The Mason City Airport will forever be remembered as the site of a famous crash which killed musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. A remodeled farmhouse was used as the first terminal during the Airport’s dedication on June 22, 1946.ĭuring the 1950s, the Airport saw commercial airline service from several airline companies, including Mid-Continent, Braniff, and Ozark. At the time, the Airport had two paved runways, associated taxiways, and a small ramp area. It saw its first official landing in March 1945. In February 1942, the City of Mason City purchased 312 acres of land for a new airport, and began construction. The Mason City Municipal Airport is located six miles west of downtown Mason City, Iowa, in Cerro Gordo County. But they were all fun.Mason City Municipal Airport Unique in the Midwestīusiness View Magazine interviews Dave Sims, Airport Manager at Mason City Municipal Airport, as part of our series on regional American airports. There were other big crowds, like in California and New York, but they saw so much Navy that they weren’t the die-hard fans that you’d find in the Midwest. You would have thought we had won World War Three. About that time the crowd broke through the barrier, the snow fence, and we shut down. Then we realized we were sinking in to the hot asphalt taxiway that was not built to handle heavy jets. We managed not to run off the runway, but while taxiing back in echelon we kept getting slower and slower. We were not scheduled to land there because the runway was only 5,000 feet or so, but our public affairs officer radioed us about the enthusiastic crowd so we decided to land. There were probably ten or twenty thousand people in Mason City, so it was obvious that they had drawn people from all over the state. We flew over the field for our opening maneuver and it looked like a million people. We flew out of a base around Minneapolis on one of those crystal clear days. As a result an appearance of the Blue Angels was a major event. They didn’t see a lot of Navy planes and in those days didn’t see many military aviators at all. I like the Midwest most because of their enthusiasm. "Did you have a particular place that you liked to perform? We recently came across this interview with a former Blue Angel pilot from the late 1950s, Bob Rasmussen.
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