Business View Magazine | March 2019

59 ITIES A uburn-Lewiston Airport is a 627-acre, regional reliever, general aviation airport located five miles southwest of the cities of Auburn and Lewiston in Androscoggin County, Maine. The Airport opened in 1935, and from late 1942, it was under the control of the United States Navy for use as a base for anti-submarine patrols in the North Atlantic. It was commissioned in April, 1943 as Naval Auxiliary Air Facility Lewiston, and along with Naval Air Station Brunswick, was used to train British, Cana- dian, and American torpedo bomber pilots until 1945. Lt. George H.W. Bush was assigned there briefly, after being shot down towards the end of the war. Naval operations ceased on December 1, 1945, and the site was declared surplus in 1946, and handed back to the cities of Auburn and Lewiston in 1947/48, with the stipulation that it remain an airport in perpetuity.