Hadley Field was an airport in South Plainfield, New Jersey, United States. It was a terminus for transporting airmail in the eastern United States and instigated the first long distance night airmail service across the nation.
Background
The Post Office planned to do night airmail in the early 1920s. It was then using Mineola, New York'sHazlehurst Field on western Long Island for daytime airmail. They also used Belmont Race Track in Elmont, New York, just west of Mineola. These flights were over New York City and in poor weather presented dangerous conditions. The New York air fields were often in fog and smoke, so were inadequate for night flights. The ideal area for night lift-offs and landings would be a level field of land clear in all directions most of the time. The area could be then improved to make a terminal facility that could operate 24 hours a day. Government officials for the United States Post Office scouted for such an area in the eastern United States.
Description
The officials for the United States Postal Service found level ground acreage just outside of New Brunswick, New Jersey, that would work for a new 24 hour flight field. John R. Hadley Sr. owned the 144 acre farm in Piscataway Township, New Jersey. He leased seventy-seven acres of his farm to the US Postal Service on November 1, 1924. There were certain improvements made by the US government to make it satisfactory. The land was first cleared to make airplane runway strips. Then radio antenna towers were built and field boundary lights installed. There were powerful floodlights and revolving beacons added so it could conduct night flying. It became known as Hadley Field, after the name of the farmer that owned the property.
History
The airmail operations were completely moved from Hazlehurst Field in New York to Hadley Field in New Jersey by December 15, 1924. The first night flight service for airmail was from Hadley Field and instigated on the evening of July 1, 1925. There were 500,000,000-candlepower arc floodlights that lit Hadley Field for a mile in a semi-circle. There was additionally a searchlight that was on a hangar that revolved six times a minute. There were more than 15,000 spectators that watched pilots Dean Smith and J.D. Hill fly out into the evening sky destined for Cleveland, Ohio, where the mail would be forwarded to Chicago by other planes and pilots. The people were witnesses to the significant inaugural transcontinental night airmail service between the two largest American cities, New York and Chicago. The route was lighted with beacon lights to direct and guide the pilots for night flying. Smith described in his book his initial night flight for the new air mail service as a harrowing experience. He explains that the newsreel cameras were filming while he climbed in the De Haviland model DH-4 airplane. He recounted his take-off from Hadley Field, with eighty-seven pounds of mail, as something out of the ordinary. The engine suddenly throttled down on its own at about a hundred feet altitude as though someone had pulled back on the controls. This was not as desired as the airplane was still climbing to a cruising altitude. He then describes how he managed with difficulty to turn the airplane around and went back to Hadley Field. It was discovered upon examination by the mechanics that there was a mechanical malfunction of the carburetor. It was fixed in two hours with no delay in the schedule and he took off again for his first stop at Bellefonte, Pennsylvania. Later, while in flight engine failure forced him to land in a field at Kylertown, Pennsylvania. Smith was delayed a couple of hours while obtaining another plane to use to continue his airmail delivery to Cleveland. He describes this leg as not any better than his first flight leg. He had run out of gas less than twenty minutes from the airport at Cleveland. He crashed landed upside down in a farmer's vineyard with a broken airplane, but unhurt himself. The farmer asked Smith if this was his normal way of landing. J.D. Hill was the first to get his mail through. He lifted off from Hadley Field at 9:48 P.M. and arrived at Cleveland at 3:04 A.M. the next morning, for a total time of a little over 9 hours. The mail was transferred to another plane piloted by Warren Williams who took off at 3:28 A.M., some twenty minutes later. Williams got the mail to Chicago at 6:19 A.M. The first flights of night airmail in and out of Hadley Field were deemed a success. The first plane to arrive at Hadley Field in the new night airmail service carried flowers for Colonel John Coolidge from Vice President Charles G. Dawes and arrived at Hadley Field at 2 A.M. on July 2, 1925. Airmail that arrived at Hadley Field by plane was transported by truck and train to New York City.
Demise and legacy
Once the airmail routes in the United States were established, the service was then done by private carriers instead of the government. Hadley Field closed it operations in 1968 and the property was sold to a real estate developer. A shopping mall was put on the land. There is a historical marker there explaining about Hadley Field. It is listed in Abandoned & Little Known Airfields' database.
