Bases – Westhampton Beach

A Special Place

The history of the 106th must include reference to the runways at Westhampton Beach since it was from here that the unit made history and saved over 600 lives. It was from this area of the Pine Barrens that aircraft were launched in support of the world's longest over-water rescue mission. It was from here that members deployed to support wartime operations in Afghanistan, Turkey, Iraq, and Kuwait.

A Wing and a Plan

A Mysterious Propsal for Underground Hangers

By Michael Dorman

 

Lt. Col. Anthony Cristiano, director of support for the 106th Rescue Wing of the Air National Guard, was sitting in his airport office in Westhampton Beach about five years ago when an airman plopped a flock of papers on his desk. The papers looked official and were accompanied by maps, charts and engineering sketches.

``I found these in a Dumpster,'' the airman said.

``What do you mean, you found them in a Dumpster?''

``I just happened to see them. They didn't look as if they belonged there. So I decided to bring them to you.''

Neither Cristiano nor the airman had any way of knowing it, but the discovery of those papers at Francis S. Gabreski Airport would eventually bring to light a baffling mystery: Did the United States once plan to make a Westhampton Beach air base the Northeast's first line of defense against possible attacks by Nazi warplanes?

The chief document was a 13-page engineering plan for constructing a system of underground bunkers capable of holding 1,000 fighter planes that could swiftly be sent aloft to combat Nazi planes. The document was entitled ``Engineering Brief for the Construction of a Major Military Airplane Base on Eastern Long Island, New York.'' It was dated December, 1940, and signed by two prominent Westhampton Beach engineers of the time, Hermon Bishop, later Suffolk public works commissioner, and E.L. North, later a high-ranking state engineer.

There is no evidence that such a plan was implemented. Bishop and North are dead. The mystery they left behind concerns why they drew up the complex engineering brief, whether the government ever asked them to do so, whether the government ever seriously contemplated building such a base and how the brief wound up in the Dumpster more than a half-century after it was prepared.

``I'll tell you this much,'' said Bishop's grandson, also named Hermon Bishop and also a Westhampton Beach resident. ``My grandfather was a very practical man. He never would have spent the time drawing up those plans unless someone asked him to do it.'' Bishop said his grandfather was a longtime friend of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and often took Roosevelt on fishing trips from Westhampton Beach. It was possible, he said, that an invitation to draw up the plans had come through the Roosevelt connection.

North's son, Lee North of Brightwaters, remembers his father doing ``runway and other work'' at the Westhampton Beach Air Force Base, now Gabreski Airport, owned by Suffolk County. ``I do remember blueprints and think they had to do with, at least in part, some underground facilities,'' Lee North said. But that is the extent of his recollection.

At the time the engineering brief was prepared, the United States was still a year away from entering World War II. But there were fears at the time that Great Britain would soon fall to the Nazis and that Adolf Hitler would then attack the United States.

News reports of the period showed German warplanes subjecting London and British military installations, such as a huge naval base at Southampton, to blitzkrieg bombing attacks. One Nazi raid on Dec. 9, 1940, pounded London with bombs for more than eight hours.

It was against this background that the engineering brief - no matter what its elusive genesis - was prepared. ``The project hereby submitted is for the design and construction of a major military airplane base, located on eastern Long Island, New York, so planned on natural terrain as to permit extensive bomb-proof and fire-proof hangars to be constructed underground,'' the brief said.

There were then two small private airports on the site, which did become a World War II air base - but without underground bunkers. The engineering brief said the property was large enough ``to allow the construction of bomb-proof hangars capable of safely sheltering at least 1,000 various type planes.''

One section of the brief explained: ``It has been shown that the first essence of military air strategy is a secure base from which to operate offensive and defensive air power; that bomb-proof and fire-proof shelter must be provided at the base for planes . . . that the base must be so strategically located as to enable its planes to intercept an invading air force. It is the purpose of this project to insure a major stronghold for the defense of the United States' industrial Northeast, the city of New York and its adjacent unprotected flying fields.''

The brief emphasized the base would occupy a strategic position for national defense. ``A patrol radius of only 500 miles from the project will include all of New England, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, which comprises over 60 percent of the industrial area of the United States.''

Details down to where the base would obtain its electricity (from LILCO) and water (from the Quantuck Water Co.) - as well as a $17,746,300 construction budget - were included in the brief. The plan called for building two U-shaped underground hangars 200 feet wide and 2,200 feet long. ``A salient feature of the hangars is that the planes may be warmed up inside the hangars and emerge into the open at flying speed. There are at this time no properly defended or sheltered air bases in existence for the protection of the United States' industrial Northeast. It seems, therefore of vital importance that a major underground camouflaged military base be constructed in this strategic location.''

But although an air base was established on the site, it was not underground or camouflaged. Organizations from the Defense Department to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park, N.Y., to the National Archives reported they could find no references in their files to an underground base at Westhampton Beach.

Thus, the mystery remains. Nobody has been found - in Westhampton Beach or elsewhere - who can explain the existence of the engineering brief prepared by Hermon Bishop and E.L. North.

``But it's hard to believe they would have done all that work on their own,'' Cristiano says. ``Somebody in the government must have asked them to do it.''
Michael Dorman is a freelance writer.
Copyright © 2008, Newsday Inc.