970560 North Carolina Army National Guard AH-64 attack helicopter demonstrating low-level terrain-following flight.

Ernest H. Robl stock photos:
Aviation and military

Aviation has played an important role in North Carolina since the Wright Brothers made their first powered flight on the Outer Banks a hundred years ago.

In addition several large airports for civilian aviation, the state also contains bases of military services (Air Force, Army, Marines, and Coast Guard) with important aviation components. The North Carolina Army National Guard also has aviation units.

This page provides a few examples of aviation and military subjects from North Carolina. The page supplements my other North Carolina thumbnail pages. (See links at the bottom of this page.) Those pages also include aviation images.

Click on the images on this page for larger versions.

For additional North Carolina sample images, see the links at the bottom of this page.

Of course, no mention of aviation in North Carolina is complete without starting with the Wright Brothers' first powered flight on North Carolina's coast in 1903.

A variety of events were scheduled throughout 2003 to celebrate the centennial of this flight.

I have visited and photographed the Wright Brothers Memorial site at Kill Devil Hills many times over the years.

This parade took place down a closed section of U.S. highway 301.

Part of my military service (1968-1970) in the U.S. Army was at Fort Bragg, N.C.

During that time I flew on many types of military aircraft, including flights out of Pope AFB.

I have continued to follow military issues and equipment.

Vietnam

I also spent almost a year in Vietnam with the U.S. Army, for which I received the Bronze Star Medal.

To view a small selection of Vietnam subjects from 1969-1970, click here.

 

Airborne and Special Operations Museum, Fayetteville

The Airborne and Special Operations Museum in Fayetteville is a world-class military museum focusing on paratrooper and special forces history.

The museum is located immediately adjoining the Amtrak train station in downtown Fayetteville.

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Heavy military equipment returning from Iraq is driven off a roll-on/roll-off (RoRo) ship, the Cape Wrath, and then loaded on railroad flatcars for transport inland. The state port handles a substantial amount of military traffic.

For more detailed information, click on the images for larger versions with extended captions.

North Carolina Global TransPark

The North Carolina Global TransPark is is a business park built around the Kinston, N.C., regional airport.

Built to attract businesses and investment to this mostly rural part of eastern North Carolina, the site has been controversial because, despite the investment of millions of state and federal dollars, the park had failed to live up to its designers' promises.

Over many years, the park attracted only a handful of tenants, some of which were state agencies. One much-heralded business closed down after it lost federal contracts to maintain older military aircraft at the site.

In May of 2008, the TransPark officials finally announced the acquisition of a key tenant, Spirit AeroSystems of Wichita, Kans., a manufacturer of aircraft subassemblies, including fuselage parts.

Spirit plans to open a major manufacturing facility at the site, employing more than a thousand workers by 2010. The state and the TransPark provided millions of dollars in incentives for Spirit to locate its new plant in Kinston.

Don't see the images that you need? Give me a call or send e-mail. Remember, the images on my site are only samples from many thousands more available from my files.