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Floyd Bennett Field was New York City's first municipal airport, later a naval air station, and is now a park. While no longer used as an operational commercial, military or general aviation airfield, a section is still used as a helicopter base by the New York City Police Department (NYPD). Located in Marine Park, southeast Brooklyn, the field was created by connecting Barren Island and a number of smaller marsh islands to the mainland by filling the channels between them with sand pumped from the bottom of Jamaica Bay. The airport was named after famed aviator and Medal of Honor recipient Floyd Bennett, a Brooklyn resident at the time of his death. It was dedicated on June 26, 1930, and officially opened on May 23, 1931. The IATA airport code and FAA airfield identifier code was NOP when it was an operational naval air station and later coast guard air station, but now uses the FAA Location Identifier NY22 for the heliport operated there by the NYPD. Since 1972, Floyd Bennett Field has been a part of Gateway National Recreation Area, managed by the National Park Service. Many of the earliest surviving original structures are included in a historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places, being among the largest collections and best representatives of commercial aviation architecture from the period, and due to the significant contributions to civil aviation and military aviation made there during the interwar Golden Age of Aviation. ==History== Prior to the opening of Floyd Bennett Field in 1930, a compacted dirt runway existed on the island. It was referred to as "Barren Island Airport", but was used primarily by one pilot who gave flights to paying customers. The municipal airport site was chosen and designed by famed aviator Clarence D. Chamberlin. His preference was Barren Island, a marsh with 33 small islands in Jamaica Bay, off the southeastern shore of Brooklyn. The site was favorable due to the lack of obstructions nearby, and because it was easily identifiable from the air. After much debate over the merits of other sites within the city (including Governors Island, the purported favorite of New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia), the Barren Island site was approved. Six million cubic yards of sand were pumped from Jamaica Bay to connect the islands and raise the site to above the high–tide mark. The new airfield's modern, electrically illuminated, concrete runways (when most "airports" still had dirt runways and no night landings) and comfortable terminal facilities with numerous amenities made it among the most advanced of its day, earning a rating of A-1 (the highest) by the United States Department of Commerce at the time. A seaplane base was constructed on the southern waterfront as part of the installation. Flatbush Avenue was widened and straightened to create a more direct route into Manhattan. LaGuardia pushed for Floyd Bennett Field to replace Newark Airport in Newark, New Jersey as the city's ''de facto'' main air terminal, including designs and plans to shuttle passengers to and from Manhattan in flying boats. He was only able to persuade American Airlines to move its Newark operations to the new airport, and many passengers complained that ground travel from Bennett Field to Manhattan took longer than from Newark. In addition, particularly in the early days of commercial aviation, freight – not passengers – provided the bulk of profits. As airmail was a major fraction of air freight at the time, airports having contracts with the United States Post Office Department attracted commercial airlines. Airlines used the cargo area available on passenger aircraft to carry airmail, guaranteeing a profit on empty flights, and often providing more revenue than passenger ticket sales on under-booked flights, which were common. Public skepticism about the safety of this new form of transportation, as well as the Great Depression, made air travel an expensive luxury. As LaGuardia was never able to convince the Postal Service to move its New York City operations from Newark to Floyd Bennett Field,〔Even with the improved facilities, it was still quicker to move mail into the city from the New Jersey airfield than from Floyd Bennett field.〕 neither did the airlines relocate. This hindered commercial air activities at the airfield. As a general aviation airfield, however, it attracted the record-breaking pilots of the Golden Age of Aviation because of its superior modern facilities and excellent location for flying, hosting dozens of "firsts" and time records as well as a number of air races in their heyday, such as the Bendix Cup.〔Blakemore, 1981, p. 51.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Floyd Bennett Field」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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