Battlefield Airport

The Battlefield Airport was the Gettysburg Battlefield site of the Battlefield Airways, Inc. west of the Peach Orchard^[1] between the Emmitsburg road^[2] and Warfield Ridge. The corporation and airfield were operated in the 1920s by ,[1] an aeronautical record holder and former Air Service pilot who subsequently was a Lockheed test pilot.[2] His wife, Clair May Fahy, also operated from the airfield [3][4][5] and flew a Travel Air with Curtiss OX-5 in the 1929 Women's Air Derby.[6] The airport was denied a 1928 state Public Service Commission charter to fly sightseers over the battlefield because it would compete with the Gettysburg Flying Service,^[3] where a new airport was built in 1942 [7] and re-established in 1969.

After the first flights to Gettysburg in 1912,[8] the airfield had been the 1918 Camp Colt, Pennsylvania, drill ground which was used as the landing field by the All American Pathfinders (the 1922 USMC camp had over a dozen airplains and a balloon).[9] Air circuses were subsequently held at the Gettysburg National Military Park,[10] and during World War II the Lee-Meade Inn near the Battlefield Airport was the Temple University camp of the .

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