How Did One Wooden WWI Hangar Outlast Every Building Around It? | The Why Behind It Ep. 15

Hangar 9, Brooks AFB — The Last Building Standing In December 1917, the U.S. Army broke ground on a new aviation training base south of San Antonio. More than sixty structures went up. One survives. But the story of *Hangar 9 at Brooks Field* is really several stories sharing a single address — and together they trace the birth of modern military aviation. What you'll hear in this episode *Sidney Johnston Brooks Jr.* — the twenty-hour cadet whose fatal 1917 cross-country flight gave an entire base its name, and whose remains were reinterred near the hangar in a Veterans Day ceremony 76 years later *Albert Kahn* — the industrial architect who received his Army assignment on a Thursday and had plans for a national network of training airfields on his desk ten days later; within eight months, thirteen bases were operational *The Gosport Method* — a British communication system for in-flight instructor correction that was the entire reason Brooks Field was built, and what it says about the limits of ground-based teaching *William Ocker and Carl Crane* — the two aviators working at Brooks in 1929 who used a covered shoe box, a turn indicator, and a penlight to prove that the human inner ear cannot be trusted in cloud — and who were nearly shut down by the very institution their work was saving *A generation of future leaders* — Charles Lindbergh, Curtis LeMay, and Nathan Twining all trained at Brooks's Primary Flying School in the 1920s *The Ed White connection* — the astronaut who became the first American to walk in space was born at Fort Sam Houston while his father was training at Brooks *Why one building survived* — and what it means that the one that lasted was the one most carefully designed The hangar itself covers roughly 8,700 square feet, rises about 30 feet, and features a bolted wood truss in a modified gambrel form, stacked double-sash windows for natural light, and 65-foot sliding wooden doors that still open today. It was designed to be a working aero repair shop — not a storage building — and every decision in it follows from that. Of more than sixty World War I–era structures at Brooks Field, this is the only one left. --- Sources & further reading [NPS — Hangar 9, Brooks Air Force Base](https://www.nps.gov/articles/hangar-9...) [Wikipedia — Hangar 9, Brooks AFB](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangar_...) [Wikipedia — Brooks Air Force Base](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_...) [Texas State Historical Association — Brooks AFB](https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/e...) [San Antonio Report — Hangar 9 Turns 100](https://sanantonioreport.org/brooks-c...) [Albert Kahn Legacy Foundation — WWI Hangars](https://albertkahnlegacy.org/blog/kah...) [Wikipedia — William C. Ocker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William...) [Texas Coop Power — Flying Blind](https://texascooppower.com/flying-blind/) [TSHA — William Charles Ocker](https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/e...) [Wikipedia — Spatial Disorientation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial...) [Early Aviators — Sidney Brooks](https://www.earlyaviators.com/ebrooks...) [Find a Grave — Sidney Johnston Brooks](https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/1...) [Wikipedia — Ed White (astronaut)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Whit...) [The Clio — Hangar 9 entry](https://theclio.com/entry/42971) [Texas THC National Register PDF](https://atlas.thc.texas.gov/NR/pdfs/7...) --- The Why Behind It explores the stories, ideas, and reasons behind the things that shape our world. New episodes regularly.