The View from Above

 

When I flew to California last month, I made a point of getting a window seat.  I enjoy looking out the window and seeing what I can recognize.  Here we are approaching the Orange County Airport.

On this occasion, I had another thought in mind for wanting to sit by the window.  You see, every time I fly into this airport, I always see two huge buildings that look like giant hangers and I've been curious about them.

I was hoping I could snap a photo that would help me discover what those buildings were used for.

So when they came in view, I snapped some photos.  Here is a photo of the first of those giant buildings.

And in this photo, I've captured them both.  The second one is to the right in this shot and partially hidden by the wing.

Well, having these photos helped quite a lot.  I did some searching on line and soon found a photo that matched mine and it related to a place called Marine Corps's Air Station Tustin.  It seems these two buildings have quite a history.  They date back to 1942 when they were used by the Navy.  They were officially designed for blimp operations. The facility was decommissioned in 1949 but the buildings were used for other purposes after that.

In 1979 it was renamed to its present name.  Officially, the place was closed again in 1999 but one of the hangers is still used for storage and repair of commercial blimps.

You can read the history of the place here.  

Since I was featuring views from above, I thought I'd add two more views that I took back in 2019 when I flew home to Arizona from Orange County.  I love being able to recognize the places below such as this view of the big Newport shopping center called Fashion Island.  

And this last photo is getting pretty grainy but I can still make out Crystal Cove where I walk on the beach. It's right in the center of this photo and above that is the resort I was staying at.  

I've flown this route so many times now that I know what to expect and where to sit on the plane to get the best views.