Delta Mike Airfield has launched five related websites that celebrate the aircraft and people who landed and signed the Golden Age Airfield Registers at Clover Field, Santa Monica, Calif., Grand Central Air Terminal, Glendale, Calif., Parks Field, East St. Louis, Ill., Peterson Field, Colorado Springs, Colo., and Pitcairn Field, Willow Grove, Pa.
Each interactive site stands alone, according to officials.
However, important linkages are made among the sites. Visitors will delight in discovering the overlap in the movements of people and aircraft from airfield to airfield. The linkages clearly reveal the patterns of air traffic and, more broadly, the evolution of civil, commercial and military aviation in the United States during what historians call the Golden Age of Flight between the years 1920 and 1940.
Since 2005, the non-profit company has also operated a sixth site, DMAirfield.org, which celebrates the history of the people, aircraft and aviation events recorded in the Register of the old Davis-Monthan Airfield, Tucson, Ariz. More than 15 million visitors around the globe have stopped by the site; hundreds are relatives of register signers. Thousands more are students or authors of aviation history, or historians with interest in the people and aircraft.
Delta Mike Airfield President Gary W. Hyatt states, “All together, my six websites now analyze the history of 21,667 Airfield Traffic Days between 1925 and 1942, across Airfield Registers that are trans-continental in scope. Each interactive site is driven by databases I built from handwritten records in the Airfield Registers. Now, embedded in the websites online, the databases form a rich, interactive environment for researching pilots, airplane registrations, and patterns of movement by people and machines across the United States during the period.”
All the sites are wholly owned by the non-profit corporation Delta Mike Airfield. The mission of the company is education, encouragement and support of historical aviation research and multi-media publication around the globe. Specific emphasis is on the Golden Age of Flight. The company operates primarily, but not exclusively, through its websites. Other mixed media publications and public appearances also support the Company.
Hyatt concludes, “About 15 million hits have come to my first website. To the 30% of visitors who are repeats, I have a track record of research, publications, enhancements and additions to that site. In turn, many have contributed information and photographs, for which I’m very grateful. What I offer is a compelling mix of history, biography, stories and engineering that breathes life back into the tens of thousands of people, aircraft and events recorded in the registers. Over the years to come, I’ll commit the time, resources and effort to build and maintain all my new sites to the same high levels of interest, value and robustness.”