Forgotten Airfields
 

Not a day goes by that I'm not reminded in some way that the internet is a powerful tool for research.

Yes, I said "research" and not "porn".

Some time ago I was flipping through images on Terraserver of the USF's campus and was busy stitching them together when I accidentally hit the "South" button. The image that loaded caught my attention -- an area that I frequently drive through had some unusual features when viewed from above. (large image warning) It certainly looked like runways to me, but at ground-level you wouldn't notice such things. So I took photographs of the area and then did a little research.

I stumbled across Paul Freeman's Little Known Airfields and found out that what I had found were the remains of Henderson Airfield, an airport run by the US Army during WWII that served as an auxillary field for MacDill AFB. I was a little surprised to find that I was, on a daily basis, driving over sections of runway that bombers once landed and took off on sixty years ago! I found it even more amusing to catch Busch Gardens using pieces of airstrip to train some of the drivers for their jungle ride --they probably don't know that they're driving on pieces of history.

I thought the airfields site was pretty cool -- there appears to be old airports and runways all over the country and explains why I've seen nothing but airstrips when I peer out the window when flying across the country.

I love this shit.

I have located expensive homes built on what was once a nuclear missile battery. Nike Hercules were nuclear tipped anti-aircraft batteries. The location of most batteries as well as Texas Towers, major radar sites, etc are in this museum http://www.radomes.org/museum and http://ed-thelen.org. Major cities such as NY, Philly, LA were surrounded by these missile sites that are today long gone - land now covered with houses.

Thanks for posting that link. There is an airport not to far from us that still has a bunch of hangers and such used to house b-29 bombers when they were practicing dropping the atom bomb on Japan. The hangers are in bad shape but still there. I never knew it still had all the hangers and such intact. I cant wait till spring so I can go take some photos. Thanks again for posting that link.

Wow ... are you near Wendover??? Definitely take pics!! :)

Wendover is about 2 hours from us, but me being raise in Los Angeles 2 hours never seems that far. Alan got me a new lens for my SLR for Christmas and I am just itching to take a picture of something other then snow. I told him come spring we are going out there and taking photos.