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Airmail: the airway passed north of the township

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1920s–1930s · TESTED NEGATIVE FOR THIS GROUND

No contract airmail route served this ground, and no Department of Commerce intermediate or emergency field stood in Liberty Township. The Chicago–New York airway crossed St. Joseph County on an east–west line through South Bend, well north of the township: the original South Bend Airport (later Cadet Field) was depicted in the Commerce Department's Airway Bulletin of 16 January 1929 as the city's municipal airport and principal air terminal, at a latitude some fourteen miles north of the township's strips. The airway's named Indiana intermediate field in the record reached is Helmer — Site 14 on the Chicago–New York Airway, a 44-acre sandy Department of Commerce field with two runways, last charted in September 1938 — and Helmer is in Steuben County, seventy miles east-northeast: the airway era's test case for this region, printed here to be refused as this township's. Freeman's northern-Indiana compilation, read whole, contains no Liberty Township field of the airway era; the only intermediate field it lists is Helmer's. One residue is stated honestly: airway beacons stood about ten miles apart between fields, and whether the beacon line physically crossed the township's northern edge was not reached at beacon-site strength — gap G-W3A-3. The served ground and the fields, which are what the leg tests, are negative.

Principal sources: Freeman, Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields: Northern Indiana (secondary, read whole); EAA airway history (secondary, snippet); the search sets named in the note.

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Source: Airmail: the airway passed north of the township, Moosed History by Project Moosed, https://history.projectmoosed.com/usa/midwest/indiana/north-liberty/airports/airmail-the-airway-passed-north-of-the-township/