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I. Maritime Air Station Wildwood

Southern New Jersey, encompassed by the Atlantic Ocean and the Delaware River, had been inseparably attached to maritime flight with a few air stations during World War II. The biggest, and accordingly generally significant, had been Naval Air Station Wildwood.

Following its causes to President Roosevelt, who had utilized New Deal assets to build regular citizen air terminals under the Civil Aeronautics Authority (CAA) for military transformation in case of war, Naval Air Station Wildwood had been started by the developing requirement for a pilot preparing base to shield the Atlantic seaboard from German submarines which had focused on US supply ships making a trip to Britain. Nazi Germany, having just caught France in June of 1942, had become an expanding danger.

In Southern New Jersey, the US Coast Guard moved its station, which had been initially worked as a World War I maritime base in 1917, to the Navy, which had then appointed it Naval Air Station Cape May in September of 1940 and from which perception and scout squadron preparing had in this manner been led.

Yet, the criticalness for extra offices had uplifted the next year when the Japanese had assaulted Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, cautioning of the requirement for maritime airplane and capable jump aircraft pilots. The Cape May base had been pathetically lacking for this reason, provoking a progression of overviews in Lower Township for extra land.

An underlying 500 sections of land, rented for $1.00 from Cape May County for later transformation to non military personnel use, had brought about March, 1942 legislative development offers, and laborers, under the bearing of the Army Corps of Engineers, initiated the burdensome deforestation process by clearing trees and filling in bogs to get ready land for a battling squadron preparing base in Rio Grande. In spite of the fact that the development exertion had been effective, its motivation had not been: the Army at last chosen to build up a comparable office around 40 miles north, in Millville, surrendering the task.

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