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I'm surely not alone in being unable to mentally connect flights over the Hoh River rainforest to excessive audio discomfort to the general public connected with airplane practice landings on Whidbey Island. I would expect, however, some heavy objection from residents living closer than I to the airfields in the Coupeville-Oak Harbor area. So I"ve tended to leave arguments over perspective and values more to those right next door to things.

I do know that Whidbey Naval Air has been around since its commissioning in 1942, early in World War II, sited there in large part because of the area's superior applicable topography. Much like our nearby Indian Island depot fuels and arms our warships, Whidbey began in part as a refueling station. We also had an anti-submarine net across Port Townsend Bay—although there are relatively few of us around who remember that. Same for the boom of Coast Artillery guns practice firing at Fort Worden.

In this day and age it's always been a certain measure of security to me having facilities nearby from which planes could be scrambled in the event of threats against Indian Island or submarine facilities at Keyport. Working in coordination with aircraft carriers and our own missile-launching vessels at sea.

Here in Uptown Port Townsend, I hear planes sometimes around 5 a.m. or perhaps occasionally well after dark. But they are not a real disturbance or even of a lasting nature. I find it hard to believe that any of it's rattling windows or loosening bricks on some old building downtown. I also live about a block and a half from the county courthouse, where a loud bell rings the hour around the clock and has been since the 1890s. I hardly ever even notice it anymore.

With population increase moving ever forward, it doesn't seem logical to move backward by replacing Whidbey operations at some ineffective inland location, putting the problem in someone else's back yard and adding critical seconds of flight time to the coastal area in an emergency in this instantaneous world.