By Harry Bridges
Historian and Museum Curator
Dare County Regional Airport

During the late 30's and early 40's,  Dare County was served by a small privately owned airport at Skyco on Roanoke Island. It served the county well, but the Board of Commissioners knowing how important a public owned airport would be to the growth of the Outer Banks, on March 1st, 1940, appointed a committee of three persons to acquire the property and get the ball rolling. Those three persons were Martin Kellogg, John Ferebee and D. V. Meekins.

Planning and acquisitions were going fine with two 3,000 foot runways on the drawing board. On December 7th, 1941, Martin Kellogg and John Ferebee were on site discussing more acquisitions when they heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor. They knew that a first class airport was in the near future.

The Navy had considered a Naval Auxiliary Air Station At Cape Hatteras, but since the field was already started at Manteo and most of the preliminaries finished they chose Manteo as the new site. Their planning included three 3,000 foot runways with numerous buildings, hangers, and barracks.

On July 27, 1942, a mass flight of Civil Air Patrol aircraft left Charlotte, Asheville, Elkin and Winston Salem for Skyco Airport on Roanoke Island with direct orders not to land at the Naval Auxiliary Air Station under construction on the north end of the Island. The Civil Air Patrol operated Coastal Patrol Base 16 at Skyco until construction permitted them to use the new airport in the late fall of 1942. The Civil Air Patrol's primary task was anti submarine patrol.

Navy Auxiliary Air Station Manteo was officially commissioned on March 3rd, 1943, and started operations. The Civil Air Patrol and Navy shared the field and worked very well together. NAAS Manteo was used for special training of squadrons and the most common airplanes used were F4F Wildcats, F6F Hellcats, SB2C Helldivers, TBM and TBF Avengers. PBY Catalinas and F4U Corsairs.

In early April 1943, a squadron of F4U Corsairs came to NAAS Manteo. This squadron commanded by Lt Commander Tom Blackburn proved to be the most famous Navy squadron of their time. One of Dare County's own Lt. Sheldon R. "Ray" Beacham of Kitty Hawk was a pilot with VF17. He was credited with their first victory and later took out another Zero.

The Navy and Coast Guard had taken over the anti submarine patrols, so the Civil Air Patrol Base 16 was closed on August 31, 1943. The Navy continued special training of many different squadrons until the station was placed on caretaker status on December 15, 1945. During 1947, Dare County ask for the return of the airfield and their request was granted and has since been operated by Fix Base Operators or the Dare County Airport Authority.

The Fix Base Operators were Ocracoke-Manteo Transportation Co. with Dave Driskill as manager and Stanley Wahab and Bill Newton as associates, Postwar until 1949, That Company with Walter Deloatche as manager from 1949, until 1951, Manteo Flying service with Bill Henderson 1951, until 1968, and Brantley Tri-ford from 1968, until 1975, First Flight Air Service with Larry Swain as manager from 1975, until 1981, Northeastern Aviation with Kent Phillips as manager from 1981, until 1983.

The Dare County Airport Authority took over the airport in 1983, with Clarence Skinner as manager. John Price was the airport manager from 1990, to 1992, when Tim Gaylord assumed the manager's position.

Dare County Regional Airport is a bustling center of activity year round with a full staff to serve the public, a modern terminal building, modern hangars, two runways with radio controlled lighting for runways 5-23 and 17-35, AWOS weather service, DME, VOR and ADF Navigational equipment.

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