Greetings family, friends and neighbors! Today's rambling is about an adventure at Fremont's Sky Sailing Airport nearly five decades ago....Bill

Nostalgic Ramblings

SOARING

There was a loud “pop” and our glider shuttered as the tow line

dropped away as we were set free hundreds of feet above

Fremont’s Mission Peak. It was my job to pull the knob and release

our small powerless metal craft from the tow plane that had

strained to pull us above the ridge line of Mount Allison and

Monument Peak. Unlike the slick streamline gliders dashing

around us seeking updrafts capable of keeping them aloft for

hours, our heavy blunt craft was unable to ignore gravity and

immediately began the slow unavoidable return to sea level. The

only sound was the wind rushing outside our craft and the bright

sun heated our tiny sealed cabin. The South Bay salt ponds

spread below like a multi-color quilt and I got a quick glimpse of

our house tucked among the seemingly endless suburbia. The

distant Sierra Nevada range were briefly visible before we dropped

below Mission Peak’s twenty five hundred foot crest. Our silent

craft hugged the rolling dry hillside and sparse groves of tree’s,

each pass taking us lower down the rocky cliffs.

The modest Fremont Sky Sailing Airport was located at the foot of

Durham Road adjacent to the popular Baylands Raceway. A small

U.S. Army airfield operated here until the Navy established the site

as an “outlying emergency landing field” during World War ll for

Moffett Field’s Army Air Corps and the airships Macon and Akron.

The property was sold to Southern Pacific railroad following the

war and leased to Baylands and the Sky Sailing Airport in the

1960’s. There were only a couple modest permanent airport

structures, however dozens of private glider storage buildings and

acres of parked storage trailers were scattered haphazardly

throughout the property.

Sensing our altitude and the distance to the landing field, the pilot

guided our craft westward over the rooftops and low over the

Nimitz Freeway. A quick right bank positioned us up for our single

brakeless landing opportunity on the short runway. Our single

wheel touched down first and the silence of the past twenty

minutes was broken with the scrapping of the nose of our glider

on the packed gravel surface. The glider slowed to a stop and

tipped gently to one side, resting on a wing tip. -Bill 11/23