Ruggles Towing

I. Air Station Wildwood Naval

Southern New Jersey, surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean and the Delaware River, has been inextricably linked to naval aviation stations with air for several World War II. The largest, and therefore most important, was Naval Air Station Wildwood.

Tracing its origins to President Roosevelt, who used New Deal funds to build civilian airports in the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) for military conversion in case of war, the Naval Air Station Wildwood was triggered by the appearance of need a training base for pilots to protect the Atlantic coast of German submarine which had targeted U.S. supply ships traveling in Great Britain. Nazi Germany, having already taken France in June 1942, had become a growing threat.

In southern New Jersey, U.S. Coast Guard has transferred its station, which was originally built as a First World War, the naval base in 1917, the Navy, who was then commissioned Naval Air Station in Cape May September 1940 whose observation and Training Squadron Scouts were then conducted.

But the urgency for additional facilities has reinforced the following year, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, warning of the need for naval aircraft and pilots to master the dive bombers. The base in Cape May has been woefully inadequate for this purpose, provoking a series of surveys in Lower Township additional land.

Approximately 500 acres, rented for $ 1.00 Cape May County for a subsequent conversion to civilian use had led to construction bids in March 1942 government and the workers, under the leadership of the Army Corps of Engineers, begun the process of deforestation difficult to uproot trees and filling in wetlands to prepare a land-based struggle against Training Squadron in the Rio Grande. Although the construction effort was a success, its goal was not: the military ultimately opted to establish a similar facility some 40 miles north to Millville, the abandonment of the project.

The cleared area of 500 acres, with potential applications as an auxiliary field for badly-enterprises Cape May Naval Air Station, was still short of 400 acres of Navy plans requirement of 900 acres, which had been corrected by the Cape May County Emergency Council resolution chosen Freeholders authorize an additional $ 15,000 for the acquisition of land. Expenditure win-win was seen as providing both the Navy with the necessary land at its base and the county to use necessary to arrest its economy falling into quicksand depression, although the need for such an installation has been clearly demonstrated by the battle concomitant Coral Sea in May and the Battle of Midway in June, as lasting victories with bases where skilled pilots could be trained. In fact, the number of these pilots had been estimated at 20,000. The basic project of Rio Grande, he argued, would be important to maintain naval aviation footprint in the Pacific.

Resultantly, the Navy, leasing land from the county and appropriating $ 500,000 for the new airport, construction began in October 1942, subsequently completed a 4,000 foot runway, three 5,000 foot runways, a tower control, warehouses, barracks, an operations building, a refectory, a water supply station, a steam heating plant, a sewage system and roads, creating jobs for 362 local civilians.

The base, adopting its name from the post office nearest you, had been responsible for "Naval Air Station in Rio Grande, 1 April 1943, Lieutenant Commander Morris Ruggles Brownell, Jr. took command.