Noisy Neighbors Upstairs
PART ONE OF THREE
In the 1950s, there were three sources of low-flying aircraft over Hicksville: Mitchel Air Force Base (spelled with only one L) at Uniondale, Republic in Farmingdale, and Grumman in Bethpage .
Their air traffic flew mostly at the behest of Uncle Sam, and it often was noisy - the military rarely stipulated that its airplanes had to be quiet. Sometimes, depending on where in Hicksville you happened to be, for several seconds the noise overhead might rattle brains and windows alike.
As a child, I was too busy gawking to think much about exactly why those airplanes criss-crossed the sky over my house. This article - the first of three - looks back, and talks about just what was in those skies because of Mitchel AFB, and why it was there. There will be two later articles, covering respectively the air traffic we saw because of Republic Aviation and Grumman Aircraft.
Please note that these three articles will not appear in consecutive months. In between, Hixtory articles will cover other topics related to Hicksville , giving you readers a break from all these airplanes.
