Bases – Mineola

The Hempstead Plains

 

The earliest form of flight by man was ballooning, and this primitive type of travel also made its presence known on Long Island. Long Island's most famous balloon flight was an unsuccessful transatlantic attempt by W. H. Donaldson in 1873. By 1896 the first recorded aircraft flight took place on Long Island, when a Lilienthal-type glider was flown from the bluffs along Nassau County's north shore. By 1902 gasoline-powered airships were flown over Brooklyn. Powered flight had come to Long Island to stay.

 

By 1909 the first daring flights were made from the Hempstead plains in the central part of Nassau County. Because the flat, open landscape made a natural airfield, famous aviator Glenn Curtiss brought his biplane the "Golden Flyer" here. By 1910 there were three airfields operating on the Hempstead Plains, and Long Islanders were now building their own airplanes. Several flying schools and aircraft factories also sprang up and Long Island became the center of the aviation world. By far the most important aeronautical event on Long Island up to this time was the 1910 International Aviation Meet at Belmont Park. The greatest aviators from all over America and Europe came to Long Island to show their latest flying machines, race, set records and win prize money. A similar meet was held at the Nassau Boulevard airfield in Garden City in 1911, and the first official air mail flights in the United States were the featured events. Also in 1911 the first transcontinental flight occurred when Cal Rodgers, in a Wright biplane, flew from Long Island to California in 49 days. 

 

Mitchel Field

Hazelhurst Field, N. Y. was a temporary flying field under lease, located on the Hempstead Plains at Mineola, Long Island.The field was also known as aviation Field No. 1 and included Field No. 2, later known as Mitchel Field. The field was named in honor of 2d Lt. Leighton W. Hazelhurst, Jr., 17th Inf., who was killed in an aviation accident, June 11,1912. Established, June 1916 on property previously used by New York National Guard as an aviation field. Flying started June 1916 with capacity of 50 students from junior officers of the line detailed to Aviation Section, Signal Corps. Served as training field until July 9, 1918, when placed under jurisdiction of Operations Section, Department of Military Aeronautics. Additional construction began July 26, 1917. From June 7, 1918 to Feb. 7, 1919, referred to as Headquarters First Provisional Wing or Headquarters First Reserve Wing. Headquarters 1st Provisional Wing: The Wing controlled all flying fields on Long Island ; its principal function, aside from the defense of New York City, was the training of squadrons as units for oversea duty and development of team work in advanced flying. Used as reception center for Air Service recruits.

 

In 1917, a new army aviation field, Field #2, was established just south of Hazelhurst Field to serve as an additional training and storage base. Jennies became a common sight over Long Island in 1917 and 1918. Hundreds of aviators were trained for war at these training fields, two of the largest in the United States. Numerous new wooden buildings and tents were erected on Roosevelt and Field #2 in 1918 in order to meet this rapid expansion. In July 1918, Field #2 was renamed Mitchel Field in honor of former New York City Mayor John Purroy Mitchel who was killed while training for the Air Service in Louisiana.

Our Place in History By George Dewan

If aviation was born on a wind-blown, sandy hill near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, it was raised and nurtured on the flatlands of Long Island's Hempstead Plains.

 

In the early days of manned flight, Long Island was where much of the action was. It was the scene of a number of firsts -- the first air mail; the first solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean; the first "blind" flight, in which the pilot took off and landed by instruments; the first non-stop flight across the United States; the first American-designed and -built monoplane; the first wireless radio transmission from an aircraft; the first American woman to pilot an airplane -- to name the most important.

 

They all came flocking to an airfield Glenn Curtiss had developed on the Hempstead Plains. He had come down from upstate New York down to New York City, looking for a flat place, and when he came to Long Island he must have felt like Brigham Young when he crossed the last mountains and said, "This is the place."

 

Not for nothing has Long Island become known as the "cradle of aviation." The great Hammondsport, New York plane-maker Glenn Curtiss -- whose Buffalo plant produced the World War I workhorse Jenny biplane - moved downstate in 1917 to Garden City, a new town built on the barren flatlands of central Nassau County. His company was the first facility devoted solely to airplane research and development, and he bought the western section of nearby Roosevelt Field, re-christening it Curtiss Field. Out of this venture came the first flying boat, and in 1919 the Curtiss-built NC-4 became the first airplane to cross the Atlantic.

 

Fields of Dreams

 

There have been at least eighty airfields, large and small, scattered about Long Island, from Queens County to Montauk Point. The 1910 International Aviation Meet was held at Belmont Park in nearby Elmont (later made famous by horse racing); a year later, a second meet was held in Garden City. At this meet, pilot Earle Ovington, designated as U.S. Mail Pilot #1, made the nation's first official air mail flight, a six-mile jaunt to Mineola, where he dropped a mailbag onto the small Mineola airfield.

 

SOURCES The story of aviation on Long Island has developed piecemeal over the past century; primary sources and archival materials are rare. Contemporary newspaper accounts, often thought of as the “first draft of history”, are in this case the only draft of history. In the past two or three decades, personal interviews with many of the early fliers found their way into daily newspapers like Newsday and the now-defunct Long Island Press, as well as the weeklies. A variety of books on Long Island aviation have also been published. Some of these include The Aerospace Heritage of Long Island by Joshua Stoff, curator of the Cradle of Aviation Museum (Heart of the Lakes Publishing, 1989); Picture History of Aviation on Long Island: 1908–1938 by George C. Dade and Frank Strnad (Dover Publications Inc.,1989); and Takeoff! How Long Island Inspired America to Fly by the Newsday staff (Newsday, Inc., 2000). Elinor Smith published a first-rate account of her own experiences in her autobiography Aviatrix (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981). The Northrop Grumman History Center in Bethpage, a volunteer operation open two days a week by appointment only (phone (516) 349-5941), has an extensive aviation photography collection, as well as technical documentation of the company’s aircraft.

 

They came from New York City, these thirty men, all interested in serving the Empire State and the United States of America. Here they are, 22 June 1916 in the rollcall that made history:Rutledge B. Barry, Frederick Boger, Ripley Bowan, Graham M. Brash, Kenneth J. Burns, William M. Conant, Alexander M. Craig, Fairman R. Dick, Albert L. Fabre, Donald G. Frost, Roger J. Gilmore, Paul J. Henry, Frederick S. Hoppin, Wilbur F. Howell, John F. Hubbard, William C. Jenkins, Walter L. Johnson, Roland S. Knowlson, Henry L.D. Lewis, Edward McCormick, Erwin Martin, Daniel P. Morse, Jr., Charles L. Nolan, D. Raymond Noyes, Walter T. Odell, Clearton H. Reynolds, Wallace L. Rockwell, Philip J. Roosevelt, Robert F. Russell, and Hamilton H. Salmon. Our heritage rests on their shoulders.