Baltimore Municipal Airport



Baltimore Municipal Airport (also known as "Harbor Field") is a former airport and United States Air Force military airfield located about 6 miles southeast of Baltimore, Maryland on an artificial peninsula. Construction began in 1929 and was completed in 1941. It was closed on 30 December 1960. The western half of the airport was located within the city of Baltimore, whereas the eastern half was in Dundalk, in Baltimore County.

Today, the former airfield is the site of the Dundalk Marine Terminal, a multi-use shipping facility.

Official Names

 * 1929-1941 Baltimore Municipal Airport
 * 1942-1945 Baltimore Army Airfield
 * 1946-1950 Baltimore Municipal Airport
 * 1950-1960 Harbor Field
 * 1960–present Dundalk Marine Terminal

History
Construction of the new "Baltimore Municipal Airport" began in 1929 under authority and exertions of the municipal government of the City of Baltimore. The airport was planned as a replacement for the smaller previous Logan Field, which was located adjacent to the planned site of the "Baltimore Municipal Airport". It was constructed on an artificial peninsula built from dredged harbor silt alongside old Colgate Creek on the "Patapsco Neck" peninsula (which ends and juts out into the Chesapeake Bay between the Patapsco River to the south and Back River (Maryland) in the north at Sparrows Point and North Point). Lower Colgate Creek flowed into the Patapsco River and is today the site of the Dundalk Marine Terminal facility of the Helen Delich Bentley Port of Baltimore.

A seaplane facility was opened by Pan American Airlines in 1932, and by 1937 Imperial Airlines began operation out of the airport (seaplane use subsequently declined, and by the end of 1940s the seaplane facilities had fallen into disuse). Various commercial airliners and "Pan Am" seaplanes (known as "Clippers") used the facility until World War II. Problems with the harbor silt led to lengthy delays and the facilities for land-based aircraft weren't ready for use until 1941.

All normal civilian traffic was suspended in 1942, when the United States Army Air Corps took over the airfield. The Army Air Corps used Baltimore Army Airfield as a I Fighter Command training airfield. Units assigned to the airfield were the 324th Fighter Group (6 July-28 October 1942); 353rd Fighter Group (26 October 1942-27 May 1943), and the 358th Fighter Group (28 April-28 May 1943). Beginning in 1943, it was transferred to the Air Technical Service Command as a repair and maintenance sub-depot for the Middletown Air Depot, located near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill departed from "Baltimore Municipal Airport" on a 1942 British Overseas Airways Company (BOAC) flight (today it is "British Airways") after visiting President Franklin D. Roosevelt in what was at first, a secret trip to the White House in Washington, D.C. for Allied consultations shortly after America entered the War following the Japanese bombing at Pearl Harbor, on Sunday, December 7, 1941. He later met with reporters and addressed a joint session of the United States Congress at the The Capitol. BOAC continued to use Harbor Field as its main U.S. Operating Base during the war. BOAC "flying boat" service to Baltimore Municipal Airport ended in 1948.

Civilian airline service returned to "Baltimore Municipal Airport" after the war in 1946. However, the airport's runways were not long enough for the postwar jet airliners. The airport's use was limited to smaller, lower-capacity planes. When Friendship International Airport (later later renamed Baltimore-Washington International Airport in the 1980s, when it came under control of the new Department of Transportation of the State of Maryland)) opened in 1950, dedicated by President Harry S Truman, near Linthicum in suburban Anne Arundel County, major airline operations almost immediately moved to the new larger, more modern airport.  "Baltimore Municipal Airport" was officially renamed "Harbor Field" in 1950.  During the 1950s "Baltimore Harbor Field" continued to serve private pilots and business aviation.

It was also used as a Maryland Air National Guard (MDANG) base after the war. Beginning in 1946, the MDANG based its 104th Fighter Squadron at the airport. The squadron was originally equipped with piston-powered P-47 Thunderbolt aircraft, later replaced by F-51 Mustangs, but eventually the unit converted to the jet-powered F-86 Sabre. In 1957, the 104th relocated to the Glenn L. Martin Company Airport, further to the east along Eastern Avenue in Middle River whose longer runways was necessary to support jet operations. In addition, the Maryland Air National Guard's 135th Air Commando Group was based at Harbor Field from 1955 until 1960, when it too relocated to the Martin Company Airport. That unit flew twin-engine C-46 Commando and SA-16 Albatross aircraft.

In 1958, the Martin Company airport was purchased by the recently constituted Maryland Port Authority of the State of Maryland for conversion into a marine terminal for port and maritime business and shipping, ending the use of the facility as an airport. The airfield was officially closed on 30 December 1960, following the departure of the last Air National Guard unit. Construction throughout the 1960s removed the runways and other airport structures, and by 1971 almost all physical evidence of the former airport were gone. A 1990 historic site survey reported on four major structures from the "Airport Era" which were still extant: the old 1930's "art-deco"-style Pan American terminal, the Air Station, Hangar #1, and the Air Guard Building. The Maryland Historical Trust subsequently earlier found these buildings to be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, based on their innovative design features & their association with local transportation history. In 2005 the former control tower building, which had become derelict, was torn down. Unfortunately, by April 2013, it was reported by a local historical newspaper columnist in the Baltimore Sun, Frederick N. Rasmussen, that the iconic "Pan Am" Terminal that he had visited five years before had now been razed, and a substantial piece of Maryland's aviation history was lost.

It is also known that somewhere on the grounds of the former "Logan Field", "Baltimore Municipal Airport" or "Dundalk Marine Terminal" along the shores of the lower Colgate Creek, was the original location of the first church building for St. Paul's Parish of the old Church of England, the established state church then of the colonial Province of Maryland, and one of the "Original Thirty" parishes designated for the Colony and the one for the newly "erected" (established) Baltimore County, founded in 1692, and the oldest church in either the County or the newly established "Baltimore Town" on the north shores of "The Basin" at the head of the Patapsco River. After 1706, when an official tobacco port had been established at Baltimore Town by authority of the General Assembly of Maryland for shipping and imports, the was enough that local citizens petitioned the legislature to lay out a town which was authorized in 1729 and followed the next year by an official "Original Survey" laying out lots of land. As the official Anglican Church for the County, it was decided to move the Parish to the new Baltimore Town, so Lot#19 was purchased from Charles Carroll of Annapolis in 1730 and construction of a new building was begun.