Civil Air Patrol request for WPA Assistance, 5 August 1942

North Carolinians established their first Civil Air Patrol coastal patrol base at Manteo, NC on 22 July 1942. The first aircraft arrived on 27 July and initial patrols began on 10 August. Located at a dirt strip off Skyco Road, the men battled muddy conditions, excessive heat, and literally black clouds of mosquitoes rising forth from the marsh grasses. With spartan funds and accommodations, NC CAP wing commander Frank E. Dawson wrote to Governor Joseph Melville Broughton to solicit the assistance of the Works Projects Administration to improve base conditions. The WPA provided a small contingent of workers to help construct small buildings for the men to use, some of which were relocated for use at what is now the Dare County Regional Airport during a base transfer from Skyco in October-December 1942.

Dawson hints in this letter of his working to secure a second patrol base for the state. This would be the coastal patrol base located at Beaufort, NC which Dawson himself commanded, beginning on 7 September 1942. While Manteo suffered from a lack of buildings, Beaufort's field was described in the base yearbook as "growing waist-high in swamp grass, and full of stump pine. About half the field was under water at high tide. The only evidence of human effort of living in the area was a tiny, two-room homestead in the northeast corner of the field."

The WPA would provide some assistance at Manteo, but their biggest help came at Beaufort, where the state submitted a Federal Works Agency War Public Works application to build a hard-surfaced airport to serve the men and the town of Beaufort. One of the few airfields built in the state during World War II for civilians rather than military personnel, this airport is still in use today as the Beaufort-Morehead City Airport (named Michael J. Smith Field).