The standard tests: first flight, airmail, war years, famous landings, air shows

ALL NEGATIVE for this ground · searches named

Each of this section's standard tests was run for Lakeville and Union Township, and each returns the county's answer at the county seat, not here. First flight — negative: searches for a Lakeville barnstormer, first flight or early exhibition returned no Lakeville, Indiana flight of any kind; the county's first flight is South Bend's, at pointer size — the French aviator René Simon's successful flight of 10 September 1911 on a Blériot monoplane, near Ironwood and Dragoon Trail on the county's north side (the museum's record; the airport's own history: "the area's first recorded airplane flight in 1911"). Airmail — negative: the transcontinental airway passed north, over South Bend — the original South Bend airport stands in the Commerce Department's Airway Bulletin of 16 January 1929 — and no contract route, intermediate or emergency field, or airway facility in Union Township was found in any carrier; whether an airway beacon physically crossed the township's northern edge was not reached at beacon-site strength, and no claim is made either way (gap G-AIR-3). War years — negative: the state's Second World War army-airfield list carries Bendix Field AAF at South Bend (Air Transport Command) — the county's wartime field, pointer only; the naval outlying fields of northern Indiana are Converse and Galveston, far south; Civil Air Patrol searches returned national and organisational history only. No training, auxiliary, outlying, glider or patrol field or activity in Union Township was found. Famous landings — negative: none on Lakeville ground was returned by any search; the county's is the airport's own history-page record that Amelia Earhart landed her Lockheed Electra at Bendix Field in 1936 — South Bend's whole, pointer only. Air shows, races and fly-ins — negative: every return was a confusable — Lakeville, Minnesota's fly-in at its Airlake Airport, Lakeville, Connecticut's newspaper, or other Indiana towns' events. The residual settler for all five negatives is the same and is named once: a Lakeville or town-paper archive was not reached (gap G-AIR-6); the negatives stand at the search strengths stated until it is read.

Principal sources: the searches named in the text; The History Museum, South Bend, and the airport's history page (Simon's flight; Earhart, pointer); Freeman (the 1929 Airway Bulletin depiction, pointer); the Indiana WWII Army Airfields list (pointer).