In the early 20th century, Alameda’s western shore emerged as a prime Bay Area aviation site because its central location, broad level land, and frequent fog-free days overcame regional limits of fog and scarce flat ground. The first recorded flight at Alameda Point occurred on October 9, 1911, when Weldon Cooke took off to entertain President William Taft and spectators in Oakland. Deepwater access and a protected bayside setting soon drew military interest, while defense industry expanded in 1916 with the Bethlehem Steel Shipbuilding Company yard near the future Naval Air Station Alameda. In 1917, John J. Mulvany persuaded the Navy to examine Alameda Point as a destroyer base, and Admiral James Helm concluded that its sheltered bay location, industry, and infrastructure suited Pacific Coast naval plans, though congressional funding for an air station did not come for two more decades. Commercial aviation then accelerated after Charles Lindbergh’s 1927 transatlantic flight. Alameda Municipal Airport opened in March 1929 on filled land at the western tip of Alameda Point, with a short runway, an administration building, and three hangars. Curtiss Wright Aviation was its principal tenant until Pan American Airways leased the field for Martin M-130 flying boats, the “China Clippers,” which became symbols of American commercial aviation in the 1930s. In 1935, Kneffler J. McGinnis set a seaplane distance record by flying 3,387 miles from Coco Solo, Panama to Alameda Airport, and later that year Pan American began trans-Pacific airmail and passenger service to Manila by way of Hawaii, Midway and Wake Islands, and Guam. Alameda also developed the San Francisco Bay Airdrome, begun in 1930 on university marshland as a planned regional airport with two oyster-shell-paved runways, but by the mid-1930s it had lost major airline tenants and was used mainly by private aircraft until the Navy condemned part of it in 1941 and ended the rest to avoid interference with Naval Air Station Alameda. A third field, Benton Army Air Corps Field, began in 1930 on partially submerged land between the other two airports and expanded through dredging, filling, and Works Progress Administration improvements. As Army construction continued, the Navy renewed its interest in western Alameda, sought 1,000 acres there in 1935, received congressional authorization in June 1936 for President Franklin D. Roosevelt to accept Alameda Municipal Airport, and acquired Benton Field in October 1936, creating a proposed naval base of about 2,000 acres. The Navy’s 1938 Hepburn Report then recommended that Naval Air Station Alameda become a major air station for operations, aircraft assembly, and repair, capable of supporting multiple carrier groups and squadrons.