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10 September 1911; field line 1920s–1942 · South Bend and present-day Granger (boundary)
The exhibition flight. The area's first recorded airplane flight was made by the French aviator René Simon on 10 September 1911, flying a Blériot monoplane from a field near the southeast corner of Ironwood Road and Dragoon Trail, before a crowd the History Museum's record puts at 30,000. It was an exhibition flight, not the opening of a field, and it is dated and placed as such. The first field. South Bend's first municipal airfield was the original South Bend Airport, northeast of the city — north of State Road 23 and west of Fir Road, in present-day Granger. The South Bend Tribune of 1 April 1973, looking back, described it as "four hangars, fairly good runways for that era, and was the principal air terminal for South Bend," against the just-building Bendix Field's "horseshoe shaped driveway to a grass runway and little else." Aviation weather observations began there on 1 December 1929 (National Weather Service observing history). The field was later renamed Cadet Field (art-53-4), and its official opening under that name was reported by the Tribune on 9 August 1942. Its end as the city's airport came by succession: the weather station moved to Bendix Field on 28 February 1933, and Bendix took the city's air traffic with it. Osceola's share of both firsts is distance: the Simon field and the first airport are county ground, eight to ten miles from the township, and no first flight or first field is claimed for Penn Township.
Sources: The History Museum, South Bend (Simon flight); Indiana Transportation History, "Aviation Around South Bend/Mishawaka," quoting the Tribune of 1 April 1973 and 9 August 1942; National Weather Service, Weather History at South Bend.