The Gettysburg Airport (Forney Airfield in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

) was a

Gettysburg Battlefield The Gettysburg Battlefield is the area of the July 1–3, 1863, military engagements of the Battle of Gettysburg within and around the borough of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Locations of military engagements extend from the site of the first shot ...

facility northwest of

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania Gettysburg (; non-locally ) is a borough and the county seat of Adams County in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The Battle of Gettysburg (1863) and President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address are named for this town. Gettysburg is home to th ...

, on the west slope of Oak Ridge off of the Mummasburg Road.

History

The Gettysburg Flying Service operated airplane tours of the battlefield from the west slope of Oak Ridge in the 1920s (

cf. The abbreviation ''cf.'' (short for the la, confer/conferatur, both meaning "compare") is used in writing to refer the reader to other material to make a comparison with the topic being discussed. Style guides recommend that ''cf.'' be used onl ...

the Battlefield Airways at the Battlefield Airport across from The Peach Orchard), and the field was a 1939 site on the initial transcontinental airmail line. In 1937,

TBD To be announced (TBA), to be confirmed (TBC), to be determined or decided or declared (TBD), and other variations, are placeholder terms used very broadly in event planning to indicate that although something is scheduled or expected to happen, a ...

Bircher took over the Boulevard airport in southeast Pennsylvania ("

William Penn William Penn ( – ) was an English writer and religious thinker belonging to the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, a North American colony of England. He was an early advocate of democracy a ...

airport" when opened in 1917, closed 1951), but his World War II flight training school was "forced to move from

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

because of wartime restrictions on flying." Bircher bought the W. A. Kelly farm near Gettysburg, for the Gettysburg Flying Service and in 1942 the new airport was built along the Mummasburg Road (2 runways of 1/2 mile and 1900 feet) after being granted a Civilian Aeronautics Administration license. Lighting was added to the 1895 Oak Ridge Observation Tower, and the airport's World War II Civilian Pilot Training program included

Temple University Temple University (Temple or TU) is a public state-related research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1884 by the Baptist minister Russell Conwell and his congregation Grace Baptist Church of Philadelphia then calle ...

students from the battlefield's Lee-Meade Inn. In January 1944, Bircher was the owner-operator of the Gettysburg School of Aeronautics and was notified to close the school circa July 1 (1944 appropriations were for a different airport.) In 1947, farm chicks survived an airplane crash at the airport but died in a subsequent hangar fire while in the 1950s, President

Eisenhower Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, ...

used the airport to travel between

The White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 180 ...

and his Gettysburg farm. In 1969 to compete against the Doersom Airport on the

Lincoln Highway The Lincoln Highway is the first transcontinental highway in the United States and one of the first highways designed expressly for automobiles. Conceived in 1912 by Indiana entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher, and formally dedicated October 31, 1913 ...

, the Mummasburg Road facility became the "Gettysburg Airport" of Sheen, Louser, & Roth; but was converted to a turf farm in 1981.

References

{{authority control Gettysburg Battlefield Defunct airports in Pennsylvania World War II airfields in the United States Gettysburg, Pennsylvania Transportation buildings and structures in Adams County, Pennsylvania