[CPEO-MEF] PRESERVATION: Hangar One "cork room" slated for demolition at Moffett Field (CA)

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Historic "cork room" slated for demolition soon inside Hangar One

by Daniel Debolt
Mountain View Voice (CA)
June 11, 2010

Any day now one of the last unique artifacts of the pre WWII airship era 
is set to be destroyed -- a building inside Moffett Field's Hangar One 
known as the "cork room."

In the late 1930s, the massive Navy airship the USS Macon sailed over 
Mountain View and the Pacific Ocean like an airborne aircraft carrier 
with a handful of small fighter planes ready to be deployed from its 
belly. In its home base, the 200-foot-tall, 1,133-foot-long Hangar One, 
the cork room was a temperature-controlled environment used to store and 
maintain the Macon's fragile hydrogen gas cells which kept the airship 
aloft. They were made from cow intestines before Goodyear came up with a 
cotton fabric that did the job, said Bill Wissel, founding board member 
of the Moffett Field Historical Society. The fragile cells had to be 
constantly inspected and patched because of chaffing on the airship frame.


...

For the entire article, see
http://www.mv-voice.com/news/show_story.php?id=2984&e=y

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org


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