Bohemia Historical Society
Aviation & Aerospace
From a wartime airfield to a hub of modern engineering
For most of its first century, Bohemia’s story was one of cigar makers, farmers, and laborers who crossed the Great South Bay to work the fish and oil factories on Fire Island. But beginning in the 1940s, a new and entirely modern industry took root on the hamlet’s northern edge — one of aircraft, engineering, and flight. The arrival of Long Island MacArthur Airport, and the cluster of aerospace companies that grew up alongside it, opened a chapter that places little Bohemia firmly within Long Island’s celebrated aviation heritage.
1942–1949
A Wartime Airfield
The airport was born of World War II. In April 1942, just months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Town of Islip contracted with the federal government to build an airfield on town-owned land for military use. Construction of three paved runways was funded through the Civil Aeronautics Administration — the predecessor of today’s FAA — under a wartime program to develop landing areas for national defense.
Originally called simply Islip Airport, the field was renamed in honor of U.S. Army General Douglas MacArthur at the suggestion of local elected official Charles H. Duryea. MacArthur’s dramatic escape from the Philippines had captured the public’s imagination, and the name stuck. The airport was officially activated in May 1943.
Aviation industry took an interest almost immediately. In 1944, the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation built the first hangar at the field. Through the 1950s, the Sperry Corporation — one of Long Island’s great aerospace and instrumentation firms — conducted aerospace research at the airport. After the war, control of the field returned to the Town of Islip, which built the first passenger terminal in 1949 in anticipation of commercial service.
1960–Present
From Airfield to Regional Hub
Scheduled passenger flights finally arrived in 1960, when Allegheny Airlines began flying Convair aircraft from Islip to Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. The General Douglas MacArthur Terminal was completed in 1966. Mohawk Airlines joined in 1967, and in 1971 American Airlines began nonstop Boeing 727 service to Chicago O’Hare — putting Bohemia’s doorstep within a single hop of the Midwest.
The airport’s modern transformation came in 1999, when Southwest Airlines made MacArthur a focus of its Northeast operations, sending passenger traffic soaring. In 2011 the FAA formally designated it an official New York metropolitan airport, grouping it with Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Newark. Today the airport covers more than 1,300 acres, handles well over a million passengers a year, and remains owned and operated by the Town of Islip — a rare municipally run commercial airport.
1950
Dayton T. Brown, Inc.
The runways were only part of the story. The real industrial legacy lies in the aerospace and defense companies that established themselves in Bohemia and neighboring Ronkonkoma, drawn by the airport, the skilled local workforce, and Long Island’s deep aviation roots. Several of these firms are still family-owned and still operating today.
Few local companies carry an aviation pedigree like Dayton T. Brown, Inc. (DTB). It was founded in 1950 in Copiague as Brown & Mole, Inc. by Dayton T. Brown, Sr. and George E. Mole, beginning as a sheet-metal shop that used surplus WWII machinery to manufacture aircraft parts — its first major job producing aluminum searchlight housings during the Korean War.
The company’s founder was an aviation pioneer in his own right. An M.I.T. graduate, Dayton T. Brown, Sr. had served as Chief Engineer at Detroit Aircraft (of which Lockheed was then a division), designed the Brewster Buffalo — the first U.S. Navy fighter to exceed 300 mph — and worked on aircraft designs at Grumman. Both he and his son, Dayton T. Brown, Jr., were later inducted into the Long Island Air & Space Hall of Fame.
The firm added a testing laboratory in 1952, was renamed Dayton T. Brown, Inc. in 1954, and purchased land in Bohemia beginning in 1958, eventually consolidating onto its 32-acre campus on Church Street. Today DTB operates one of the largest independent engineering and testing laboratories in the country, with divisions covering Engineering & Test, Technical Services, and Mission Systems. The company marked its 75th anniversary in 2025 and still counts Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman among its clients.
1951
Davis Aircraft Products
Founded in 1951, Davis Aircraft Products has manufactured aircraft restraint and cargo-control systems from its Bohemia plant on Walnut Avenue for more than seventy years. The company traces a memorable origin to founder Frank L. Davis demonstrating his aircraft tie-downs aboard a Douglas DC-3 for American Airlines engineers — an early milestone in the development of safe air freight.
Today Davis is an AS9100-certified aerospace manufacturer producing cargo restraint systems, tie-down rings and studs, aircraft seat belts and buckles, inertia reels, litter brackets for medical transport, and helicopter blade-fold and restraint systems for both commercial and military aircraft. Among its notable defense work, Davis was contracted to develop titanium cargo tie-down components for the Sikorsky CH-53K heavy-lift helicopter built for the U.S. Marine Corps.
1968
East/West Industries
Just over the line in Ronkonkoma — on aptly named Orville Drive — sits East/West Industries, founded in 1968 by Dom and Mary Spinosa. From humble beginnings manufacturing electrical connectors, the company grew into a globally recognized specialist in aircrew survival, guided by its enduring motto that “saving aircrew lives is our first concern.”
East/West designs and manufactures ejection-seat and crashworthy seating systems, emergency oxygen and life-support systems, survival kits, and aviation ground-support equipment for military and commercial platforms — including work associated with the Air Force’s ACES II ejection seat and aircraft such as the F-16 and B-2. A woman-owned small business led by President Teresa Ferraro, it remains family-operated and in 2017 moved into an expanded facility in Ronkonkoma, now totaling roughly 75,000 square feet.
Legacy
Bohemia’s Place in the Cradle of Aviation
These flagship firms anchor a wider aerospace-and-defense community in the Bohemia–Ronkonkoma corridor. Lourdes Industries manufactures pneumatic, hydraulic, and fuel components and specializes in precision machining of titanium and other specialty metals. Magellan Aerospace operates a Bohemia facility producing large, complex parts from titanium, stainless steel, and aluminum. Consolidated Aircraft Supply Co. in Ronkonkoma operates as an FAA-certified repair station serving the aviation aftermarket. Together they form one of Suffolk County’s most concentrated pockets of aviation manufacturing.
It is no accident that the industrial park beside the airport carries street names like Orville Drive — a quiet tribute, woven into the local map, to the aviation pioneers whose legacy these companies continue.
Long Island has long called itself the “Cradle of Aviation,” a title earned by the airfields of Nassau County and the great factories of Grumman and Republic. Bohemia and the MacArthur Airport area represent the Suffolk County extension of that story — less famous, perhaps, but no less real. From a wartime airstrip carved out of town land in 1942 grew not only a regional airport but a durable community of engineers, machinists, and manufacturers whose work has lifted aircraft, secured their cargo, and brought their crews home safely for three-quarters of a century.
It is a fitting modern chapter for a community whose residents have always found their living in skilled, hands-on work — from rolling cigars to building the hardware of flight.