NAVY: Mighty Fortress

New England, more air-raid conscious than other parts of the country, felt more secure last week. With a minimum of red fire, the U.S. Navy commissioned the mightiest fortress in New England’s once thin aerial defenses. At Quonset Point, R.I., on the western shore of Narragansett Bay, Commander Andrew C. McFall listened to a few speeches, then took com mand of the Navy’s newest and one of its largest air stations. The colors were hoisted, the watch set, and Quonset Point buckled down to work.

A year ago, Quonset Point was a project, just begun. Before the summer had gone, 260 cottages had been moved to the west (to be used as quarters for petty officers) and clamshells were being dredged out of the bay, making fill for the field. With 11,000 workmen on the job, the field was leveled by winter. While the snow fell, hangars were built, great runways, 500 feet wide, 6,000 feet long, laid out and paved. Last week, except for a few odds & ends of construction, Quonset was complete, even to anchorages for two aircraft carriers, hangars and housings for their planes and flying crews.

Part of the Navy’s big base at Newport (including fuel and munitions depots, training and torpedo stations), Quonset Point was in operation before it was officially in commission. For months seaplanes, ranging far & wide across the North Atlantic, have been based there. During the winter their maintenance crews had plenty of work outdoors at improvised moorings. Today their big flying boats are hauled ashore, serviced and housed in Quonset’s great hangars.

Besides Quonset Point, World War II’s emergency had given New England the air defenses it long lacked: the great Army bases at Westover Field (Chicopee Falls, Mass.) and Manchester, N.H., an enlarged naval air establishment at Squantum in Boston Harbor. And just below New England’s border, on Long Island, were two more bastions of defense: the Army’s Mitchel Field, the Navy’s new air base at Floyd Bennett Field.