On 3 June 1937 aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart landed at Zanderij with a Lockheed Model 10 Electra at local time 2:38 P.M. The navigator was a retired PAA aviator Fred Noonan. This was on their second attempt of a "World Flight" en route from Miami to Natal and then transatlantic to Dakar, Senegal. They stayed overnight at the Palace Hotel in Paramaribo and left Zanderij again on Friday 4 June 1937 for Fortaleza, Brazil. One month later they disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean near Howland Island. On 16 March 1938 two pilots Whitney and Harmon made an emergency landing with their Beechcraft on an airstrip near the Eerste Rijweg. They could not find Zanderij Airfield. In 1938 the KLM started a weekly service between Paramaribo and Willemstad (Curaçao) with a twin engined Lockheed L-14 Super Electra able to carry 12 passengers and named "MEEUW" (PJ-AIM). Mail arrived much faster at Curaçao than with PAA, but the service was no commercial success. On 11 May 1939 The Flying Hutchinsons arrived at Zanderij in a twin engine Lockheed Electra, on their "family round-the-world global nations flight" which was broadcast on a radio series sponsored by Pepsi Cola. After the fall of the Netherlands to German forces in 1940, the United States obtained military basing rights to the airport from the Netherlands government-in-exile in London. Suriname was then the world's principal source of bauxite (for aluminium production) and needed protection. The first American armed forces arrived at the airport on 30 November 1941 and expanded the facilities to be a transport base for sending Lend-Lease supplies to England via air routes across the South Atlantic Ocean. The runways were constructed by the US Corps of Engineers. They also built the road from Onverwacht to Zanderij which was completed in 1942. With the United States entry into the war in December 1941, the importance of Zandery Field increased drastically, becoming a major transport base on the South Atlantic route of Air Transport Command ferrying supplies and personnel to Freetown Airport, Sierra Leone and onwards to the European and African theaters of the war. In addition, antisubmarine patrols were flown from the airfield over the southern Caribbean and South Atlantic coastlines. Major United States Army Air Force (USAAF) units assigned to the airfield were:  Just before the Pearl Harbor attack, on 3 December, the 99th Squadron was ordered to distant Zandery Field, Dutch Guiana (by way of Piarco Field, Trinidad) under an agreement with the Netherlands government-in-exile, by which the United States occupied the colony to protect bauxite mines.