Weeksville
Big ain’t it?
Out in the middle of farmer's fields, and quaint country homes, rising above the rooftops, tree line and water tower, was this behemoth. My first impression was that it may be housing one of those UFOs that the government has long denied the existence of, and inside is some likable alien desperately trying to phone home.
The actual story is more interesting.
The building that I saw is roughly 20 stories tall and one thousand feet wide and was built during World War II to house what was then an important part of our national defense – U. S. Navy blimps or dirigibles. What’s a dirigible? Quick, grab your copy of Led Zeppelin’s first album and that cover is a dirigible, or blimp.
It’s a “helium – lifted airship.” After the surprise attack on Pearl harbor the U. S. Navy fully engaged the use of this kind of aircraft to protect our coasts by watching for any signs of enemy ships. Radar was still in its infancy and super-secret, so visual sightings were how we spotted the enemy. Until Pearl Harbor the Navy had only one “blimp base” on the east coast, in New Jersey at Lakehurst Naval Air Station. That’s the same location where the German airship the Hindenburg crashed and burned in 1936.
The Hindenburg disaster was one of the first to be so extensively covered by photography.
Most of us are familiar with this blimp.
South of Elizabeth City, North Carolina – which has excellent proximity to the Atlantic Ocean and is just south of the Norfolk Naval Base – is a little community known as Weeksville. From here dirigibles could be launched to watch for German U-Boats that might be attacking merchant shipping and our navy. They could stay afloat for hours as opposed to planes that had to refuel.
In the First World War German U-Boats sank approximately 11 million tons of Allied shipping, and thousands of lives, mostly civilian, were lost. With a blimp a submerged submarine, which was very difficult to spot from the ship’s deck – the water made it almost invisible – was easier to spot. And since a blimp could remain airborne for two days without needing to refuel, spotting and hunting a U Boat, and dropping depth charges and summoning other warships, they were formidable obstacles to U Boat commanders.
In 1942 two hangers were built to house these dirigibles at Naval Air Station (LTA) Weeksville. LTA was the designation for “Lighter Than Air.” One hanger was constructed of steel; the other was an entirely wooden structure. Until August 1995, when a fire destroyed the building, the wooden hanger was considered one of the largest wooden structures in the world.
The remaining steel structure has an arching roof that at its pinnacle is 198 feet above the ground. The flooring for the hanger covers the size of six football fields.
These prints show you how “modern” dirigibles were in the Second World War and the threat that they conveyed to the general public, and to the propaganda of world powers.
