Op-Ed: Last of the Historic Blimp Hangars Closed to the Public

Recently the Tillamook Port Board in Tillamook, Oregon voted against Hangar B roof repairs and that the World War II-era Oregon hangar that housed the Tillamook Air Museum will remain closed for now. Local American Legion Posts, particularly Tillamook Post 47, and museum representatives frequently participated in joint meetings and civic events dedicated to preserving regional aviation and military history.

For years the American Legion Posts in the San Jose region supported the museum at Moffett Field. 

The Moffett Field Museum originally opened inside a 30,000-square-foot section of the iconic Hangar One in 1994. The museum operated there until 1999, when NASA raised the hangar’s rent and required the museum to install an expensive sprinkler system. Lacking the funds, the museum was forced to close in 2002 and later relocated to Building 126, which is located right next to the hangar. Then an inspection of the Blimp Hangar detected toxic materials—such as lead paint and PCBs—that forced its complete closure in 2003. 

Google’s Planetary Ventures bought the building and fully restored it, but it remains closed to the general public, and the surrounding base is an active federal facility restricted to military and authorized personnel.

The iconic twin blimp hangars at the former Marine Corps Air Station in Tustin, California, are also no longer accessible. The North Hangar was completely destroyed by a massive fire in November 2023. The South Hangar remains standing but is closed to the public and fenced off.  Because it is no longer accessible, the historic site has been permanently marked as being closed.

[This] only leaves the blimp hangars at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station (now part of Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst) in New Jersey; which are structurally open, but you cannot visit them freely because the hangars sit on an active, secure military base, access is heavily restricted, and visits are strictly limited to guided public tours.

At one time, during World War II, 17 large hangars were built to house U.S. Navy blimps. Now, only four survive, and none of them are open to the public.

These structures played an important historic role in the defense of our nation and that of The American Legion’s support for aviation. From WWI, where airships provided protection from U-boats as they crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the airplanes that broke the stalemate of trench warfare, the American soldiers of WWI in Europe saw firsthand the importance of air power in modern warfare. 

Therefore, readiness and military strength in aviation were important to the founding members of The American Legion. At the first national convention held at Minneapolis in November 1919, Legionnaires adapted a resolution that “Congress make the U.S. Air Service a separate and distinct department of our system of national defenses under control of a member of the President’s cabinet appointed for that purpose alone.” 

This resolution was reaffirmed a year later at the 1920 convention held in Cleveland.

Because of concern over the demobilization of the air forces at the end of WWI, the Aeronautics Committee was one of the first committees formed in The American Legion. Now the icons of that effort are being dismantled, as are the organization and support for aerospace in The American Legion. 

The Department of California has the last active Aerospace Commission in the American Legion, and there has been no activity in the National Aerospace Committee in years. The National Aerospace Committee falls under the National Security Commission, but there has been a lack of oversight there, and the National Executive Committee (NEC) has not taken any action to ensure that committee chairs provide leadership to the positions of which they are appointed.