The Tustin military base was built in 1942 to keep and maintain the lighter-than-air (LTA) airships operated by the U.S. Navy. The giant hangars were made almost entirely of wood as steel was in short supply due to the war effort. Each hangar covers about 7 acres of enclosed space, enough to house six lightweight helium blimps each about 250 feet long. The sheer scale of the structures would earn them recognition as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, not to mention some impressive film and TV cameos. These two mammoth blimp hangars were built in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor to house the manned airships that patrolled the coast of California looking for enemy submarines. At 17 stories high and over 1,000 feet long, they tower over the houses in the Orange County town of Tustin, and are still among the largest freestanding wooden structures on the planet.
