A 24-year-old from Manchester was killed flying mail across Utah in 1934. Eight years later, his hometown airport became the door through which 9,000 American bombers flew to Europe.
A Pirep featured story · KMHT Manchester-Boston Regional, Manchester, NH
In February 1934, the U.S. Post Office was in crisis. President Roosevelt, citing fraud allegations against the established airline carriers, had cancelled the air mail contracts and ordered the Army Air Corps to fly the mail with its own aircraft and pilots. The order was unwise. The Army's pilots were trained for combat, not for night and instrument flying in the mountains. In the first month of Army air mail, ten pilots were killed.
One of them was Second Lieutenant Jean Donat Grenier of Manchester, New Hampshire. He was twenty-four. He was flying a Curtiss A-12 Shrike attack aircraft, serial number 33-244, on the night route between Salt Lake City and Cheyenne, when he was caught in weather over the Wasatch Range. On February 16, 1934, the wreckage was found near Oakley, Utah.
His hometown's small civilian airport, which had been built south of Manchester in 1927, was renamed Grenier Field in February 1942, two months after Pearl Harbor. Over the next three years, that airfield became one of the most important places in American military aviation.
On January 1, 1944, Grenier Field became the headquarters of the North Atlantic Division of the Air Transport Command. The mission was to move freshly built American bombers from factories in the heartland to combat units in England. The route ran from Grenier north through Presque Isle and Goose Bay, across Greenland and Iceland, and into Scotland. Every B-17, B-24, and other combat aircraft headed to the Eighth Air Force in England crossed the Atlantic by way of Grenier. Over 9,000 aircraft were ferried through. More than 50,000 airmen — pilots, navigators, radio operators, gunners — got their final North Atlantic weather and survival training here before they continued east. At peak, 6,000 personnel were stationed at the field.
After the war, Grenier was retained as an Air Force base until 1966. The civilian terminal was completed in December 1961, and the field eventually transferred fully to civilian use as Manchester-Boston Regional. It is now the largest airport in northern New England.
A young Army Air Corps pilot from Manchester died flying the mail across Utah. Eight years later, his hometown airport became the door through which 9,000 American bombers flew to Europe.