The Naval Station at Weeksville, North Carolina, 40 miles south of Norfolk, Virginia, was one of eight new blimp bases established during WWII. Construction started on the first hangar at Weeksville in 1941, before the US officially entered the war. Made of steel, it has a design similar to other steel hangars built for earlier rigid airships, like the Goodyear Airdock at Akron, Ohio, and Hangar 1 at Moffett Field, California, with clamshell doors that opened on curved tracks around the end of the building. In 1996, the aerospace contractor TCOM moved into it to develop small blimps and aerostats for the government, used primarily as radar platforms. Today TCOM still operates the site as a manufacturing, production, and testing location for airborne persistent surveillance solutions, including the tethered aerostats flown along the US/Mexico border. This is one of the few places left in the nation dedicated to blimp R&D work.