Ten months after a windstorm tore a large gash in the roof of the old Naval Air Station Tillamook Hangar B, the Tillamook Air Museum has announced it will reopen to the public on Thursday, October 29. For all involved, it has been an exhausting ordeal, but with the help of the Utah-based nonprofit Vintage Aviation Museum, one of the Pacific Northwest’s most well-known air museums will once again welcome visitors inside its massive WWII-era wooden blimp hangar.
On December 18, 2025, a 180-foot-long, 30-foot-wide gash was torn open on the south end of Hangar B, exposing the 84-year-old wooden structure to the elements and threatening to permanently close the museum, which has been in operation since 1994. We at Vintage Aviation News have been covering the winding and often uncertain path the museum was forced to take over the last ten months HERE, including the news from August 2026 that the Vintage Aviation Museum of Spanish Fork, Utah would take over the ownership and operations of the Tillamook Air Museum while retaining the name of this living institution of Oregon’s aviation history.
Furthermore, the Tillamook Air Museum welcomed the arrival of two mobile cranes from Snell Crane Service based in Olympia, Washington, which have gone to work to repair the roof of the historic Hangar B, starting with the removal of the damaged roofing still hanging from the side of the blimp hangar. As the cranes worked on the exterior of the hangar, the Tillamook Air Museum organized a Volunteer Work Party on October 9, calling on local volunteers to clean aircraft, doors, and exhibits, as well as putting away the tarps placed over the airplanes during the museum’s closure, going through the Gift Shop’s inventory, and moving smaller aircraft into new display positions.
In all, nearly 80 volunteers, both young and old, came together, with many of them being members of the nonprofit SAVE Hangar B, established by the Friends of the Tillamook Air Museum (FOTAM), along with local businesses Main Street Pizza, Safeway of Tillamook, Christenson Electric of Portland, and the Civil Air Patrol’s Tillamook County Composite Squadron. The opening event that will be held on October 29 will last from 10:00 am to 7:00 pm, allowing the local community to come and see what has changed to make the reopening of the museum possible.
In addition to the dozens of airplanes that have been part of the Tillamook Air Museum’s collection for 30 years, the reopening will allow the people of Tillamook and visitors from out of town to see two two retired military aircraft delivered to the museum in October 2025 (just two months before the windstorm); McDonnell-Douglas AV-8B Harrier II BuNo 165002 (flown directly to Tillamook, Oregon from Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, California, and on long-term loan from the National Naval Aviation Museum) and Lockheed T-33A Shooting Star 51-4286, formerly displayed at the Imperial War Museum’s American Air Museum in Britain at Duxford Aerodrome, England from 1992 until 2016 before being stored at the National Museum of the USAF at Wright-Patterson AFB, Dayton, Ohio from 2016 to 2025. Now the reopening will allow the public to see more of these two aircraft, which have only been publicly displayed at Tillamook for months prior to the reopening ceremony.
Furthermore, the Vintage Aviation Museum will not only manage the Tillamook Air Museum, but it will also be adding new airplanes to the collection as well as updating and expanding the Tillamook Air Museum’s exhibits. Among the new aircraft being brought to Tillamook are one of the Vintage Aviation Museum’s Lockheed PV-2 Harpoons. Another aircraft set to be delivered by the Vintage Aviation Museum is a Beech AT-11 Kansan bombardier/navigator trainer restoration project. While work is still being carried out on repairing the roof of Hangar B, the reopening of the Tillamook Air Museum comes as welcome news to all aviation enthusiasts, and will ensure that the museum will continue to have the means to inspire new generations, preserve one of the last surviving WWII blimp hangars, and remain a home to one of the most well-known aerospace collections in the Pacific Northwest. For more information, visit the Tillamook Air Museum’s website HERE.
For more information, visit the Tillamook Air Museum’s website HERE.
