Frederick R. Morin - Massachusetts Aviation

IMAGES
of Aviation

MASSACHUSETTS
AVIATION

Massachusetts had an active interest in aviation from the late 19th century, establishing the Boston Aeronautical Society in 1895; Aero Club of New England in 1902, still active and the second oldest club after the Aero Society of Great Britain (1866); and the Harvard Aeronautical Society in 1909, all firsts in the United States. (Massachusetts Aviation Historical Society.)

ON THE COVER: Harriet Quimby dared to dream. The magazine and early screenplay writer took up flying during Americas first aviation craze and flew into the history books during the 1912 Boston Aero Meet, held at Squantum in Quincy, Massachusetts. (Quincy Historical Society.)

IMAGES
of Aviation

MASSACHUSETTS
AVIATION

Frederick R. Morin and John Galluzzo

Copyright 2016 by Frederick R. Morin and John Galluzzo
ISBN 978-1-4671-2402-7
Ebook ISBN 9781439658536

Published by Arcadia Publishing
Charleston, South Carolina

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016936274

For all general information, please contact Arcadia Publishing:
Telephone 843-853-2070
Fax 843-853-0044
E-mail
For customer service and orders:
Toll-Free 1-888-313-2665

Visit us on the Internet at www.arcadiapublishing.com

We dedicate this book to the early Massachusetts aviation pioneers, the men and women who dared to take to the sky despite the longest of odds.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors would like to thank their many friends at the Massachusetts Air & Space Museum, who gave us complete access to the Massachusetts Aviation Historical Society archives; Massachusetts Aviation Historical Society (MAHS); Ed Fitzgerald, executive director of the Quincy Historical Society (QHS); the Massachusetts National Guard (MNG); Timothy Muldoon and the Massachusetts Air National Guard Historical Association (MANGHA); the US Navy (Navy); the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); the US Coast Guard (USCG); Scott Price, acting historian, US Coast Guard; the US Air Force (USAF); Andrew Biscoe, USAF, Westover Air Force Base; Steve Rawding, Massachusetts Aeronautical Division; Ms. Danny Levy, director of strategic communications and marketing, Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport); historian Marc Frattasio; the Association of Naval Aviators Patriot Squadron; and more for their help in making this book soar to life. Thanks, too, to Lorraine and Michelle, for encouraging this joint dream to take flight.

INTRODUCTION

On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright demonstrated the first powered, manned flight by a heavier-than-air machine at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. It would take just over six years for powered flight to come to Massachusetts. On February 28, 1910, Augustus Herring piloted an aircraft designed and built by Starling Burgess and Herring in Marblehead, Massachusetts, over the frozen surface of Lake Chebacco in nearby Hamilton, Massachusetts. In April 1910, Burgess established the first airfield in Massachusetts on Plum Island in Newburyport to test his designs.

The Harvard Aeronautical Society was formed in 1909 by some Harvard students, faculty, and alumni and was promoting an aero meet to be held in September 1910 at Soldiers Field in Cambridge. Almost immediately, that venue proved too confining and potentially unsafe. The society decided to move the site to the Atlantic (Squantum) section of Quincy, where the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railway Company owned a large tract of open and relatively flat land. Over the span of two and a half months the area was transformed into the Harvard Flying Field. The societys president, Abbott Lawrence Rotch, was himself an MIT graduate and president of the Blue Hills Observatory in nearby Milton. Entrants came from around the world and included the Wright brothers and their company flyers; aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss; and Englishman A.V. Roe, later to be the supplier of the Avro bombers used by the Royal Air Force during World War II. Notable spectators included US president William Taft, Navy secretary George Von L. Meyer, Massachusetts governor Eben Sumner Draper, Boston mayor John F. Fitzgerald (grandfather of future president John F. Kennedy), and New York state senator and future US president Franklin D. Roosevelt.

World War I brought aviation to the forefront of technology, and innovations from aircraft manufacturers as well as colleges and universities developed at an extraordinary pace. At the end of World War I, returning flyers wanted to continue flying and discovered the lack of necessary resources. Small airfields and flying schools sprang up around the area. The King family in Taunton started their airfield in 1919, and today it is the oldest continuously operating airport in the state of Massachusetts. The Harvard Flying Field, which hosted the Harvard-Boston Aero Meets of 1910 and 1911 and the Boston Aero Meet of 1912, had been the site of aircraft testing for some local companies and a US Navy flight training facility. In 1923, Lt. Comdr. Richard E. Byrd convinced the Navy to construct and commission the first Naval Reserve air base in the United States at the Squantum site. Also in the 1920s, the introduction of airmail service required airfields for maintenance and emergency services. In 1927, aviation changed dramatically, and suddenly everyone wanted to learn how to fly; Charles Lindbergh flew nonstop solo across the Atlantic Ocean. (The US Navy had flown across the Atlantic in 1919, when one of three NC planes made the trip from Long Island, New York, to Lisbon, but the plane made several stops along the way; Albert C. Read, a Hanson native, was the pilot.) Lucky Lindys feat greatly increased the publics appetite for flying and created a demand for flying schools and airfields throughout the state and country. As a point of interest, Lindberghs last US landfall on his way to Paris was over the coast of Marshfield.

Throughout the 1930s, airfields sprang up across the state. Some were privately owned by people wealthy enough to afford the sport; others were established by returning veterans wishing to continue flying and to teach others. However, the Depression affected a lot of those plans, and many small airfields and flying schools disappeared. When the threat of war emerged in 1939 and 1940, plans were already underway to establish military airfields along the coast. The emergence of German U-boats along the East Coast of the United States represented a potential major threat to shipping. When war did break out in December 1941, the threat turned real, and German U-boats decimated Allied shipping along the entire East Coast. Airfields within 50 miles of the coast were closed or taken over by the military. Airfields in Plymouth, New Bedford, Mansfield, and many more across Cape Cod and the state were taken over as outlying fields (OLF) and used as training fields for Navy bases in Squantum and Quonset Point, Rhode Island. During this time, Naval Air Station South Weymouth was established as a lighter-than-air (LTA) facility for the Navy. Its giant blimp hangars would be landmarks, with one surviving until 1967.

After the war, many more flyers returned home, and general aviation again took off across the state. Returning veterans established airfields in places like Braintree and Marshfield. The OLF fields were returned to private or municipal use, and the improvements made by the Navy, like paved runways, taxiways, buildings, and lighting, were welcome additions. These fields flourished during the 1950s and 1960s as the public embraced general aviation. The commercial use of small aircraft increased significantly as well. Many small business owners used aircraft to travel on business, and agricultural enterprises embraced the efficiencies of airplanes for spraying fields. On the South Shore, small airplanes and helicopters are a common site around cranberry bogs in the spring, many flying from small grass backyard landing strips. However, economic events and the gas crisis of the late 1970s had a major impact on the cost of flying. As families grew and the rapid growth in housing pushed the suburbs further out from the cities, small airports were threatened. Then September 11, 2001, almost sounded the death knell for general aviation. New federal regulations and security issues were implemented for good cause, but the effect was to further restrict general aviation and increase the cost of pleasure and sport flying. Many general-use airports are still spread across the South Shore, and we will attempt to document these as well as the ones that have forever disappeared from the landscape