Dover Air Force Base celebrates new 84,000 square foot facility
DOVER, Del. – A ribbon cutting ceremony was held at the Dover Air Force Base Monday, celebrating the completion of a new, state-of-the-art hangar.
Newly completed Hangar 916 at Dover Air Force Base is an 84,000 square foot facility that is the fruit of over 20 years of effort, with a price tag of over $40 million. While ground was broken in 2020, the need for a facility like this was identified decades ago. Delaware Senator Chris Coons said, “The challenge is that it took a long time to get the funding to get the support of the Air Force, to get the site prepared, to get the whole project done…Dover Air Force Base is one of the best maintained, best equipped air bases in the entire country and continued investment in state of the art facilities like this one is going to ensure it stays that way for a long time to come.”
As the largest aerial port under the Department of Defense, the Dover Air Force Base is home to some of the largest military aircraft in the world, namely the C-17 Globemaster and the C-5 Galaxy. The former is a plane so big that it can’t even fit in a regular hangar, which creates issues for those who are tasked with maintaining it. “Having the tail sitting outside of the hangar ,with winds over 25 knots, we have to stop doing maintenance. So, having the additional hangar adds about 100 additional days or so of maintenance that we can do on the aircraft here,” said Lt. Col. Jerome Rogers, Commander of the 512th Maintenance Group. Rogers continued, saying that not only will this facility have them working more efficiently, but it will help keep service members safe too: “So you’re 65 feet in the air with a C-5, and it’s kind of hard to do when the weather’s raining or the wind’s blowing. So to be able to [operate inside], we keep our airmen safe and it’s a much easier environment for them to work on.”
Senator Coons emphasized the importance of the missions flown by these massive aircraft–maintained and operated out of Dover Air Force Base: “C-5s and C-17s from here fly regularly all over the world, both on missions of mercy and to deliver lethality to American forces and to our partners and allies. They also have a sacred duty of welcoming home those Americans who fall in service to our nation.”
As part of his remarks during the ribbon cutting ceremony, Senator Coons recalled the rainy ground breaking ceremony he attended four years earlier. Reflecting on it with a laugh, he said, “We barely got through it. It was a drenching. We were sort of looking for Noah floating by, [it was that] kind of rainstorm. Today is a beautiful, clear, sunny sky and a great moment to celebrate the completion of this important project for Dover Air Force Base.”
With the completion of Hangar 916, Dover Air Force Base says it currently has no further needs to carry out its operations. On May 18th and 19th, the base will be holding an air show, open and free to the public.
