1950:
Dick Martin flies his AT-6 plane trailing smoke through Tillamook Naval Air Station Airship Hangar “B”, and Norman William “Swede” Ralston Sr. pulls up for a loop beside the hangar to line himself up, and flies through right after Dick (no smoke).
As explained by “Swede’s” son, Norman William Ralston, Jr; “The air shows went on and soon Swede would perform a stunt that would some years later draw the attention of several journalists. Now, I don’t intend to diminish the popular myths that accompany the picture, but Dad was not the first one to go through the hangar that day. As Swede would much later write, he and Dick Martin were flying together in AT-6’s one which had the smoke going and one that didn’t. Swede was alongside and a little back of Dick, and when they came to the hangar, Dad pulled up into a loop just alongside of the hangar as Dick flew through. Dad made his loop high and long enough to allow him to line up with the hangar and then he went through. Upon exiting the hangar he pulled the nose up and did a roll. And that’s the way it was August 21, 1950.”
2020:
The hangar that ‘Swede’ flew through is now known as Hangar B at the ‘Tillamook Air Museum’.