Airmail and the war years: the route that passed, the years that are blank

1927 — 1945 · TWO TESTED NEGATIVES

Airmail: The transcontinental contract airway crossed this valley early — CAM-17, National Air Transport's New York–Chicago leg, awarded 2 April 1927 and in service from 1 September 1927 — and the airway's stopping place in the bend was South Bend's municipal field, listed on the federal airway in the Commerce Department's bulletin of 16 January 1929. That record is South Bend's and is carried whole in its build. Mishawaka's share is a test, and it returns negative at the size the record supports: no Mishawaka field appears on the airway record reached, and when the city's own field entered the federal bulletin in January 1935 it entered as a commercial airport description — a listed landing place, not an airway station — seven years after the mail route was already flying over the bend to somebody else's field. No scheduled airmail stop at any Mishawaka field is established by anything reached, and none is assumed.

The war years: For the Second World War the pattern repeats at one remove. The bases and the training went elsewhere: South Bend's old field became Cadet Field for pilot training in August 1942, Fort Wayne won the Army base the two cities' region lobbied for in 1940, and the 1942 naval-base possibility settled at Peru — all in the neighboring builds' records, pointed to here and not retold. For Mishawaka's own field the war years are part of the fourteen-year blank between its 1935 federal listing and its 1948 last-seen reference: no training contract, military use, or wartime operator for the Dragoon Trail field appears in any source reached, and the Military pass of this build independently settles the larger question — no base, camp, or training installation ever stood on Mishawaka ground. Whether the 1934 field flew through the war years at all is not documented in the record reached; the 1944 AAF Airport Directory's Mishawaka page is the named settling source, and the blank is printed as a blank.

Sources:

1. South Bend build, Airports (this project's own record) — CAM-17's award and opening dates, the 1929 airway bulletin listing of South Bend's field, Cadet Field (9 August 1942), the 1940 base award to Fort Wayne, and the 1942 naval-base reports: the neighboring record, pointed to at anchor size.
2. The January 1935 federal listing of Mishawaka Airport (quoted whole in the 1934 entry above) — a commercial description, carrying no airway or mail function.
3. Mishawaka build, Military (this project's own record) — no installation, camp, or training ground on Mishawaka ground, settled there.