When you first see it, the Corsair looks like it’s rising up from the airfield, ready for another World War II battle in the Pacific.
But it’s not. The plane, actually a full-scare fiberglass replica of a Corsair, heralds your arrival at the Massey Air Museum, just west of the Delaware-Maryland border. Mounted on a pedestal, the Corsair stands just a few feet away from a 1937 DC-3 — the real deal, not a doppelganger — done up in a 1940s-era military paint scheme.
But while you can find display cases of airplane models, aviation books and assorted memorabilia at Massey, these things are not the field’s main focus.
That, to no great surprise, is flying.
Massey Aerodrome is a working, breathing airfield, a bit of a throwback to a time when civilian aeronautics, buoyed by the wartime experiences of the nation’s former military pilots, really took off in the United States.
The airfield features a 3,000-foot turf runway that hosts up to 4,000 takeoff and landings per year. It is incorporated as a non-profit group dedicated to grassroots aviation in America.
Founded in 2001 on a former 93-acre farm, the organization is the brainchild of Jim Douglass of Kennedyville, Md., and three of his neighbors.
“We all are flight enthusiasts to varying degrees,” Douglass said. “At least two of the four of us are here every day.”
Massey does have that feel, a place where pilots can just get together and talk about their favorite hobby. But not everyone who hangs around the airfield is a pilot. Some are just like 15-year-old Anthony McKeown, who regularly rides his bicycle to the field from his Smyrna-area home.
“I really love airplanes and I love flying,” Anthony said. “So I started volunteering here.
“I do whatever they want me to — cutting grass, taking out the trash, or working on airplanes,” he said.
When it comes to the latter, Anthony joins Douglass and a number of other flying aficionados who keep the museum’s collection airworthy. Upon walking into the field’s terminal, one immediately catches the odor of paint, glue, oil and a myriad of other mechanical smells.
This part of the terminal is a workshop where Douglass is restoring a Stinson Reliant AT-19, the same plane he owned when he learned to fly as a teenager, and later sold. He bought the airplane again several years ago, stripped it down to its metal skeleton and is slowly making it flyable again.
