Los Alamitos (US-CA)
Los Alamitos Army Airfield (ICAO: KSLI, FAA LID: SLI) is a military airport located one mile (2 km) southeast of central Los Alamitos, and within its city limits, in Orange County, California, USA. Formerly operated by the U.S. Navy as "Naval Air Station Los Alamitos," it was transferred to the U.S. Army in 1977. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, due to what the United States Navy perceived as a hostile attitude on the part of the City of Long Beach regarding improvements and maintenance of Long Beach Airport (then both a municipal airport and Naval Reserve air station), and unknown to city officials at the time, the Navy had begun a survey for a more suitable site for flight operations. Admiral Ernest J. King, then the Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, and Admirals William D. Leahy, Joseph K. Taussig, and Allen E. Smith pointedly demanded that the City of Long Beach repair the hazardous runways at Long Beach Airport and simply reminded the city that the Pacific Fleet, then laying offshore in both Long Beach and San Pedro harbors, had a payroll of over US$1 million per month. That amount being a substantial sum of money at the time, the city complied with the Navy's demands. Still, the city continued to show a hostile attitude toward approving a lease on any additional land that the Naval Reserve now required. The Navy thereupon, fed up with the city of Long Beach, decided upon the purchase of some property owned by a Mrs. Susanna Bixby Bryant, a fact made known by the commander of the base, Commander Thomas A. Gray, to the Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, Admiral John H. Towers. The circumstances behind the purchase were revealed to James V. Forrestal, Under Secretary of the Navy, and by him to the House Naval Affairs Committee who approved the purchase. Although Commander Gray had offered Mrs. Bryant US$350 an acre, in the best patriotic spirit she sold the property at US$300 an acre. With the site acquired, in 1941, construction funds soon followed and Naval Reserve Air Base (NRAB) Los Alamitos began to take shape. The new base provided many jobs and spurred modest growth. On 1 June 1941, operations physically relocated from Long Beach to Los Alamitos.
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