Play Flight of the Icarus Shaded, It specifically says they were pirates.
No, silly, it's the people he saved who collected all the stuff.
Dude, Gabriel flew into a horde of pirates far to the south and died. NOBODY who he would have saved could have retrieved the Icarus. Gabriel was also a trader, who had the guns to defend himself. He didn't go around looking for people to save/
And we know this how? Maybe they built airships themselves. And yes, I know, and with his murderous, anti-pirate swathe through the sky, he opened up opressed towns for other trade.
Either them, or the factions mounted an expedition to retrieve the Icarus, and brought back the pirates they shot down too.
Seeing how half of them could barely feed themselves, I doubt that.
Anyways, bottom line is, nobody would have cared to retrieve the Icarus.
Icarus was a legendary ship that made everyone copy his actions and fly into the sky as well.
He had the ship with a working Tesla gun.
The design of the Icarus made it possible fight off hordes of pirates BY ITSELF.
The game is constantly yammering on that all the factions are fighting to grab new technology, resources and weapons.... and you think no-one cares to hunt down the legendary ship that is to this day several decades ahead of current technology?
Ye..... just... just surrender to the awesomeness that is this map.
As I see it, Gabriel's legacy is a hanger is that basically the goddamn one piece. People fly all around the world looking for it. And when they do find it, they never make it back alive. Hence this hanger has been left preserved like it has been.
The mysterious guardian never shows itself until its too late. When two factions meet inside it just observes and then comes in and destroys any survivors.
Someday, people will find it en masse and decide to not fight each other for its treasure. But until then, they fight each other for it and weaken each other, falling prey to whoever comes for them on the aftermath.
So I say... the hanger has all these ships hanging...but te ground is full of broken ship parts to such a point that you dont actually see the floor. It's just piles of metal and wood.