Topics Related to U.S. Air Force

Brigadier general of the Army Air Service, demonstrated air power by bombing battleships off coast, Sept. 5, 1923. Landing field was here.

On June 12, 1942, the U.S. Army Air Force took over Seymour Johnson Field for use as a training center. In 1941, the Works Progress Administration built a municipal airport south of Goldsboro; the dedication was held one week before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The field was named for Seymour Johnson, a Goldsboro native, U.S. Naval Academy graduate and test pilot for Grumman Aircraft who died in a crash shortly before the war.

On April 5, 1919, the Camp Bragg Flying Field was renamed in memory of First Lieutenant Harley Halbert Pope, the first officer assigned to the post.  Pope had been killed when the Curtiss JN-4 Jenny he was flying crashed into the Cape Fear River earlier that year.