Grenada Municipal Airport is a public use

airport An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial Aviation, air transport. They usually consist of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surf ...

Grenada County, Mississippi Grenada County is a county located in the U.S. state of Mississippi. As of the 2020 Census, the population was 21,629. Its county seat is Grenada. The county was named for Granada, Spain. Its western half is part of the Mississippi Delta. Cott ...

, United States. It is owned by the City of

Grenada Grenada is an island country of the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean Sea. The southernmost of the Windward Islands, Grenada is directly south of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and about north of Trinidad and Tobago, Trinidad and the So ...

and located three

nautical mile A nautical mile is a unit of length used in air, marine, and space navigation, and for the definition of territorial waters. Historically, it was defined as the meridian arc length corresponding to one minute ( of a degree) of latitude at t ...

s (6 km) north of the

central business district A central business district (CBD) is the Commerce, commercial and business center of a city. It contains commercial space and offices, and in larger cities will often be described as a financial district. Geographically, it often coincides wit ...

. This airport is included in the

National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems The National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems (NPIAS) is an inventory of U.S. aviation infrastructure assets. With the Airport and Airway Improvement Act of September 3, 1982, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was required to develop a ...

for 2011–2015, which categorized it as a ''

general aviation General aviation (GA) is defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) as all civil aviation aircraft operations except for commercial air transport or aerial work, which is defined as specialized aviation services for other ...

'' facility. There is no scheduled

commercial airline An airline is a company that provides air transport services for traveling passengers or freight (cargo). Airlines use aircraft to supply these services and may form partnerships or alliances with other airlines for codeshare agreements, in ...

service. Although many U.S. airports use the same three-letter

location identifier A location identifier is a symbolic representation for the name and the location of an airport, navigation aid, or weather station, and is used for staffed air traffic control facilities in air traffic control, telecommunications, computer program ...

for the FAA and

IATA The International Air Transport Association (IATA ) is an airline trade association founded in 1945. IATA has been described as a cartel since, in addition to setting technical standards for airlines, IATA also organized tariff conferences tha ...

, this airport is assigned GNF by the FAA but has no designation from the IATA (which assigned GNF to

Gansner Field Gansner Field is a public use airport owned by and located in Plumas County, California, United States. The airport is one nautical mile (2 km) north of the center of Quincy, California. It is included in the National Plan of Integrat ...

Quincy, California Quincy (formerly Quinsy) is a census-designated place and the county seat of Plumas County, California. The population was 1,630 during the 2020 Census, down from 1,728 during the 2010 Census, and 1,879 during the 2000 Census. History Before ...

History

Built during 1943 and opened in February 1944, the airport was known as the Grenada Army Airfield 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 ...

, the

United States Army Air Forces The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...

Army Air Forces Training Command The United States Army Air Forces during World War II had major subordinate Commands below the Air Staff level. These Commands were organized along functional missions. One such Command was the Flying Training Command (FTC). It began as Air Cor ...

. Grenada Army Airfield's primary mission was described as follows: A. The deliver Army ground force combat teams at strategic points by: a. Parachute troops and equipment b. Delivering gliders with troops and equipment B. The field's secondary mission was: a. Reinforcement and re-supply of ground troops b. Evacuation of wounded The field consisted of three runways - all of which were approximately long. The ramp and taxi strips were concrete-ramp being by long. By the time the program was completed, fifty C-47 airplanes and 25 CG-4A gliders were brought to Grenada field to be serviced and prepared for use. Troop Carrier Command assigned the following groups to the airfield for the purpose of training replacement crews. * 63d Troop Carrier Group, 3 June 1943-10 January 1944 *

10th Troop Carrier Group 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number, numeral, and glyph. It is the first and smallest positive integer of the infinite sequence of natural numbers. This fundamental property has led to its unique uses in other fields, ranging from science to sp ...

, 21 January-8 March 1944 The headquarters unit on the airfield was the 443d Base Headquarters Squadron. In 1945 Troop Carrier Command moved out and the airfield was turned over to Air Technical Service Command. Initially it was used as a prisoner of war camp, the last POWs being released at the end of 1945. ATSC then used the base for surplus aircraft storage and as a military air freight transshipment point for many years. In 1953 the airfield was turned over to John Mason Boyd (Boyd Construction Company) and became known as the Grenada Municipal Airport. The military has since made improvements to the field and jointly uses it with civil aviation. Manning, Thomas A. (2005), ''History of Air Education and Training Command, 1942–2002''. Office of History and Research, Headquarters, AETC, Randolph AFB, Texas

Facilities and aircraft

Grenada Municipal Airport covers an area of 656

acre The acre ( ) is a Unit of measurement, unit of land area used in the Imperial units, British imperial and the United States customary units#Area, United States customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one Chain (unit), ch ...

s (265 ha) at an

elevation The elevation of a geographic location (geography), ''location'' is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational equipotenti ...

of 208 feet (63 m) above

mean sea level A mean is a quantity representing the "center" of a collection of numbers and is intermediate to the extreme values of the set of numbers. There are several kinds of means (or "measures of central tendency") in mathematics, especially in statist ...

. It has two

runway In aviation, a runway is an elongated, rectangular surface designed for the landing and takeoff of an aircraft. Runways may be a human-made surface (often asphalt concrete, asphalt, concrete, or a mixture of both) or a natural surface (sod, ...

s with

asphalt Asphalt most often refers to: * Bitumen, also known as "liquid asphalt cement" or simply "asphalt", a viscous form of petroleum mainly used as a binder in asphalt concrete * Asphalt concrete, a mixture of bitumen with coarse and fine aggregates, u ...

surfaces: 13/31 is 7,000 by 150 feet (2,134 x 46 m) and 4/22 is 4,998 by 99 feet (1,523 x 30 m). For the 12-month period ending January 5, 2012, the airport had 5,000 aircraft operations, an average of 13 per day: 68%

and 32%

military A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. Militaries are typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with their members identifiable by a d ...

. At that time there were 10 single-

engine An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy. Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power ge ...

aircraft based at this airport.

References

External links

Grenada Municipal Airport

Aerial image as of February 1996
from

USGS The United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an government agency, agency of the United States Department of the Interior, U.S. Department of the Interior whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geograp ...

The National Map ''The National Map'' is a Collaboration, collaborative effort of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and other federal, state, and local agencies to improve and deliver topographic information for the United States. The purpose of the eff ...

'' * * {{US-airport-minor, GNF Airports in Mississippi Buildings and structures in Grenada County, Mississippi Transportation in Grenada County, Mississippi 1943 establishments in Mississippi Airports established in 1943 Airfields of the United States Army Air Forces in Mississippi

History

Facilities and aircraft

See also

References

External links