Forgotten Airfields

[Kitsune]

Not a day goes by that I'm not reminded in some way that the internet is a powerful tool for research.

Yes, I said "research" and not "porn".

Some time ago I was flipping through images on Terraserver of the USF's campus and was busy stitching them together when I accidentally hit the "South" button. The image that loaded caught my attention -- an area that I frequently drive through had some unusual features when viewed from above. (large image warning) It certainly looked like runways to me, but at ground-level you wouldn't notice such things. So I took photographs of the area and then did a little research.

I stumbled across Paul Freeman's Little Known Airfields and found out that what I had found were the remains of Henderson Airfield, an airport run by the US Army during WWII that served as an auxillary field for MacDill AFB. I was a little surprised to find that I was, on a daily basis, driving over sections of runway that bombers once landed and took off on sixty years ago! I found it even more amusing to catch Busch Gardens using pieces of airstrip to train some of the drivers for their jungle ride --they probably don't know that they're driving on pieces of history.

I thought the airfields site was pretty cool -- there appears to be old airports and runways all over the country and explains why I've seen nothing but airstrips when I peer out the window when flying across the country.