Tropical Storm Hermine forced aircrafts to seek shelter in the hangar, resulting in a game
of aircraft Tetris.
Credit: NASA/David C. Bowman
When Tropical Storm Hermine charged up the East Coast of the United States earlier this month, a number of aircraft sought shelter from the powerful winds and drenching rains in a NASA hangar — and a newly released photo shows that the result was akin to a game of aircraft Tetris, with almost 20 different planes squeezed carefully into the cavernous building.
The hangar at NASA's Langley Research Center, in Hampton, Virginia, provides 85,200 square feet (7,900 square meters) of open space to house aircraft ranging from small jets to massive Boeing 757 airliners. When Hermine was threatening the East Coast, however, the hangar already had a rather large resident: a C-130 Hercules four-engine military transport aircraft. [Supersonic: The 11 Fastest Military Airplanes]
With some maneuvering, the hangar at Langley Research Center was able to accommodate more than a dozen Air Force fighter jets, sandwiched in with a number of other planes, to provide protection from the tropical storm winds.
