THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 11, 1996 TAG: 9602080148
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS
STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: EDENTON LENGTH: Long : 165 lines
GHOST PILOTS in the sky in long-gone World War II Marine Corps fighter planes may soon look down from their infinite altitude and see that the main runway at Edenton's Airport is a lot better than it was 50 years ago.
It's longer, for one thing.
And not so many tall pine trees reach up to stick near-miss greenery in the landing gears of B-25 medium bombers and the lovely gull-winged F-4U Corsair fighters that never let young Marine flyers forget how close they were to heaven.
Soon, past and present pilots, real and spectral, should feel more comfortable when Edenton townsfolk finish a far-reaching plan to turn the old Marine air base east of town into an expansive new regional airport.
``Federal and state government has given us grants of close to $700,000 for airport improvements, and that's just a beginning,'' said Charles H. Shaw Jr., a World War II Navy tailgunner who is finally getting his dream of a greater Edenton airport off the ground.
Shaw, an oil company executive who came to Edenton to retire, now finds himself surrounded by regional airport enthusiasts who are helping to push the idea.
``We're ready to go with lengthening the main Edenton runway from 5,351 feet to 5,800 feet; we have $186,750 on hand for the runway work, and Edenton is ready with the required $20,750 in matching local funds,'' said Willard G. Plentl Jr., director of aviation for the North Carolina Department of Transportation in Raleigh.
That runway extension is vital to the plans of Peter Wood, a retired Navy commander, who is the gung-ho chairman of Edenton's revved-up new Northeastern Regional Airport Commission.
``We think our new airport will play a major supporting role in the development of the Global Transpark at Kinston,'' Wood said.
``The longer main runway will not only make Edenton an attractive stopover for the general aviation community, but it will allow large, heavy aircraft that will be operating out of Kinston to also land in Edenton.
``That's important, because we hope to make our new regional airport a maintenance and repair center for those Global Transpark planes.''
Regional airport officials have already contacted a plane repair and upkeep company that has expressed interest in moving to Edenton, Wood said.
``We'd like to create an industrial park around the perimeters of the airport and make it attractive enough to bring in several clean new industries,'' he added.
And that's not all.
Anne-Marie Knighton, town manager of Edenton, and state Rep. William T. Culpepper III, an Edenton attorney and Chowan County Democrat, persuaded the North Carolina General Assembly to ante up $250,000 for improvements and refurbishing at the old Marine Corps air base. And an additional $153,000 has been earmarked by the legislators for ``flexible projects'' at the airport.
Culpepper says state Sen. Marc Basnight, D-Dare, joined in a lot of the heavy lifting to get the Edenton money from Raleigh.
The North Carolina Department of Transportation plans to spend $350,000 restoring and modernizing the long, two-story building that now belongs to the town of Edenton.
When the work is completed, DOT will then pay rent to Edenton for more than half of the refurbished building for office space. In addition, Edenton and the state will each contribute $160,000 to rehab the old building.
DOT road engineers and staff will be transferred from Ahoskie to Edenton some time this year, said a DOT spokesman.
``They should be moving down in late summer or early fall,'' the spokesman said.
For many of the enthusiastic sponsors of the regional airport, much of the satisfaction is in rediscovering the spirit of half a century ago that made the Edenton Marine air base a memorable part of Chowan County history.
A spokesman for all those hundreds of long-departed Marine men and women who manned the old Edenton aviation facility during and after World War II is Charles T. Skinner Jr., a Perquimans County commissioner and resident of nearby Hertford.
Skinner enlisted at 17 in the Marine Corps in World War II and soon became a sergeant and an aviation ordnanceman. Semper Fi is a major force in Skinner's psyche, and his detailed history of the old Edenton air base will soon be in the collection of the Museum of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City.
``I love history, and I've spent years researching the records of the Edenton air station,'' Skinner said. Not surprisingly, Skinner was made one of the founding members of the Regional Airport Commission.
``It's a good idea,'' he said. ``At present there is no regional aviation center that is dedicated to serving northeastern North Carolina.''
Skinner focused on the Edenton facility when he discovered that it was started as a glider training base in 1942, just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
There were early plans to use Marines as glider troops in Europe, but when the island-hopping war against Japan developed in the Pacific, the Marines switched to conventional aircraft training in Edenton.
By October 1943, the first squadrons of PBJ's - Marine designation for the twin-engine B-25 Mitchell bomber - touched down on the runways that once had been Chowan County farmland.
The new facility was then called the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Edenton, and soon, Marine, Navy and Coast Guard personnel were on duty training hundreds of bomber pilots and crews, who later shipped out to the South Pacific.
The PBJs played a powerful air role in the great amphibious assaults that drove the Japanese back from Guadalcanal, New Guinea, the Philippines and finally Okinawa.
By early 1945, Skinner wrote in his history, the graceful F-4U Corsair fighter planes, as well as the stubby Grumman F-8 Bearcats, were flying out of Edenton in support of Atlantic Fleet air operations.
Hundreds of WRs - USMC Women Reserves - also held important jobs in operation of the Edenton air base.
``They not only carried out administrative duties, but also served as aircraft mechanics, Link Trainer operators, parachute riggers and control tower personnel,'' Skinner wrote.
There are still many old-timers in Edenton who remember the feisty young spit-and-polish Marines and the trim WRs who spent off-duty hours in the historic little town that has known fighting forces since pre-Revolutionary days.
On March 1, 1945, the Marines turned the base over to the U.S. Navy, and the facility became the Naval Auxiliary Air Station, Edenton.
Finally, on Oct. 17, 1946, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Rufus T. Brinn, later a redoubtable aircraft carrier skipper, became one of the last COs at the old Edenton air station. Capt. ``Tim'' Brinn later retired to a waterfront home in Hertford, where he became a close friend of Charlie Skinner.
Remarkably, when Brinn and others closed down the base, the Navy gave the whole layout, land, buildings and runways to the town of Edenton on a leased basis.
Later, the Navy reactivated the base, and again the Marines operated out of the field until 1959, when once again it was given to Edenton - this time outright.
In ensuing years, the aviation gift has been known as ``The Edenton Airport,'' but it rarely attracts more than a few local and transient private aircraft.
It was only after Charles Shaw Jr., later a member of the Northeast North Carolina Economic Development Commission, began beating the drum for the creation of a regional airport that interest in the old flying field began to develop.
In 1993, Peter Wood, the chairman of the regional airport commission, staged ``Wings Over Edenton,'' a successful aviation pageant marking the 50th anniversary of the Marine Corps Air Station. Enthusiasm for the air show spilled over into the present efforts by Shaw and others to create the regional airport.
Anne-Marie Knighton, Edenton's town manager, is technically the landlord of the base, and she is enthusiastically working with the new regional airport commission.
``We're fortunate to have such a valuable property,'' she said. ``And we're more fortunate to have a visionary regional airport commission.
``We think the whole idea will take off in a big way.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Cover, Color photo]
FLYING INTO THE FUTURE
Staff photo by DREW C. WILSON
The crew of the PBJ-35010 stationed at a Marine Corps air base in
Edenton posed for a group shot on May 10,1944.
Peter Wright Wood, left, and Charles Shaw are the forces behind
creation of the regional airport in Edenton.
Aircraft owner Harry Gard, left, and Peter Wright Wood discuss plans
for future development at the Edenton Airport.
Staff photos by
DREW C. WILSON
by CNB