Massachusetts Aviation

Shortly after the Wright brothers took to the air, aviation fever gripped Massachusetts. The biggest names in the industry, including Wilbur Wright, Glenn Curtiss, and Claude Graham-White, among others, flew in for the first major air shows, further exciting the people of the Bay State about the potential of manned flight in the realms of military tactics, the expansion of commerce, and even personal transportation. By the 1920s, Massachusetts had become home to the first Naval Air Reserve Base, in Quincy; one of the first Coast Guard Air Stations, in Gloucester; and the Boston Airfield, which would become the largest international airport in New England. Within a few decades, individuals like Edward Lawrence Logan, Frank Otis, Oscar Westover, and Laurence G. Hanscomb would permanently leave their names on the Massachusetts landscape in connection with the airports and airfields still used today.

Frederick R. Morin is the current president of the Naval Airship Association, past president of the Massachusetts Aviation Historical Society, former director and education adviser to the Massachusetts Air and Space Museum, a private pilot, and a naval aviation researcher. Historian John Galluzzo is the author of more than a dozen Arcadia titles, including Squantum and South Weymouth Naval Air Stations (Massachusetts) and Millville Army Air Field (New Jersey).