facility. Today, TCOM is corporately head-quartered in

Columbia, Maryland Columbia is a census-designated place in Howard County, Maryland. It is one of the principal communities of the Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area. It is a planned community consisting of 10 self-contained villages. Columbia began with ...

, while the former NAS Weeksville site is now known as the ''TCOM Manufacturing, Production and Test Facility'' for airships and aerostats and an active airfield for

aircraft operations.

References

;Notes

Bibliography

* {{cite book, title=Building the Navy's Bases in World War II; History of the Bureau of Yards and Docks and the Civil Engineer Corps, 1940-1946, year=1947, publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office, location=Washington, D.C., oclc=568748097, url=http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/Building_Bases/index.html, author-link=Bureau of Yards and Docks, author=Bureau of Yards and Docks, US Navy, access-date=29 December 2011 (Public domain)

Background

Description

References

Bibliography

See also