FLOYD BENNETT FIELD — Dozens of around-the-world and trans-Atlantic flights started or ended on Floyd Bennett Field’s runways in the 1930s-40s, including those piloted by Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart and Howard Hughes. 

In World War II, the field was designated for naval purposes. In 1971, the military turned it over to the Gateway National Recreation Area to be run by the National Park Service. The field, which is 1,300 acres and bigger than Prospect Park and Central Park combined, now serves as a national park and historic recreation area open to the public. However, it retains airborne value as a site for the NYPD Air Squad and Brooklyn’s Emergency Services. 

For the most part, Floyd Bennett Field, New York’s first municipal airport located in Marine Park on the shore of Jamaica Bay, flies under the radar today. With some digging, one may come across Hangar B, located on the east side of Floyd Bennett Field. 

Within the hangar lies a hidden gem: the Historic Aircraft Restoration Project, a National Park Service Volunteer In Parks program established in 1995 dedicated to preserving the aviation history of Floyd Bennett Field. 

Over Earth Day weekend this year, the Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy and the Gateway National Recreation Area joined forces to reactivate Floyd Bennett Field and celebrate the opening of the hangars for public view. The restoration was years in the making: $26 million in federal funding restored the exterior of the building, and the conservancy handled the interior work. 

Museum standard  

Hangar B spans an enormous two-acre size and houses a collection of 12 historic aircraft from every era of aviation, each branch of the U.S. military and the NYPD. 

Restoration efforts are created and staffed entirely by volunteers, and many are retired aviation mechanics. Their goal is to return these aircraft to nearly original condition.

John Daskalakis, supervisory park ranger at Gateway National Recreation Area, told the Brooklyn Eagle that while these planes have been in the hangar for decades, there is always some work to do.

“A plane is never really finished,” Daskalakis said. “We are not looking to make them fly again. We want to get them up to museum standard.”  

Daskalakis pointed out that most of the aircraft have been donated by the military, with some on loan and others owned by the Park Service. 

Following your passion 

Mario Aponti is one of Gateway National Recreation Area’s volunteer mechanics and has been working at the facility for some 15 years.  

“If you don’t have a passion for this sort of work, you shouldn’t be here,” Aponti said, previously a facility technician for several hospitals in New York City. 

“I retired early and knew about Floyd Bennett’s Hangar B,” Aponti explained. “I was impressed and offered my services. I applied what I knew as a facilities technician to planes, which I was always interested in. Working here is therapeutic for me.

Aponti said it is great knowing that what he does will benefit from a historical perspective and may also catalyze interest in aviation among young people. 

“There are a lot of possible career choices here besides actually flying,” Aponti said. “There is the technical and maintenance side of it as well.”  

Daskalakis continued, “Everyone that walks into Hangar B is awestruck. For me, it’s the concept of flight and how that is universal.”

“People are astounded by a jet up close,” he added, “or seeing a rotary engine. To think, someone decided to attach this to a frame and fly it. It is not every day you get to see a hangar full of aircraft and the evolution of technology.”

The Historic Aircraft Restoration Project at Hangar B is open on Sundays and by appointments made on the website.

Did you know this about Floyd Bennett Field?

By Francesca Norsen Tate

Floyd Bennett Field was dedicated on May 23, 1931, and it was rated A-1-A, the Civil Aeronautics Board’s highest classification. The field boasted concrete runways, four hangers that could service the largest aircraft of the day and an Administration Building that served as a terminal. The airfield was named after Floyd Bennett, a native of Warrensburg, New York, who enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1917. He was selected as the naval pilot for Commander Richard E. Byrd’s flight survey expedition over Greenland in 1925. Byrd, respecting Bennett’s flying skills, chose him to pilot his next expedition over the North Pole in 1926. Congress voted to award both men the Medal of Honor by a special act passed on Dec. 21, 1926.

Floyd Bennett Field was the new name given to Barren Island, on a landmass that had been an island but gradually turned into a peninsula. It was geographically part of the Outer Barrier island group on Brooklyn’s southeast shore facing Jamaica Bay. Barren Island’s name was an attempt to Anglicize the island’s Dutch name, Beeren Eylandt, meaning “Bears Island.” Barren Island was originally home to the Lenape Native Americans before Dutch settlers colonized the area in the 17th century. The Lenape, who established settlements along streams or other bodies of water, were farmers who had to relocate when the soil ceased being fruitful. They migrated from the Hudson Valley area in New York State through New Jersey, Delaware and as far south as Maryland.

Adventurous aviators — especially those seeking to set or break world records — loved Floyd Bennett Field. Amelia Earhart, Charles Lindbergh, Howard Hughes and other famous aviators made Floyd Bennett Field the originating or destination point for 26 transatlantic and worldwide flights.

Serving as a municipal airport from 1931-41, Floyd Bennett Field was deemed to have better flying weather and landing facilities than Newark Municipal Airport in New Jersey, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported on Aug. 22, 1938. Newark Municipal had opened a decade earlier and was the first major airport in the New York metropolitan area and the first U.S. commercial airport with a paved runway. As the Eagle reported in a series of articles on Floyd Bennett Field, there were 57 emergency flight diversions from Newark to Floyd Bennett since the latter’s opening in 1931, with the most recent incident occurring on Aug. 6, 1938.

Floyd Bennet Field served as an emergency landing site just three months after it opened in 1931. On Aug. 19 that year, a Newark-bound flight carrying 16 passengers “swooped down” on the Brooklyn airport. The Eagle article pointed out that while Newark was plagued by bad fog, the fog at Floyd Bennett was less menacing. Many of these air flights were carrying 1,000 pounds or more of mail. Ironically, just two years earlier, in March 1936, the U.S. Postmaster General had decided against having mail transported to Floyd Bennett Field.

The U.S. Navy, needing more aviation space in the advent of America joining the Allies during World War II, purchased Floyd Bennett Field from the City in 1941 after Municipal Airport #2, later renamed LaGuardia Airport, opened in 1939. The last civilian flight from Floyd Bennett was on May 26. 1941; a week later, it was commissioned as the Naval Air Station-New York, with high Naval ceremony and protocol. Borough President John Cashmore declared June 2, 1941, as a “festive day.”

A letter to the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle from Theodore Belzner, chairman of the Marine Park Civic Association’s Aviation Committee, urged the City to re-secure Floyd Bennett Field for civilian use “after the national emergency” (World War II). His letter appeared in the Eagle’s Dec. 2, 1941, edition, just five days before the Pearl Harbor attack that officially brought the U.S. into World War II.

The Brooklyn American Women’s Voluntary Services, then headquartered at 147 Pierrepont St. in Brooklyn Heights, in late 1941 organized a motor corps in response to the call for vehicles needed by the U.S. Naval Base at Floyd Bennett Field. The BAWVS sent cars and drivers. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle on Jan. 16, 1942, reported, “Two weeks ago, 14 women took up their duties serving as receptionists, guides to visiting officials and drivers for officials at the post who must get back and forth across the huge field quickly.” The mission quickly expanded to the then-extant South Brooklyn Army Base and the Fort Hamilton Army Base.

Future astronaut John Glenn, then a Major serving as a Naval Aviator in the U.S. Marine Corps, completed the first non-stop supersonic coast-to-coast flight in an F8U-1 Crusader on July 16, 1957. His flight from Los Alamitos Naval Air Station, California, to Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field took three hours, 23 minutes and 8.1 seconds. For this accomplishment, Glenn was awarded his fifth Distinguished Flying Cross. He later became the first man to orbit space and, following his retirement, the oldest man in space.