Bettis Field was an airstrip in

West Mifflin, Pennsylvania West Mifflin is a borough in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, located southeast of downtown Pittsburgh. The population was 19,589 at the 2020 census. It is named after Thomas Mifflin, 1st Governor of Pennsylvania, signer of the U ...

, southeast of

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

, established in 1924. It was named for

U.S. Army Air Corps The United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) was the aerial warfare service component of the United States Army between 1926 and 1941. After World War I, as early aviation became an increasingly important part of modern warfare, a philosophical ri ...

Lieutenant Cyrus Bettis following his fatal accident on Jack's Mountain near

Bellefonte, Pennsylvania The Borough of Bellefonte is a borough in and the county seat of Centre County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is approximately 12 miles northeast of State College and is part of the State College, Pennsylvania metropolitan statistical area. ...

in 1926.

History

Initially a grass strip in a meadow established by local investors Barr Peat, Clifford A. Ball and Bo Phelan, it was gradually improved. Changing hands several times, it was operated by the Pittsburgh-McKeesport Airport Corporation.

Curtiss-Wright The Curtiss-Wright Corporation is an American manufacturer and services provider headquartered in Davidson, North Carolina, with factories and operations in and outside the United States. Created in 1929 from the consolidation (business), consoli ...

sold the field to Gus Becker, who operated the Pittsburgh Institute of Aeronautics, which trained engine and aircraft mechanics in downtown Pittsburgh classrooms. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

PIA operated under government contracts, delivering training for the military. By 1944 the airstrip was a paved surface. Sold to Westinghouse in January 1949, the field was closed and redeveloped, becoming the

Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory is a U.S. Government-owned research and development facility in the Pittsburgh suburb of West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, that works exclusively on the design and development of nuclear power for the U.S. Navy. It was one ...

. The two paved runways, used for parking, and two hangars remain along with a maintenance building. The Art Deco terminal building was razed sometime in the 2000s. There was a landing at Bettis sometime in the 1960s when a small plane landed claiming he confused it with Allegheny Co Airport, east, due to smoke obscuration.

Airlines

* Clifford Ball Airline was a contract carrier for the U.S. Mail between Pittsburgh and Cleveland from July 1, 1925. * CBA became Pennsylvania Airlines * Pennsylvania Airlines was merged with

Central Airlines Central Airlines was a local service carrier, a scheduled passenger airline operating in Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas from 1949 to 1967. It was founded by Keith Kahle in 1944 to operate charter and fixed base serv ...

becoming

Pennsylvania Central Airlines Capital Airlines was a United States trunk carrier, a scheduled airline serving the eastern, southern, southeastern, and midwestern United States. Capital's headquarters were located at Washington National Airport (now Reagan Washington Natio ...

(PCA), "The Capital Airline", eventually becoming Capital Airlines and becoming part of United Air Lines in 1961. * Transcontinental and Western Air,

TWA The Twa, often referred to as Batwa or Mutwa (singular), are indigenous hunter-gatherer peoples of the Great Lakes Region in Central Africa, recognized as some of the earliest inhabitants of the area. Historically and academically, the term � ...

, stopped at Bettis Field from 1930 through 1932 as one of eleven stops made on a transcontinental airline service between Los Angeles and New York. Service was then shifted to the Allegheny County Airport.timetableimages.com TWA timetable Oct. 30 1930

References

Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields
* Richard David Wissoli

Part 1 * Homestead & Mifflin Township Historical Societ
"Bettis: Pittsburgh's first airfield"
''Homestead & Mifflin Township Historical Society Newsletter'' April 2002 Volume 2, Issue 4, pp. 3–6

History

Airlines

See also

References

Further reading