Great work, Kevin Roll!
In interpreting your 1928 photo of the Lockheed complex, it's helpful to have in mind that the Burbank airport and terminal were not completed until 1930. Memorial Day weekend was the official opening. So the Lockheed airstrip as depicted in 1928 predated the United Airport and fancy terminal, which were yet to be built, on a separate parcel of land about a mile to the west of the original Lockheed complex. Lockheed maintained this airstrip all through the 1930s and into the early 1940s, as a facility separate from the Burbank airport.
Here's an excerpt from the Burbank airport history from Wiki, under the name until recently, Bob Hope Airport:
The airport has been United Airport (1930–1934), Union Air Terminal (1934–1940), Lockheed Air Terminal (1940–1967), Hollywood-Burbank Airport (1967–1978), Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport (1978–2003), Bob Hope Airport (2003–2016), and Hollywood Burbank Airport (2016-).[3]
Boeing Aircraft and Transport (BA&T) was a holding company created in 1928 that included Boeing Aircraft and United Air Lines, itself a holding company for a collection of small airlines that continued to operate under their own names. One of these airlines was Pacific Air Transport (PAT), which Boeing had acquired because of PAT's west coast mail contract in January 1928.[7] BA&T sought a site for a new airport for PAT and found one in Burbank. BA&T had the benefit of surveys that the Aeronautics Department of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce had conducted starting in 1926 to identify potential airport sites.[8]
It took BA&T a year and the cooperation of the city to assemble the site.[9] The 234-acre (0.95 km2) site was rife with vines and trees and the ground had to be filled and leveled, but it had good drainage, a firm landing surface, steady winds, and good access to ground transport.[10] Construction was completed in just seven months [1929-30]. In an age when few aircraft had brakes and many had a tail skid instead of a wheel, runways were not usually paved; those at Burbank had a 5-inch-thick (130 mm) mixture of oil and sand. There were no taxi strips, but the designers left room for them. Two of the runways were over 3,600 feet (1,100 m) long; a third was 2,900 feet (880 m); all were 300 feet (91 m) wide. Generous dimensions, and the site had room for expansion.[11]
External image
http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15799coll65/id/25826/rec/1 Aerial view of the Union Air Terminal Building at Burbank Airport, August 1935 [looking SE]
United Airport was dedicated amid much festivity (including an air show) on Memorial Day weekend (May 30 – June 1), 1930. The airport and its handsome Spanish revival terminal was a showy competitor to nearby Grand Central Airport in Glendale, which was then Los Angeles' main airline terminal. The new Burbank facility was actually the largest commercial airport in the Los Angeles area until it was eclipsed in 1946 by the Los Angeles Airport in Westchester when that facility (formerly Mines Field, then Los Angeles Municipal Airport) commenced scheduled airline operations.
The Burbank facility remained United Airport until 1934 when it was renamed Union Air Terminal. The name change came the same year that Federal anti-trust actions caused United Aircraft and Transport Corp. to dissolve, which took effect September 26, 1934. The Union Air Terminal moniker stuck until Lockheed bought the airport in 1940 and renamed it Lockheed Air Terminal.
[end of excerpt from Wikipedia]