"Passenger discomfort at landing between two walls of flame was no doubt a major reason the airline eventually rejected the use of FIDO."

That statement about the United Airlines fog dispersal experiments at ACV certainly catches the eye. But the "walls of flame" was only one of several technologies used to assist landings at this airport. In December 1947 a Southwest Airways DC-3 flying into this airport made the world's first blind landing of a scheduled commercial airliner using Ground-Controlled Approach (GCA) radar, Instrument Landing System (ILS) devices and Fog Investigation and Dispersal Operation (FIDO) oil-burning units adjacent to the runway. By the following year the airline had made 1,200 routine instrument landings at the often fog-shrouded airport.

In 1941, due to war-time exigencies, the US Navy needed a place to experiment with some fancy oil burning machines that attempted to clear airport fog (the FIDO project developed by the British, that acronym stood for Fog, Intensive, Dispersal Operations) so that planes could still use the field during periods of heavy fog. The Aleutians were the first choice but conditions there were not conducive due to the machinery sinking into the tundra.

In 1942 the Department of the Army acquired 442 acres from the County of Humboldt and then transferred the parcel to the Department of the Navy in 1944. The Navy acquired an additional 223 acres in late 1944, and the entire 665-acre site became a Naval Auxiliary Air Station (J09CA0799).

The Navy built its Landing Aids Experiment Station here and spent a number of years working with the FIDO project, later partnering with United Airlines and working with the fog problem for a few more years.

In 1950 the Air Station was donated to the Humboldt County Department of Aviation (1950) which improved the facility. It has become the major airport in Humboldt County.

More about the FIDO project.