An Airfield Across the Street ?
By Pamela Baird MVHA President
Several years ago while looking at a map book of Santa Clara County from 1954 I was totally flabbergasted to see that there used to be an airfield across the street from where my husband and I live . I had never heard anything about this before ! And thus began my search to learn more about the history of this little-known place .
Established in 1936 as the “ Progressive Air Service , Mountain View Airport ” by John Simonic as an airfield for private , commercial and flight training courses , it featured two intersecting air strips . General aircraft maintenance and repairs were conducted in the several buildings on the property . The airstrips were dirt . The field covered about 50 acres . The surrounding area was open fields . The flight school was also used by students of the Aviation Department of San Jose State University , who were working towards achieving a commercial or private pilot ’ s license . The 1941 SJSU yearbook contains information about the program .
The instructors were approved by the Civil Aviation Administration . According to the Mountain View Register Leader newspaper , Manuel Nunes of Mountain View was the first graduate of the air school in 1936 . He was thirty years old with a wife and two children . A search for more information yielded nothing , but it is probable that he was a member of the extended Nunes family that originally immigrated from the Azores .
A much younger student from rural Santa Clara , Albert Santos , aged 21 , received his first flight instruction in 1939 . He first soloed in a 35 horsepower ( a small sized engine ) biplane . He gained further flying skills in a larger Fleet biplane ( a plane often used for training ). Albert joined the Army Air Corps in February 1942 and received extensive training at air bases in Florida and South Carolina over the next year . He was stationed north of London in 1944 . During this assignment he would log 320 flying hours on 66 combat missions in the P-51 B bomber . After thirty-six years of military service , he retired in 1978 as a brigadier general .
A tragic event is associated with the airport . In January of 1947 , a small plane crashed near Rengstorff and Alma Street , killing the pilot Elmer Hartzler and severely injuring the passenger , Percy Jarvis . The two men were flying a Fairchild PT-19 , which was designed as a tandem two-seat primary trainer for use by the Army Air Corps . Evidently the plane was attempting to land at the airfield and stalled at an altitude of about 100 feet , according to a report in the January 6 , 1947 , Mountain View Register-Leader . The two had taken off from the airport in San Carlos on a short pleasure trip .
Encroaching interests threatened the airport during the late 1940s . In February of 1945 , John Simonic was concerned about the possible addition of electric and telephone lines nearby that could interfere with landing approaches . He asked the city for help in locating the lines out of the approach areas .
Map showing the location of the Mountain View Airport in the present-day Monta Loma neighborhood .
In June of 1949 , the Santa Clara County planning commission denied a permit request from a company to build and operate a skeet and trap shooting range near Alma and San Antonio Road . John Simonic protested against the permit because he was concerned about the danger of planes being hit by misplaced shots .
A long time former resident of Monta Loma , Ben Baumgartner , is quoted in 2010 on the Monta Loma Neighborhood Association website regarding his experiences . “ I am probably the only person living in the area , or alive today , who has flown out of that airport . During the war ( 1941 – 45 ) the airport was closed , but around 1944 , when I was 13 , some friends and I rode our bikes out there . We went into the hangers and sat in some of the planes and played with the controls .”
“ Sometime after the war , possibly in 1947 , my brother had a friend who worked at the airport and had learned to fly . He bought a surplus Stearman biplane trainer [ Editor ’ s note-formerly used as a military trainer aircraft during World War II-over 10,000 were built ] and took me up in it . I still remember that flight . I stuck my head out into the 90-mile-per-hour airstream to look at the ground falling away and the cars on Middlefield Road . The runway went almost to Middlefield . Some planes were still low as they flew over the road and startled the drivers passing under them . The block of Alvin north of Victory was one-half of the runway , with the end at Elka Street .”
But change was inevitable due to the rapid growth of the surrounding areas . Forty acres of land were sold for housing developments in 1952 . Companies owned by Joseph Eichler and John Mackay and the Mardell Building Company built hundreds of homes by the late 1950s . The area is now known as the Monta Loma neighborhood .
It ’ s amazing to think that the Monta Loma neighborhood is the former location of such a progressive and short-lived business enterprise .
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