“It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.”
On Aug. 18, 1937, pioneer Kankakee aviator Delbert Koerner probably would have strongly agreed with the “ill wind” part of that bit of folk wisdom. At around 7 p.m. on a stormy Wednesday evening, just such a wind tore through Koerner’s airport on what is now Illinois Route 115, southwest of the city.
The Kankakee Republican-News reported on Thursday, Aug. 19, “Cyclonic winds accompanying Wednesday evening’s rainstorm wrought havoc with the airport of Delbert Koerner … wrecking four of the five airplanes stationed there and completely destroying the two hangars. … The storm traveled as swiftly as a tornado, but could not be classed as such, since no funnel of wind was detected. A sudden blast of air seemed to center its downward flight on the landing field, then left again as it swept northeast across the highway … leaving debris scattered in its wake for a distance of 300 yards. No other damage was reported, other than trees broken down on the farms surrounding the airport.”
Four people who had taken shelter from the storm inside one of the airport’s hangars “barely escaped serious injury when the building collapsed over their heads.” Suffering only minor bruises were Delbert Koerner and Howard Nichols; Mr. and Mrs. Walter Franklin sustained bruises and lacerations.
Walter Franklin was aloft over the airport, piloting his Taylorcraft plane, when he saw the storm brewing. He quickly landed the aircraft and took cover in the hangar.
“He and the three others lay flat on the earth in the center of the building as the wreckage twisted and tumbled about them,” noted the newspaper.
The first of the two wooden airport buildings to be battered by the winds was the south hangar, which housed a Waco biplane owned by Lawrence Schilling.
“The roof of the south hangar … went first,” the Republican-News reported, “Then the whole structure was whirled into the air and crashed against the other hangar. … Koerner’s two ships, a Simpson and a Waco, were damaged in the fuselage, wing and tail struts. Schilling’s plane had the least damage.”
The fourth aircraft destroyed by the storm was a Travel Air plane owned by Franklin Krumweide.
“It was blown across the highway against a telephone pole. It was practically demolished,” noted the newspaper. Surprisingly, the only plane to escape unharmed by the storm was Walter Franklin’s Taylorcraft, which he had landed just before the storm struck. “None of the planes was insured, since the cost of such insurance is practically prohibitive,” reported the Republican-News.
The airport’s north hangar also housed Koerner’s machine shop. The shop “was completely disabled,” according to the Republican-News, “with some pieces of equipment overturned. The cyclone lasted only a few seconds, but the rainstorm continued for several minutes, ‘coming down in bucketsful,’ according to Franklin.”
Word of the storm damage spread rapidly. The newspaper reported, “Several hundred motorists stopped along the highway during the evening to inspect the debris. … This morning, the state detoured all traffic around on Kensington Road while the wreckage was cleaned up.”
When the devastating 1937 storm struck the airport, the facility had been in operation for just over a decade. In the spring of 1927, brothers Delbert and Martin Koerner landed their Waco 10 biplane on a 40-acre pasture they had purchased near Kankakee. They quickly erected a small hangar alongside their grass runway, and Koerner Airport was born. Delbert and Martin offered rides (for a fee, of course) to adventurous sightseers, then expanded the scope of their business to include pilot training.
Delbert had learned to fly in 1926, when he had taken six hours of training in Peoria. He purchased the used Standard OX-5 aircraft in which he had taken his lessons, and flew it home to the family farm near Cullom. There, he taught brother, Martin, to fly, and the two began barnstorming, selling sightseeing rides over towns in Livingston and Iroquois counties. In late summer, their old biplane failed to survive a landing encounter with a barbed-wire fence (luckily, no one was injured.)
In the early spring of 1927, they purchased a replacement aircraft — the well-used Waco 10 biplane in which they flew to their newly acquired property southwest of Kankakee. The airport eventually grew to a 120-acre triangular shape, with two half-mile grass runways, offering charter flights, sightseeing rides, pilot training, aircraft repair and restoration, and other services for aircraft owners.
On Aug. 21, 1937, three days after the storm, the Republican-News informed its readers, “The Kankakee airport will rise again. The cyclone which demolished two hangars and smashed four of the five airplanes at the landing field of Delbert Koerner on Wednesday evening will curtail Koerner’s operations only temporarily. … Work on a new hangar near the grove at the north end of the airport, started before the windstorm wrecked the old ones, has been speeded up and will be rushed to completion early in October. … Three times the size of Koerner’s other hangar, the new one will be 80 by 80 feet, with a door 18-foot high extending all the way across the south end. … The field, together with the new hangar, will accommodate any ship which frequents this area.”
Today, almost a century after Delbert and Martin Koerner landed on that pasture southwest of Kankakee, the airport continues to operate under their descendants.
Although the privately owned Koerner Airport was commonly referred to as the “Kankakee Airport” from its founding in 1927, it lost that designation to a publicly owned facility in 1962. What was that new facility?
Answer: The Greater Kankakee Airport, operated by the Kankakee Valley Airport Authority. Voters approved a referendum establishing the KVAA in 1957; the new airport began operation in 1962.