Qualla: Tillamook Air Museum

Tillamook Air Museum: Introduction

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 7bd1118425, CC BY-SA 4.0. The building is so large that clouds once formed inside it. Hangar B at the former Naval Air Station Tillamook stretches 1,072 feet long, 296 feet wide, and 192 feet tall -- dimensions that cover more than seven acres of floor space under a single wooden roof without a single internal support column. It is the largest clear-span wooden structure in the world, built in 1942 to shelter the U.S. Navy's Pacific coast blimp fleet. Each of its doors weighs thirty tons and stands twelve stories high. Today the hangar houses the Tillamook Air Museum, where vintage aircraft sit dwarfed beneath a ceiling that disappears into shadow. But the building itself has become the most compelling exhibit: in December 2025, a windstorm peeled back a 170-by-30-foot section of the roof, and the estimated cost to fully restore this wooden cathedral runs to at least twenty million dollars.

Read more: Tillamook Air Museum on Qualla

Image: 7bd1118425 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tillamook Air Museum: Blimps Over the Pacific

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tedder, CC BY-SA 4.0. The U.S. Navy built two enormous hangars at Tillamook in 1942, part of a network of lighter-than-air stations along the Pacific coast tasked with defending against Japanese submarine attacks on Allied shipping. Naval Air Station Tillamook was a six-blimp facility, and both Hangar...

Read more: Tillamook Air Museum on Qualla

Image: Tedder | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tillamook Air Museum: Warbirds and Oddities

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Valder137, CC BY 2.0. Walking the museum floor feels less like visiting a conventional collection and more like stumbling into a private airfield tucked inside a cathedral. The aircraft range from a Nieuport 11 replica -- the kind of biplane that dueled above the Western Front in 1916 -- to a Cold War...

Read more: Tillamook Air Museum on Qualla

Image: Valder137 | CC BY 2.0

Tillamook Air Museum: Beyond the Aircraft

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Valder137, CC BY 2.0. The museum reaches beyond aviation into broader wartime history. An interactive walk-through replica of an Anderson air raid shelter recreates the experience of huddling underground during a bombing raid. A Curtiss SB2C Helldiver crash exhibit presents the wreckage of a dive bomb...

Read more: Tillamook Air Museum on Qualla

Image: Valder137 | CC BY 2.0

Tillamook Air Museum: A Wooden Giant Under Threat

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cranialsodomy (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Hangar B has outlived its twin, its Navy commission, and several ownership disputes, but the Oregon coast is relentless. Salt air, driving rain, and sustained winds have been wearing at the wooden structure for over eighty years. Between 2013 and 2014, a significant portion of th...

Read more: Tillamook Air Museum on Qualla

Image: Cranialsodomy (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0