Hadley Field

Hadley Field was an airport in South Plainfield, in Middlesex County, New Jersey, United States. It contained the Nike Missile Battery NY-65 and was used as a landing site for some of the nation's early air mail service.^[1] The site has since been redeveloped into a strip mall and is currently owned by National Realty & Development Corp.^[2]

Postal employees transferring airmail to and off airplanes (left and right, respectively) at Hadley Field in July, 1925.

References

^ People - The Transportation Connection: A Brief History of the NJDOT, New Jersey Department of Transportation, October 2001. Accessed July 8, 2016. "1918 Full-time airmail service from Curtiss Field, Long Island to East Potomac Park, Washington, D.C. used Hadley Field in South Plainfield as an alternate landing site."
^ Hadley Center

Bond, Gordon (2012). North Jersey Legacies. The History Press. ISBN 978-1-60949-556-5.
Holden, Henry M. (2009). Newark Airport. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7385-6522-4.
Kane, Joseph Nathan (1997). Famous First Facts, Fifth Edition. The H. W. Wilson Company. Item 6021, page 433. ISBN 0-8242-0930-3. The first airmail long-distance night service was established on July 1, 1925, from New York City to Chicago, IL, over a 774-mile course. The first plane, from Hadley Field, New Brunswick, NJ (in the metropolitan New York area), was piloted by Dean C. Smith. It was followed by a second plane piloted by J.D. Hill.
Mappen, Marc (2004). Encyclopedia of New Jersey. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-3325-4. On July 1, 1925, overnight airmail was flown from Hadley for the first time when pilot Dean C. Smith took off with eighty-seven pounds of mail.
Nielson, Dale (1962). U.S. Air Mail Service, 1918–1927. Air Mail Pioneers.
Smith, Dean C. (2000). By the Seat of My Pants. B.D. King Press. ISBN 978-0-9716871-4-1.
Veit, Richard F. (2002). South Plainfield. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7385-1111-5. Pilot Dean C. Smith took off from Hadley Field in a DH-4 on the first leg of the run. His destination was Cleveland, where the mail would be transferred to another flight. The flight took place on July 1, 1925. Over 15,000 people came to witness the event.