First World War The city of
Horta was bombarded in December 1916, and the following year the city was shelled by the German
U-boat on 4 July 1917. With the U.S. entry into the
First World War the previous year, American naval forces occupied and operated a naval base in Ponta Delgada, consisting of a few
Curtiss HS2L hydroplanes, 150 infantrymen, two pieces of artillery, some ships, and submarines. The first of the contingent began patrolling on 23 February 1918, alongside the São Brás Fort in Ponta Delgada. Their mission was to identify and combat German submarines that tracked merchant shipping in the Atlantic, and protect the waters of the Azores. Even during the conflict, and following its events, the
Portuguese Navy already projected the installation of a permanent naval air station in Horta (), which never materialized. Similarly, in 1919, the British
Royal Air Force planned the possibility of acquiring one of the Portuguese islands in the Azores, to install a terrestrial base to provide support to air operation in the mid-Atlantic.
Interwar period , that was unable to complete its trans-Atlantic journey, in Ponta Delgada (19 May 1919) During the inter-war years, trans-Atlantic competition persisted between British and American entrepreneurs; the London-based
Daily Mail promoted a competition worth £10,000, to the aviator who was able to cross the Atlantic non-stop, within 72 consecutive hours, between the United States, Canada or
Newfoundland to any point in Great Britain or Ireland. In this context, three four-engine hydroplanes of the
American Navy attempted the first non-stop trans-Atlantic crossing between 16–17 May 1919. Two of the planes (NC-1 and NC-3) made emergency landings near Flores: NC-1 was completely damaged, while the NC-3 was able to continue to Ponta Delgada (by 19 May), but unable to complete the journey.
NC-4, under the command of Lieutenant-Commander
Albert Cushing Read was able to survive the attempt, stopping in the Bay of Horta on 17 May, and continuing to
Ponta Delgada (where he stopped on 20 May). After a week of rest, the team left on the morning of 27 May in the direction of Lisbon, arriving in the capital in the evening and anchoring in the
Tagus River. Still in 1919, a hydroplane travelling from England to the United States stopped in Faial, which became a frequent occurrence over time, utilizing Horta as a stopover. With the advent of commercial
dirigibles, the archipelago was over-flown in 1924, 1927 and 1930, by
Zeppelins making the connection between Germany and the United States. In April 1926, a
Fokker hydroplane, baptized
Infante de Sagres, departed from Lisbon, under the command of Portuguese Navy pilots Moreira de Campos and Neves Ferreira, intentionally to connect Madeira and the Azores, arriving in Ponta Delgada on 9 May 1926. Following this first flight, in 1927, the Marquess
Francesco De Pinedo, colonel in the
Italian Air Force, was forced to ditch his plane 200 kilometres from the island of Flores, after departing Newfoundland. The
Savoia-Marchetti S.55 hydroplane, named the
Santa Maria II, was recovered and arrived in Horta, where it was repaired. Later that year, in October/November, a
Junkers G 24 (D-1230) and a
Heinkel (D-1220) hydroplane stopped off in Horta, where they encountered American aviation pioneer
Ruth Elder, who was trying to emulate
Charles Lindbergh's feat. Piloting a small monoplane, that she named
American Girl, and accompanied by Captain George Haldeman, she was forced to ditch her plane in the waters along the north coast the island of Terceira due to mechanical problems, and the aircraft caught fire. In June 1928, English pilot Frank T. Courtney, piloting a
Dornier Wal G-CAGI, and later in July, a French Lieutenant in a small hydroplane named
La Frégate, stopped in Horta on their trans-Atlantic flights. In Graciosa, on the morning of 13 June 1929, an
Amiot 123 biplane overturned during an attempted emergency landing in some fields near Brasileira. The plane, piloted by Polish aviators Major
Ludwik Idzikowski and Kazimierz Kubala had departed early that morning from
Le Bourget field, in the suburbs of Paris, as part of their first trans-Atlantic crossing, heading for New York. Idzikowski was killed in the accident and Kubala suffered minor injuries, while the plane was consumed by flames during the rescue, when someone approached the wreckage with a torch. A cross was erected to mark the location of the accident. The following year, the Portuguese armed forces supported the idea to construct an airfield on the island of Terceira. On 4 October 1930, the first mono-motor
Avro 504K
biplane called the
Açor, piloted by local Frederico Coelho de Melo departed from the 600-metre-long and 70-metre-wide runway. Between 1930 and 1933, the American
Pan American completed tests in Horta bay as part of their plans to operate trans-Atlantic routes between North America and Europe. In this context,
Charles Lindbergh (accompanied by his wife
Anne Morrow) in service of Pan American, landed on 21 November 1933, with his Lockheed 8 Sirius monoplane. After these tests, between 1937 and 1944, Pan America's
Flying Boats (
Boeing 314 Clippers) routinely made the New York–Marseilles and New York–London routes with stopovers in Lisbon. The New York–London leg of the flight had a 23-hour-and-55-minute duration, and included a one-hour-and-thirty-minute layover in Faial, while the Lisbon–Marseille route consumed an additional seven hours. The use of Faial as a technical layover was also used by other companies, who used the waters between Faial and Pico on stopovers between North America and Europe. In April 1931, during the Azores Revolt, three small hydroplanes of the Portuguese Navy used Horta as a base to overfly
Angra do Heroísmo and
Monte Brasil. These planes dropped pamphlets onto the island in order to convince the mutineers to surrender. In 1933, a squadron of 24 hydroplanes commanded by Italo Balbo arrived in the archipelago: nine landed in the port of Horta, while the remaining continued onto Ponta Delgada, where one was lost en route. A year later, on 19 May 1938, a comparable squadron of four tri-motor aerial reconnaissance
Bréguet 521 Bizerte of the 1st Atlantic Light Squadron landed in Ponta Delgada, before one continued on to Horta and another to Angra do Heroísmo. For his efficiency in the commission, the British government, decorated Humberto Delgado with the
Order of the British Empire, since the officer had risked his career and future on the Allied cause. Between 15–18 May 1943, the
Trident conference to approve an Allied strategy on the Azores. It was followed by the
Quebec Conference between August 11 and 30, in which U.S. President
Franklin D. Roosevelt and the British Prime Minister agreed that Great Britain would enter the Azores with Portuguese authorization, followed by the United States, two weeks later. On 10 September, a combined British force, under the command of Air Marshall
G.R. Bromet, departed from Liverpool in the direction of the island of Terceira. British forces disembarked on 8 October 1943, at the Port of Pipas, in Angra do Heroísmo, and a contingent of 3000 soldiers travelled to Lajes in begin expanding the small aerodrome in the area called Terra Chã. Before the end of the year, the 235 Squadron of the Royal Air Force's Coastal Command was able to sink a German submarine using its contingent on Terceira. By the beginning of 1944, 1400 U.S. troops and 1700 tonnes of equipment had also arrived in Angra and Praia da Vitória, in order to expand and reinforce the runway at Lajes. This included the 928 Engineering Regiment of the U.S. Air Force (17 January), and the 95 Battalion of the U.S. Navy's
Seabee construction corp (19 January). Later the US authorities signed an agreement to construct an aerodrome on the island of Santa Maria (28 November 1944). This was done under the guidance of
Pan American airlines, as the Portuguese, not wanting to arouse the wrath of
Nazi Germany, only accepted the project on the grounds that it was a civilian facility. The construction began in 1944, in conjunction with the erection of a company hospital that served to provide medical assistance to U.S. troops hurt in the European theatre of operations. At the end of 1946, the aerodrome in Santana was converted into a civil airport, with two grass fields (one with a 1500-metre runway and the other 100 metres in length). The local population, owing to its rural location, on prime agricultural location, resulted in its local colloquial name as
aerovacas, since cattle grazed on the land when flights were not occurring. Ponta Delgada-Santana field was a regional airport at the time, and international services were directed to the international airports in Santa Maria or Lajes Airfield.
Post-World Wars But, the inauguration of the Ponta Delgada-Nordela Airport on the southern coast of São Miguel island, fronting the main population centre, on 10 August 1969, changed the face of regional/international services in the Azores. Since its inauguration the Nordela Airport served as the operational base of
SATA Air Azores and, two years later (in 1971),
TAP Air Portugal began to provide regular flights between Lisbon and Ponta Delgada. By the start of 1970s, 2 more aerodromes were constructed on other islands in the archipelago: • on 24 August 1971, a new airport in the civil parish of
Castelo Branco along the southern coast of Faial was inaugurated; and • in 1972,
Flores Airport was constructed on the eastern coast of the island of Airport to support the neighbouring islands of Flores and Corvo. In 1976, following the fall of the
Estado Novo regime, in an era that was tumultuous, the democratic politicians debated a proposal in Portuguese National Assembly to regionalize the provision of services to the Azores and Madeira. Following these events, the increasingly autonomous governments of the Azores, between 1981 and 1983, built several airports to provide expanded service to the remaining islands. In addition to improvements at Horta Airport, the government of the Azores finalized construction of: •
Graciosa Airport; •
Pico Airport; •
São Jorge Airport; •
Corvo Airport. ==SATA==