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The wartime airfield test: no installation on this ground

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1941 – 1945, tested November 2026

Documented negative: no wartime airfield, base or air installation stood in Clay or Harris township in any war. The county's airport, Bendix Field — built by Vincent Bendix west of South Bend and worked from 1933 by Homer Stockert's Stockert Flying Service — was a civil field through the Second World War: its wartime story is a man's, not an installation's, Stockert leaving to test-fly the P-47 Thunderbolt at Evansville and returning after the war to expand his flying service. The county's one documented wartime military takeover of an air-adjacent site, the U.S. Army's 1943 occupation of the Studebaker proving grounds, clubhouse and all, for military testing, lay at Bendix Woods in Olive Township in the county's west — outside both townships and outside the CDP. The county histories, the county airport record and the wartime Tribune file as reached name no airfield proposal, auxiliary strip, training detachment or base on the two townships' farmland. Wars & Military Service's frame — never a post, fort or camp on this ground — is therefore extended expressly to the air: never an airfield installation either.

From the published history of Bendix Field and Homer Stockert, the St. Joseph County Parks record for Bendix Woods (Army takeover, 1943, Olive Township), and the county histories. Searches shown: wartime airfield/base proposals for the two townships in the sources above — none found.

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Using this page? Copy a credit line. Last updated November 12, 2026.

Source: The wartime airfield test: no installation on this ground, Moosed History by Project Moosed, https://history.projectmoosed.com/usa/midwest/indiana/granger/military/wartime-airfield-test-no-installation-on-this-ground/