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1930 — 1947
The mail came first; the passengers followed: Fort Wayne's commercial aviation began not with passengers but with a contract. The improvements at the north field — paved runways, the great heated Hangar 2 — finally attracted a commercial airmail carrier to Fort Wayne in December 1930, and the field then served for more than thirty years as a stop and waypoint on the transcontinental airmail route, as the National Airmail Museum's account states it. Passenger carriers followed the mail in the early 1930s: Transamerican, Capitol Airways, and Transcontinental & Western Air — TWA — in the order the National Register nomination gives them. In 1932 alone nearly 3,000 passengers were served at the Paul Baer Municipal Airport. The Douglas DC-3's introduction in 1936 multiplied the flights, in the Park Service's summary, and TWA remained the airport's first and longest early tenant — it was TWA that the record names as the first airline to serve Fort Wayne, at what is now Smith Field, and TWA that closed the trunk era at the south field in 1963. For sixteen years, 1931 to 1947 by the Register's count, all of this — mail, passengers, DC-3s — belonged to the north field. The transfer south, when it came, was total and permanent: scheduled service has never returned to Smith Field.
Sources:
- National Register of Historic Places nomination, Smith Field (2002) — the December 1930 airmail carrier, Transamerican, Capitol Airways and TWA, the 1932 passenger count.
- National Park Service, "Smith Field" — the DC-3's 1936 effect on service.
- National Airmail Museum, Aviation Adventure case statement — Smith Field's thirty years as a stop and waypoint on the transcontinental airmail route.
- Fort Wayne International Airport history record — TWA as the first airline to serve Fort Wayne, at the present Smith Field.