Grand Central Air Terminal

Book excerpt: From 1923, when it was known as the Glendale Airport, to the World War II era, when the military took it over, Grand Central Air Terminal was the main commercial airport serving Southern California and the ancestral home of what became Convair (General Dynamics) and Hughes Aircraft. The first scheduled transcontinental passenger service was flown out of Grand Central by Charles Lindbergh, with Amelia Earhart among the passengers. Grand Central had the first paved runway west of the Rocky Mountains, and was a terminal for Pickwick, TWA, American, and Pan Am's Mexican subsidiary. After Pearl Harbor, commercial operations ceased and the Army Air Corps turned Grand Central into a training center and a key element in the air defenses for Los Angeles when a Japanese invasion seemed imminent.