The history of aviation on Long Island

1920s: Roosevelt Field flight line. Airplanes include Curtis Pusher, Orioles, Standards, and Jennys used for sightseeing, exhibition and flights. The second aircraft from right is Casey Jones's famous "Clip Wing ". Roosevelt field was attractive to aviators because it was flat and close to flight sponsors in New York City.

1927: Charles Lindbergh works on the engine of the Spirit of St. Louis, which departed from Roosevelt Field in Garden City on the world's first trans-Atlantic flight later that year.

Lindbergh takes flight - May 20, 1927

Charles Lindbergh lifted off at 7:52 a.m. from Roosevelt Field and made history, completing the first solo nonstop trans-Atlantic flight.

The 25-year old accomplished the flight alone in a silver monoplane -- the Spirit of St. Louis.

Lindbergh would land in Paris a day later, on May 21, 1927, successfully completing a flight that lasted 33 hours, 30 minutes and 29.8 seconds, according to his Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography, also named "Spirit of St. Louis."

Lindbergh would go on a victory tour after the successful flight, including a Manhattan parade in his honor on June 13, 1927.

The Spirit of St. Louis, Charles Lindbergh's airplane, is seen here lifting off from Roosevelt Field on a training flight on May 20, 1927.

Ca. 1927: Charles Lindbergh (second from left) and the "Spirit of St. Louis" ready for takeoff from Roosevelt Field.

1928: Charles Lindbergh poses with his famous plane, the Spirit of St. Louis, at the airport in Lyndhurst, N.J. Lindberg departed from Roosevelt Field for his 1927 trans-Atlantic flight.

June 25, 1928: Admiral Byrd's South Pole plane lands at Roosevelt field after making a flight with 6 tons at 12,000 feet of altitude. Despite some controversy over whether he ever made it to the North Pole, Byrd is generally credited with being the first person to reach the South Pole by air.

February 14, 1933: General view of fire in hangar at Roosevelt Field in Garden City.

1930s: Amelia Earhart, who along with other women in aviation founded the International Organization of Women Pilots, or the Ninety-Nines, at Curtiss Field in November 1929. Earhart disappeared while attempting to circumnavigate the globe by plane in 1937. Three bone fragments found on a South Pacific island could help prove that Earhart died as a castaway after failing in her quest, sa the University of Oklahoma hopes to extract DNA from the bones, which were recovered earlier this year on an uninhabited island about 1,800 miles south of Hawaii.

1938: Douglas (WrongWay) Corrigan stands next to plane at Roosevelt Field in Garden City in this photo on the eve of his famous wrong-way flight to Dublin.

October 8, 1944: F-6 Hellcats on the production floor at the Grumman factory in Bethpage. The Hellcat was the mainstay of the Naval Air arm in the pacific. During peak production periods, 20 were being produced in a single day, with 12,275 total produced as of May 1944. Grumman produced more Hellcats than any other aircraft for the war effort.

June 11, 1951: One of the last flights from Roosevelt Field in Garden City is made as the Air Ambulance off on its final flight from the field to its new home in Amityville.

June 11, 1951: Empty hangers at Roosevelt Field in Garden City.

July 20, 1969: Grumman Corp. of Bethpage won the contract with NASA to build the Apollo space program's lunar module, which brought the first astronauts to the surface of the moon in 1969. Here astronaut Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin Jr., lunar module pilot, prepares to deploy the Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package (EASEP) during the Apollo 11 lunar surface extravehicular activity.

1969: Technicians at Grumman in Bethpage build the descent stage of NASA's lunar module, the spacecraft that transported astronauts from the orbiting command module to the surface of the moon.

October 11, 1988: Grumman Corp. ships the second of its two X-29 experimental aircraft from a dock in Oyster Bay to the NASA Ames-Dryden Flight Research Facility at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The huge plane - the world's first supersonic forward swept wing aircraft - has been wrapped in a blister pack of blue plastic in preparation for its West Coast journey, which will take place on a barge via the Panama Canal.