Author Jack Whitehouse’s Fire Island History Sheds Light on an Early Chapter of U.S. Military Aviation

By S. Mark Rhodes

Embedded within the pages of Jack Whitehouse’s new book, Fire Island: Heroes & Villains on Long Island’s Wild Shore (History Press) is the fascinating, but mostly forgotten story of the creation of one of the first U.S. Naval Air Station’s on Long Island near the community of Bay Shore, New York in 1917. Whitehouse, an author/historian with a fascinating resume that includes graduation from Brown, a stint as the commanding officer of a patrol gunboat as well as having had the honor of being the first Naval Officer to participate in an exchange program with the Royal Norwegian Navy was nice enough to check in with In Flight’s Mark Rhodes about his book and this unique chapter in not only Long Island, but U.S. aviation.

In Flight USA: Bay Shore was basically the second American community to get a United States Naval Air Station. What do you think the rationale for locating it there was in particular?

Jack Whitehouse: “The Navy had several good reasons for selecting Bay Shore, located in approximately the geographic middle of the south shore of Long Island, as a location for a U.S. Naval Air Station. First, in 1916 the Second Battalion of the Naval Militia of the State of New York had built an eight-acre base in Bay Shore on the edge of the Great South Bay. The purpose of the naval militia base was to train naval volunteers in flying and aviation mechanics; thus to a great extent the site was already functioning as a naval air station.”

Postcards from the heyday of the Bay Shore Naval Air Station reflect the drama and energy of early military aviation on Long Island (courtesy Long Island Maritime Museum)“Second, Bay Shore was in a strategic location. The town lay within a few miles of the vital sea-lanes into New York harbor. Third, Bay Shore was within close proximity to other important naval aviation related facilities such as Glenn Curtiss’ Curtiss Aeroplane Company and Yale and MIT universities which contributed so much to providing many of the first navy pilots. Bay Shore was also very close to important research and development companies such as the Sperry Gyroscope Company developers of the flywheel catapult system, the gyrocompass and other vital aviation technology. “ 

IF USA: There was a lot of press at the time about activity and training at the NAS in Bay Shore. How was it that this part of Long Island’s lore was eventually forgotten?

JW: “Naval Air Station Bay Shore was forgotten because no one has ever made the effort to preserve the memory. Following World War I and the May 1919 closing of Naval Air Station Bay Shore, U.S. domestic problems became so significant that efforts to focus on memorials to World War I accomplishments fell by the wayside. Prohibition, lawlessness nurtured by rampant rum running, the rise of organized crime, the emergence of the “new” Ku Klux Klan and a runaway economy followed by the Great Depression – and then World War II – contributed to eventually making Naval Air Station Bay Shore a near-forgotten part of Long Island history.”

IF USA: Was there a figure associated with the base at Bay Shore that was particularly memorable or magnetic?

JW: “As with his more famous contemporary Glenn Curtiss, the man who owned the property on which the Navy built N.A.S. Bay Shore was a multi-talented engineer and patriot. The landed and wealthy Charles Lanier Lawrance had trained to be an architect but found his calling as an aviation inventor with a passion for design engineering. It was Bay Shore’s Lawrance who came up with the revolutionary air-cooled aircraft engine design when water-cooled engines had been the standard.”

“In the late 1910s, Lawrance established the Lawrance Aero-Engine Corporation eventually demonstrating a working model of his air-cooled engine to the Navy. The Navy found the machine more durable and reliable than their water-cooled engines and so fostered a union between Lawrence’s company and the Wright Aeronautical Corporation, the firm founded by Orville and Wilbur Wright.”

“Charles Lawrence went on to design the immediate predecessors to the Wright Whirlwind aircraft engines. Without these engines, the spectacularly successful long-distance flights of Admiral Byrd, Amelia Earhart, Charles Lindbergh and others would not have been possible. Despite the considerable fame brought to Earhart, Lindbergh, and the other pioneering pilots, Bay Shore’s Lawrance, remained a relative unknown. When asked about his lack of public recognition he liked to say, ‘Who remembers Paul Revere’s horse?’ “

IF USA: Long Island’s aviation heritage is uncommonly rich. Do you think that this early episode in military aviation history contributed to what happened later?

JW: “If asked, most people probably would point to Mr. Leroy Grumman’s landlocked firm in Bethpage, which first opened its doors in 1930, as Long Island’s original contributor to U.S. naval air power. Indeed, the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation built some of the Navy’s most well known carrier based aircraft including the TBF Avenger (flown by the first President Bush in the Pacific in WWII), the F6F Hellcat and later the A-6 Intruder and the F-14 Tomcat. But, as we have seen, long before Mr. Grumman came along, the little town of Bay Shore, together with entrepreneurs from the surrounding area, played a key role in placing the U.S. on the road to becoming the world’s preeminent naval air force.”

(Many thanks to Barbara Forde and the staff of the Long Island Maritime Museum for assistance with this piece. http://www.limaritime.org)