In Windsor, aviation pioneer Fred Wiseman and his aviator partner, Jean "John” Peters, lived in 1910 and built the very first airplane in California, then taught themselves to fly it on the Laughlin Ranch near present day Shiloh Road and the railroad tracks. On February 18, 1911, Wiseman transported two letters to Santa Rosa Postmaster H. L. Tripp from Petaluma Postmaster John Olmsted, becoming the pilot who carried the first airmail sanctioned by a U.S. postal authority. Wiseman's plane is on display in the Smithsonion Museum in Washington D.C. During World War II, a U.S. Army air base, now the Sonoma County Airport, was built in Windsor, and in 1943 a German prisoner-of-war camp was established west of downtown Windsor, where captured German submarine crews and members of the Africa Corp worked on farms, played friendly games of soccer, spent time in town, and later left behind only foundations after the camp closed shortly after the war ended; several of the prisoners later returned to settle in Sonoma County.