09/11/2026
Such a cool asset ❄️ (literally!) we have in our back yard!
That is not Alaska. It's a hangar at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, a few miles from the Gulf of Mexico, and it's below zero inside.
In 1943 the Army was testing cold-weather equipment in Fairbanks and getting nowhere, because the cold wouldn't show up on schedule. Col. Ashley McKinley, who had photographed the South Pole from the air with Admiral Byrd in 1929, suggested the obvious: build the cold indoors.
The McKinley Climatic Laboratory opened in May 1947. Its main chamber is the largest of its kind in the world, 70 feet high, big enough to hold a C-5 Galaxy. It can go from minus 65°F to 165°F, and it can add freezing rain, snow, blowing sand, salt fog and jungle humidity on request. The first aircraft frozen in it were a B-29, a P-51 Mustang and a P-38, down to minus 70.
McKinley's standard was that anything the Air Force buys has to work at minus 65. So nearly everything comes here. The B-1B in this photo. The F-117. The F-22. The F-35. The T-7 trainer in December 2023. Boeing brought the 787. Airbus brought the A350. More than 300 aircraft in the first 50 years, plus tanks, trucks, missile launchers and tires.
The photos make it look like a parked plane getting snowed on. It isn't. For the engine tests the jet is bolted into a restraint frame, the engine runs at full power with the exhaust ducted outside, and the pilot is in the seat. For the F-35 tests, the aircraft was left at minus 20 for 24 hours, then a pilot in arctic gear walked out and started it, the way he would on a real ramp. Navy test pilot Tony Wilson: "It is really, really cold. It was kind of a surreal experience."
