system and apparatus utilized for carrier take-offs, considerably streamlining the amount of time expended for the procedure. In February 1951, he was promoted to rear admiral and became- in March- deputy commander of both Sandia Base and the Field Command Armed Forces Special Weapons Project at Albuquerque, New Mexico. He served in this capacity until suffering a debilitating heart attack in April 1952. That September, Trapnell medically retired with the rank of vice admiral. After the Navy, Trapnell worked as a consultant for Grumman Aircraft for the next 23 years and became a sailing enthusiast. On April 1, 1976, the air field at Naval Air Station Patuxent River was officially named "Trapnell Field" in his honor. At the dedication ceremony, keynote speaker ADM Frederick H. Michaelis, Chief of Naval Material, said: Vice Admiral Trapnell was a pioneer test pilot whose calculated daring and prophetic vision served to advance the science of naval aviation test and evaluation. ëGet the numbersí was the watchword of the test pilots he trained and led. His contributions to aviation were enormous. In 1986, Trapnell was inducted into the Naval Aviation Hall of Honor. Family Trapnell was married to his first wife, Mary Elizabeth Belcher, in 1929; they had one son Frederick Mackay Trapnell. His second marriage, in 1936 to Alice Moffitt, produced one son, Herbert Wallace. Both marriages were to women of socially prominent West Coast families; the Trapnells made several appearances in articles covering socialite circles usually involving festivities in Coronado, an affluent city near San Diego. Trapnell's extended family had a degree of public attention—both famous and infamous—attached to it. His father Benjamin had been discharged from the Navy while a midshipman at the Naval Academy after an incident aboard the Academy's training vessel, the , in August 1883. In the first such trial of its kind, Benjamin Trapnell and several others were convicted of hazing younger midshipmen. Benjamin later served as a United States Attorney for West Virginia under the second Cleveland Administration. During a banquet given by former residents of Charles Town, WV at the St. Denis Hotel in New York, he caused a public stir when he lambasted the McKinley Administration's policies in regards to newly acquired territory from the recently concluded Spanish–American War. Trapnell's distant cousin Joseph likewise had a brief and ironic public appearance, Joseph, then a captain for Eastern Airlines, foiled an attempted hijacking of his own