LaGuardia Airport Snapshots from 1947, Part 2

Lockheed Constellations and other assorted piston-prop aircraft complete this series of photos by LC Gagnon. 

A shirt-sleeved member of the ground crew marshals a DC-3.

Probably a DC-6 is being fueled here.

Under Canadian National Railways 'ownership', the crown corporation TCA visits New York.

Our first Lockheed Constellation appears.

A DC-3 lands in the background.

Knowing LC Gagnon, this is a deliberate study of dihedral and symmetry.

A DC-4 of Pan American. 

Notice the 'Clipper' detail near the pilot's window.

An Eastern Airlines DC-3 is checked and readied for its next flight.

Frequent engine inspection was probably a requirement for the first airliners.

New York City's main air terminal is a busy spot.

A good display of flaps deployment marks the overhead passage of a Constellation.

Previous posts in this series are here:

LaGuardia Airport Snapshots from 1947, Part 1

LaGuardia Airport Postcards from 1945

(Includes a diagram of the airport back then)

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After posting Jim Christie found some interesting films for me:

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First is a 5:44 long 1935 home movie of an American Airlines DC-2 flight from Chicago

which also shows a cockpit windscreen view of Niagara Falls.

American Airlines DC-2 from Chicago

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The second is a 9:34 home movie in colour which shows many airport scenes,

including planes such as the Lockheed Constellation.

The main focus of the film is President Truman's 

USAAF DC-6 aircraft, from which the 'in flight' scenes were filmed.

This circa 1947 film has some sequences above the clouds which you can

speed through if you want to concentrate on the aircraft/airport scenes.

President Truman's USAAF DC-6 'Air Force One'

LaGuardia Airport Snapshots from 1947, Part 1

Earlier, I posted some of LC Gagnon's postcards from a visit to LaGuardia Airport in New York.

LaGuardia Airport Postcards from 1945

This 18 year old went to LaGuardia to see and photograph aircraft and operations ... and obtained those postcards along with a few schedules for the various airlines. Most of his originals are 1.5 inch by 2.5 inch prints. To economically obtain large format prints, my father built an enlarger which he operated on the kitchen table in their apartment in Montreal. 

At the time, my grandfather was working (mostly by correspondence) to obtain his Master of Arts degree from Columbia and his summer accommodation would have been LC Gagnon's 'hotel' in New York. 

His trip to LaGuardia began on the Elevated and here is a nice panned shot of a train, taken with his box camera ...

Below, the environment back then and his destination:

from: New York municipal airport: North Beach; 1939; United States WPA (Work Projects Administration ... at archive.org).

This large modern airfield was being created using coal ash, earth fill, and selected garbage from the city dump known as Rikers Island - seen immediately to the left of the circled area.

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In every single case, my identification of any aircraft should be preceded by the word probably .

... As in: This is probably a Beechcraft Bonanza - also known as a Fork-tailed Doctor Killer.

A Lockheed Model 12. 

A Douglas DC-6.

The running figure is the era's version of the 'Ground radio frequency'.

The pilot dialed up this frequency by simply opening his window.

Engines 1 and 2 are taxiing the aircraft precisely to 'the Gate'.

Well-heeled, well-dressed passengers enjoyed the luxury of air travel 

before hijackers and terrorists and deregulation made it into somewhat of an ordeal.

A DC-4 is attended to by ground crews.

Another DC-6.

And I'm guessing another DC-6.

Finally, the workhorse which led the expansion of commercial passenger aviation, the DC-3.

LaGuardia Airport Postcards from 1945

LC Gagnon paid a few summertime visits to his father in New York, taking the Delaware & Hudson from Windsor Station in Montreal. George Gagnon was taking summer courses at Columbia University to complete his Master of Arts degree in Education - which was awarded in 1947. 

The airport postcards which teenager LC Gagnon purchased connect with a key phase in New York airport history ...

Going back to the 1930s ... the old North Beach Airport (the future site of today's LaGuardia) had been renamed Glenn H Curtiss Airport in 1930, and then re-renamed 'New York Municipal Airport 2' in 1935. 

Floyd Bennett Field was the first 'New York Municipal Airport' and it still exists across Jamaica Bay from JFK. Today, tower controllers at JFK handle the local segments of police helicopter traffic which is based at Floyd Bennett Field.

And piano fans can look up the North Beach's previous owner (hint: NYSE ticker symbol LVB for Ludwig __ ____ ). The beach property featured a sand bathing beach and amusement park during that era.

Enter the aviation-minded New York Mayor, Fiorello La Guardia. He felt strongly that travelling to New York should mean landing in New York and not Newark, New Jersey. He was mayor from 1934 until 1946. He enlisted the interest and support of President Franklin Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration to build distinctive Art Deco public buildings to go with an expanded world-class aviation hub at NYMA2. 

The airport was officially named LaGuardia Airport in 1947. It was no longer 'NYMA2, LaGuardia Field' as the postcards document.

I usually, show both sides of all postcards. In this case, the reverse sides are identical, except for LC Gagnon's serial numbers.

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Coming from the archive.org book on the building of LaGuardia, linked at the end: 

The photo above shows the location of LaGuardia (circled) relative to Manhattan, in the foreground.

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The site of the 1939 World's Fair is labelled - just to the south-east of NYMA. Notice that this map's north is roughly to the right. 

Above the word "New" is the infamous Rikers Island. It had long served as an ever-expanding repository for the city's rubbish ... and probably building debris and assorted mobsters. As well, the steam-producing 'coal economy' yielded lots of ashes and cinders which were a major contemporary constituent of the olde city garbage.

On historical maps, Rikers appears as just a sliver of land - so it must have seen a lot of dumping over the years. In order to provide fill for the airfield, a causeway was built from Rikers to the airfield site ... and its 'contents' were trucked in and dumped on a huge metal underwater framework. This large unnatural subterranean deposit of steel still confounds aircraft compasses using LaGuardia. 

... These unseen underground features are nicely illustrated on the map below. The WPA provided employment for graphic artists, as well.

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Extremely bright rotating searchlight beacons were a feature of early airports and one can be seen with radio aerials and weather instruments atop the control tower.

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Only one of the two original terminal buildings still exists. It can be seen, inside and out, via Google. It is the former Marine Terminal Building - labelled MTB and MT Ramp on the map above. The book refers to 'seaplanes' but these are not radial-engined Beavers taking a couple of people fishing for the weekend ...

When the airport was being built, the British (e.g. via Botwood, Newfoundland) and Americans (with the Boeing-built Clipper aircraft) were taking the first steps in commercial trans-ocean air service. The Marine Terminal was intended to serve the anticipated growth of this flying boat and amphibious traffic. 

There is a solitary photo of Clippers on the internet showing how LaGuardia Marine Terminal was originally designed to 'land' a large flying boat - taking it from the water to the hangar (if needed). The floating aircraft would be positioned over a rail-based, submerged 'flat car' system - which the book mentions but does not show.

However, after the onset of the Second World War, the lend-lease export of US-built multi-engined bombers via (still-British) Gander, Newfoundland began. Trans-Atlantic aircraft which took off and landed on rubber tires at international airports were a reality by the time that peace returned.

... The future can be notoriously hard to predict!

Below is the link to the book on the building of LaGuardia.

New York Municipal Airport: Long Beach

Some of LC Gagnon's D&H artifacts ...

The Delaware and Hudson in Recent Memory