b'U . S .M i l i t a r yH enry Lawrence Kinney was the Pennsylvania native who firstAbove: Vernon Howe Baileys watercolor painting of over 100 Navy N3N-3 Yellow Peril training aircraft established a trading post on the high bluff overlooking Corpusat Rodd Field, one of several Coastal Bend airfields where NAS Corpus Christi cadets trained, 1942. Christi Bay in 1839, which was later incorporated as a city, inBelow: One of a series of color, high-resolution photos of Naval air training in Corpus Christi during WWII.1852. Among Kinneys trading clients was the nation of Mexi-co, during the Mexican-American War, for which he was tried for treasonand acquittedsome years later. The location he chose for Kinneys Rancho was strategic genius: The most central location on the Gulf Coast of Texas; protected from Gulf of Mexico storms by large barrier islands; equal distance, more or less, from Brownsville and the Mexican border, and to San Antonio, and; direct open-ocean shipping access to the entire world.A decade later, the Battle of Corpus Christi was the most polite and least deadly of the Civil War, and during World War I, an Army hospital was established on North Beach. Following WWI, U.S. Naval Aviation was established as aircraft carriers were developed into lethal fighting platforms that enabled a new level of strategic war-farethe ability to strike an enemy without detection, on short notice. Starting in the mid-1930s, some of the most influential South Texans embarked upon a campaign to build a Navy air training base on Corpus Christi Bay, on the northern bank of Flour Bluff. The effort in Washington, D.C., was led by former Mayor Roy Miller, working with Representatives Richard Kleberg and Lyndon B. Johnson, who together wrangled the support of Uvalde legend and then-Vice President, John Nance Garner.By 1940, the war in Europe was raging and the Japanese navy was engaged in a long bombing campaign in China. Facing the inevitable need for massive, new air assets at sea, along with President Franklin D. Roosevelts need for election year financing and political support from Texas, NAS Corpus Christi was approved on June 13, 1940.94THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINE TheCoastalBend.com'