Virginia Tech Airport

I-23

The airport was founded in 1931 as a college-owned facility. School funds and a grant from the Works Progress Administration in the early 1940s paid for paving a runway and building a hangar. Two training programs offered here made the airport important during World War II. The Civilian Pilot Training Program taught selected cadets at VPI and other colleges around the country how to fly airplanes. An aircraft mechanics training program, operated under the National Youth Administration, trained hundreds of high school graduates as mechanics. Students lived at a facility just northwest of here.

Department of Historic Resources, 2005

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Wareen H. Strother and Peter Wallenstein, From VPI to State University: President Marshall Hahn, JR and the Transformation of Virginia Tech, 1962-1974 (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2004), 207-209; "History of the Virginia Tech Airport, In Four Parts," Virginia Eagles 37(January/February/March 2004): 13-22; Patricia Strickland, The Putt-Putt Air Force: The Story of the Civilian Pilot Training Program and the War Training Service (1939-1944) (Washington: Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration, Aviation Education Staff, [1970?], 112; VPI Airport Complex, Department of Historic Resources Archives File (150-5043), Richmond, Virginia.