Flight Training: Small Fields 1953 US Navy Pilot Training Film MN-7398-E

more at http://quickfound.net/

Originally a public domain film from the US Navy, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerodrome#Airstrip

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

An aerodrome (Commonwealth English) or airdrome (American English) is a location from which aircraft flight operations take place, regardless of whether they involve air cargo, passengers, or neither. Aerodromes include small general aviation airfields, large commercial airports, and military airbases.

The term airport may imply a certain stature (having satisfied certain certification criteria or regulatory requirements) that not all aerodromes may have achieved. This means that all airports are aerodromes, but not all aerodromes are airports. Usage of the term "aerodrome" remains more common in the UK, Ireland and Commonwealth nations; in American English, it is only used for a facility specialized in antique or ultralight aircraft.

A water aerodrome is an area of open water used regularly by seaplanes or amphibious aircraft for landing and taking off.

According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) an aerodrome is "A defined area on land or water (including any buildings, installations, and equipment) intended to be used either wholly or in part for the arrival, departure, and surface movement of aircraft."...

History

In the early days of aviation, when there were no paved runways and all landing fields were grass, a typical airfield might permit takeoffs and landings in only a couple of directions, much like today's airports, whereas an aerodrome was distinguished, by virtue of its much greater size, by its ability to handle landings and take offs in any direction. The ability to always take off and land directly into the wind, regardless of the wind's direction, was an important advantage in the earliest days of aviation when an airplane's performance in a crosswind takeoff or landing might be poor or even dangerous. The development of differential braking in aircraft, improved aircraft performance, utilization of paved runways, and the fact that a circular aerodrome required much more space than did the "L" or triangle shaped airfield, eventually made the early aerodromes obsolete. The city of the first aerodrome in the world is a French commune named Viry-Chatillon.

The unimproved airfield remains a phenomenon in military aspects. The DHC-4 Caribou served in the U.S. military in Vietnam (designated as the CV-2), landing on rough, unimproved airfields where the C-130 workhorse could not operate. Earlier, the Ju 52 and Fieseler Storch could do the same, one example of the latter taking off from the Führerbunker whilst completely surrounded by Russian troops...

An airstrip is a small aerodrome that consists only of a runway with perhaps fueling equipment. They are generally in remote locations. Many airstrips (now mostly abandoned) were built on the hundreds of islands in the Pacific Ocean during World War II. A few airstrips grew to become full-fledged airbases as strategic or economic importance of a region increased over time.

An Advanced Landing Ground (ALG) was a temporary airstrip used by the Allies in the run-up to and during the invasion of Normandy, and these were built both in Britain, and on the continent...