Early Flight Testing at Patuxent River Naval Air Station

Introduction
For my parents, Desmond E. and Marie Canavan, WWII was personal. The morning of December 7, 1941, while my mother lounged in her robe, my father, “Des” Canavan was assuming duty as Officer of the Day at Ewa Field on Oahu. Len Ashwell was finishing his breakfast, preparing to go off duty. That Sunday morning the Marine Corps aviators of MAG-21 lost nearly all their aircraft in a matter of minutes … and more. On Wake Island, the fate of the forward echelon of MAG-21’s VMF-211 would be unknown for several weeks. Marine Corps aviators were more than eager to level the playing field against the enemy.

But six months later, Marines at Midway learned the bitter urgency of needing better aircraft, not just Navy cast-offs. They were all in this together. The fundamental skills it took to stunt in an airplane Des learned at Pensacola. But the raw nerve it took to push his aircraft to its limits and beyond, were basic to Bombing Squadron One and soon Flight Test. In less than seven years, Des went from flying biplanes to being the first Marine Corps aviator to fly both the jet and helicopter. Friends who had attended my parents’ wedding, were lost at isolated mosquito-infested sand-spits in the Pacific, an irreplaceable loss and a huge score to settle as quickly as possible. The only question was how.

On April 1, 1943, a short commissioning ceremony inaugurated the Naval Air Test Center, the coalescing of the various specialized and heretofore scattered Naval aviation testing units. Having a single but sparsely populated location for such varied testing as dive-bombing, catapulting and carrier tactics without worrying about the proximity to the nation’s capital city was a vast improvement. Adm. John McCain set the tone as the Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, and Cmdr. “Ras” Rassieur spoke briefly that April morning saying how very honored he was to assume command of the post, which he had been shepherding since the previous September. It had taken a year since the ground breaking in April 1942 to construct from agricultural estates, wetlands and duck blinds a half-dozen huge concrete hangars, pave several runways, ramps, taxiways and access roads. In an inconceivable environmental assault that could never occur in the United States today, the land of St. Mary’s County was
converted almost overnight for the sole purpose of helping create the toughest and smartest naval aviation force in the world, to defeat all comers. For months before and after the dedication, pilots from Anacostia and Quantico easily got their bearings by the dust plume that rose well into the atmosphere, . . .