Military

Coast Guard Air Station Brooklyn

Coast Guard Air Station Brooklyn was decommissioned in May, 1998 and its resources transferred to the newly established Group-Air Station Atlantic City, which opened June 8, 1998. The City of New York deeded a portion of New York City's only municipal airport at that time, Floyd Bennett Field, to the Coast Guard air arm on 9 July 1936. The station was constructed at a cost of $399,800.00. Air Station Brooklyn became operational on 23 April 1938 and was one of the Coast Guard's first ten air stations. At that time, such aviation notables as Amelia Earhart and Howard Hughes routinely flew in and out of the field. For all practical purposes, rotary wing aviation within the Coast Guard was born at Brooklyn, when LCDR Frank Erickson, USCG, and Igor Sikorsky designed and developed the Sikorsky XR-4 helicopter. [Arthur Pearcy, A History of Coast Guard Aviation (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1989), p. 88.]