Bourne Field
Bourne Field was a U.S. Marine Corps air facility on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. It began as a civilian airstrip called Mosquito Bay, which opened in 1928. The U.S. government took over the field on September 1, 1935, and renamed it Bourne Field after Major Louis T. Bourne, the first person to fly non-stop from the United States to Nicaragua.
As a Marine training base, Bourne Field started with two 1,600-foot unpaved runways and grew quickly. In the early 1940s, the base was expanded: the main runway was lengthened to 4,800 feet and facilities were added, including a larger hangar, stores, quarters, a 60-bed hospital, and equipment to service seaplanes.
The base housed Marine squadrons such as VMS-3, and aircraft moved from the J2F Duck to the OS2N-1 Kingfisher and later the SBD dive-bomber. By late 1941, the post was renamed Marine Corps Air Facility St. Thomas. In 1943 it was merged with the nearby Navy Operating Base, St. Thomas, and renamed accordingly. In 1944 it became MCAS St. Thomas, combining with the Lindbergh Bay seaplane base and an emergency runway on Anguilla Island.
During World War II the base supported anti-submarine patrols, but by 1946 operations were reduced and the base entered caretaker status. It was decommissioned on February 16, 1948, and the land was leased to the U.S. Department of the Interior for civilian use. The hangar was converted into a civilian terminal named after President Harry S. Truman.
In 1950 the Interior leased the land to the U.S. Virgin Islands, but the lease was canceled in 1954 and the property was given to the U.S. Virgin Islands Corporation. The airfield later became Cyril E. King Airport, the civilian airport serving St. Thomas.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 19:32 (CET).