(Text from Wikipedia)
Naval Weapons Industrial Reserve Plant, Calverton, NY (NWIRP) was a government-owned,
contractor-operated (Grumman) facility testing prototype aircraft from 1956 until 1996,
located in Riverhead, New York. In 1956 the United States Navy purchased about
6,000 acres by New York Route 25 for the NWIRP. The unit is
most associated with test, assembly and retrofitting the A-6 Intruder, E-2
Hawkeye, EA-6B Prowler and F-14 Tomcat. During
the Space Race, Grumman built a mock-up of the lunar surface to test its
proposed Lunar Module. Many of the lunar astronauts were said to have
visited the plant then. In
1996, the wreckage of TWA Flight 800 which had crashed about 20 miles (32 km)
south of the airport was reconstructed in a hangar. In
1965, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller proposed converting the airport into
the fourth New York City metropolitan airport joining Laguardia Airport, John
F. Kennedy Airport and Newark Airport. The proposal was abandoned following
opposition from both Grumman and local residents. Grumman merged with Northrop
Corporation in 1994, forming Northrop Grumman Corporation and the new firm
eliminated almost all operations on Long Island. Grumman vacated the site on
February 14, 1996 the facility has since been developed into Calverton Executive Airpark
Due to popular demand here are some more photos of the former
Grumman Calverton site including the runway.
This Building on the former Grumman site
kind of reminds me of Le Corbusier at Weissenhof....
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| Le Corbusier, Weissenhof, Stuttgart Germany Photo author:Shaqspeare |
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| Runway 32 |
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| Runway 32 |
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| Here is the tarmac at Calverton back in the glory days. The source of this photo and a great story about ferrying these planes from Calverton to Iran can be found by clicking on the link below: http://flitetime.net/iran.html    |
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| Looking at Tower from runway 32 |
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| Hold short runway 32 |
Which one is TWA Flight 800 in?
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