COMPTON, Calif. — In its final meeting in the last week of February’s Black History Month, a Los Angeles County Aviation Commissioner revealed the long, nearly-forgotten history of Compton/Woodley Airport’s pioneering work to put the first Black Americans in the pilot’s seat, by integrating its flight school. Some of its licensed black pilots would later form, fly and fight as World War II’s famed Tuskegee Airmen.
Commissioner Clinton Simmons, age 85 and first appointed by former Supervisor Yvonne Burke in 1993, is the longest serving airports commissioner in L.A. County’s 2nd District, now represented by Supervisor and Board Chair Holly J. Mitchell, in whose district Compton/Woodley Airport is located.
Simmons told the ZOOM meeting audience, “Compton Airport was the first airport west of the Mississippi to integrate its flight school.”
Simmons explained that a Black student at USC was the first to earn a pilots’ license at Compton, which qualified him to enlist in the U.S. Army Air Corps for military flight school. Recalling the experience of early Compton trainee Jim Woods, Simmons said when Woods got off the bus at the base in San Antonio, Texas, the duty officer was confused and perplexed. The base commander set the man straight, and Jim Woods was taught to fly at Randolph and shipped off to Tuskegee in Alabama where be became a flight instructor for the Red Tails.
The “official” Compton Airport website history begins with the tale of a military pilot who found himself running out of fuel and daylight on a June Gloom afternoon in 1924. Col. C. S. Smith landed on an empty field in Compton. He liked the site for airport and bought the land from a school district.
Thus began a string of changes in ownership, culminating in 1936 with airport expansion under Earl Woodley. The previous information gap on African American flight training at Compton falls between 1936, when private flight schools like Compton ramped up to train civilian pilots, and the U.S. entry into World War II in 1941.
During the war years of 1941-1946, private flying was restricted, and the airport was used exclusively by the military as an aviation depot. After the hostilities ceased, private flying re-emerged at Compton under Woodley. He hired instructors and bought airplanes, and with the profits from his flying school enterprise, purchased the additional land parcels that are included in the airport today.
Simmons noted with a sense of pride the fact that the two postwar flight schools at Compton trained more than 500 Black civilian pilots in the 1950s. The number exceeded any other location.
In addition to closing the missing link in Black history for Compton/Woodley Airport, Simmons updated the community airport’s more modern legacy in a series of events from the early 1990s. He screened and narrated videos of the reconstruction of a crash-damaged Jet Commander that was trucked-from Van Nuys Airport to Compton, restored to Federal Aviation Administration airworthiness certification, flown out Sept. 7, 1991, for a 2-hour shakedown including a landing to pick up passengers at another airport before returning to Compton/Woodley. Simmons said Chet Duncan was the pilot in command of the Black crew.
With degrees in electronics and management science, and a career path that led through private contracting, consulting, subcontracting with Douglas Aircraft, and finally retirement after 20 years with JPL, Simmons kept his hands and heart active at Compton/Woodley, serving as a flight instructor and advocating for the airport.
According to the county website, upon Woodley’s death in 1962, the property was acquired by an investment company, leading the county’s Aviation Commission to lease the airport from the investment company who operated it in the interim.
With support from pilot groups, local citizens, and the Mayor and Compton City Council, the Board of Supervisors voted to claim the facility as a regional airport. In June 1966, the County bought the nearly 77-acre site outright. Through the financial cooperation of the Federal Aviation Administration and the State Division of Aeronautics, the entire property was acquired for $2,948,883, including 53.64 percent federal aid.
The most recently available statistics from the Aviation Division of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works report Compton/Woodley generates more than 60,000 general aviation takeoffs and landings each year. The airport is publicly available to general aviation aircraft 24-hours a day seven days a week and is home to 200 based aircraft and aviation-related businesses and organizations.
Compton/Woodley Airport accommodates both fixed and rotary-wing aircraft ranging from small two-seat, single-engine propeller aircraft up to much larger and higher capacity turboprop and light jet aircraft. Among other features, the airport has dual parallel runways (each 3,322’ by 60’) with the south runway equipped with a precision approach path indicator (PAPI), full- and self-service fueling services (100LL) available around the clock, and advanced weather reporting equipment such as the recently installed state-of-the-art Automated Weather Observing System (AWOS).