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    Long Island Airports
    Long Island Airports
    Long Island Airports
    Ebook158 pages4 hours

    Long Island Airports

    By Joshua Stoff

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    About this ebook

    Long Island is a natural airfield. The central area of Long Island’s Nassau County—known as the Hempstead Plains—is the only natural prairie east of the Allegheny Mountains. The island itself is ideally placed at the eastern edge of the United States, adjacent to its most populous city. In fact, nowhere else in America has so much aviation activity been confined to such a relatively small geographic area. The many record-setting and historic flights and the aviation companies that were developed here have helped place Long Island on the aviation map. Through one hundred years of aviation history, Long Island has been home to eighty airfields. From military airfields to seaplane bases and commercial airports, the island has had more airports than any other place of similar geographic proportion in America. Most have vanished without a trace, but a handful remains. Long Island Airports is the first book to document the pictorial history of these airports and airfields.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439632161
    Long Island Airports
    Author

    Joshua Stoff

    Joshua Stoff is the curator of the Cradle of Aviation Museum on Long Island, and is a noted aviation historian. He is the author of numerous aviation and space titles, including Arcadia Publishing�s Long Island Aircraft Crashes: 1909�1959 and Building Moonships: The Grumman Lunar Module.

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      Book preview

      Long Island Airports - Joshua Stoff

      AIRPORTS

      PREFACE

      This work concerns itself with airports on geographical Long Island—that is, Brooklyn, Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk Counties. The airports are listed alphabetically within each chapter, by their last or most recent name. Any photographs not otherwise credited are from the collection of the Cradle of Aviation Museum. This work briefly covers the history and has photographs of 70 of the 82 airports known to have existed on Long Island since 1909. Sadly, the rest are lost to history.

      A book of such scope as this could not have been written without the support of many people. When I embarked on this project, I expected that nearly all of the information and photographs could be found in the library and archives of the Cradle of Aviation Museum. Such was not the case; many airfields proved elusive, and pinning down any firm information or finding photographs was difficult. Thus, I called on the support of many individuals and organizations. I could not have completed this project without the following: Lee Roche, Wally Broge, Florence Ogg, Robin Strong, Chuck Webber, Mike Myers, Bob Schmidt, Gene Oshrin, Van Field, Bart Spadaro, Parker Wickham, Barbara Forde, Lou Mancuso, Peter Truesdale, Michael Brosnan, Lynn MacDonald, Walt Winnicki, Leo Polaski, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and the Northrop Grumman History Center.

      INTRODUCTION

      In centuries past, no seaport city could hope to thrive unless it had a well-developed harbor and docking facilities in order to bring ships from across the seas safely into port. In the 19th century, as railroads spread their steel web across the United States, towns and cities sprang up around rail centers and marshalling yards. Towns lucky enough to have a station on the line grew, often at amazing rates.

      Once the air age arrived in the 20th century, all the major cities of the world developed flying fields and, later, airports to serve the evolving passenger and cargo craft of the sky. Such aircraft soon crossed continents and oceans at startling speeds, compared to those attainable but a few decades earlier. Thus the airport became a vital part of the transportation system, one central to the life of every city, connecting it to the world at large.

      The story of the airports on Long Island began in much the same way as elsewhere, with small open flying fields and crudely built hangars. It was from such scruffy, mud-covered fields that the first airmail services began. These open-cockpit biplanes, with no radios, often flew in appalling weather conditions. Gradually this service spread across the country, and more airfields were needed, some now with lighting for night operations. By the late 1920s, a system of lighted airways with radio beacons guiding the way spanned the continent, and with it came passenger service. By the end of World War I, just 15 years after the Wrights first flew, there were about 600 official landing fields in America. However, a close look at this list reveals many to be golf or country clubs, others to be for water machines only, and just 13 municipal flying fields in the entire country. By 1927, the number of civil airports jumped to 1,036, and by the mid-1930s, the height of the post-Lindbergh flying fever, the number had doubled. Thus from these simple beginnings—a small number of biplanes flying out of rudimentary fields—the American air transport system has grown to its present stage.

      The birth and stunning growth of the American airport system can be seen and understood by looking at what happened in just one place—Long Island, New York. In fewer than 100 years, aviation arrived, boomed, and evolved on Long Island. During that time, Long Island helped transform aviation from a dangerous sport to a viable means of transportation. It has also produced a large portion of the nation’s aerial arsenal in times of war. The many record-setting and historic flights that transpired on Long Island, and the many aviation companies that developed there, helped make aviation the integral part of our world that it is today. Long Island was geographically a natural airfield; the island itself is ideally placed at the eastern edge of the United States, at the western edge of the Atlantic Ocean, and adjacent to America’s most populous city. This made it the ideal focal point for most transatlantic and transcontinental flights. Furthermore, the central area of Long Island’s Nassau County, known as the Hempstead Plains, was the only natural prairie east of the Allegheny Mountains. This proved to be an ideal flying field, treeless and flat, with

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