Completed interior view of 80th CB's LTA hangar80th LTA HangarAfrican American Seabees of the 80th CB erecting an Airship Hangar at Carlsen Field Trinidad
Opened in 1942, Edinburgh Field had been intended solely as an overflow facility for Air Transport Command transport aircraft headed for nearby Waller Field, but eventually, it grew into an enormous sprawling complex with three parallel paved runways – 5000 x 150 ft / 5000 x 150 ft / 2000 x 300 ft and an Airship operating area that made it physically larger than all the other airbases in Trinidad, being used by both Army and Navy aircraft.
Edinburgh Field became the principal combat base for USAAF bombers and Naval airships on Trinidad as well as Navy fighters with a complex of runways and taxiways that surpassed even Waller Field. This lasted until 3 November 1943, when it was renamed Carlsen Field. It was also used by the Royal Air Force and was defended by US Army infantry and AA units. When the Navy began lighter-than-air operations in the Caribbean in the fall of 1943, the 80th Seabees were brought in to build a station at Carlsen Field. To supplement the eight Army-owned buildings taken over by the Navy, the 80th Battalion built a large, steel blimp hangar, a mooring circle, paved runways, a helium-purification plant, and other operational appurtenances.
With the end of World War II Carlsen Airfield was reduced in scope to a skeleton staff. It was placed under the command of the 24th Composite Wing based at Borinquen AFB, Puerto Rico. In 1947 Navy C-47 operations at nearby Waller Air Force Base were moved to Carlsen.
The airfield was redesignated Carlsen Air Force Base on March 26, 1948, by the Department of the Air Force General Order Number 10. Carlsen AFB was turned over to the United States Navy on 28 May 1949 and was renamed NAF (LTA) Carlsen Field. Naval units used the facility until it was formally disestablished on 10 January 1950.
Today the former air and naval airship base has been turned into a dairy and agricultural area south of Chaguanas and is all but unrecognizable. Much of the former airfield area is owned by National Flour Mills and the only remnants of the base are the name of the area in south Chaguanas, along with streets named "Edinburgh" and "Xeres".
The area known as Edinburgh which the runways for the base were located is now the site of a major housing development called Edinburgh 500 . Additional areas in Carlsen field were developed into residential housing developments but the area remains as a site of agricultural activity since the closure of the base.
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