Before World War II the only way to reach Topsail was by boat. People came over to picnic and dig for the buried treasure that Blackbeard was rumored to have left in the dunes. The war changed that. In 1946 the U.S. Navy partnered with Johns Hopkins University on a classified program they called Operation Bumblebee. They dredged a waterway. They built roads. They piped fresh water out to the island. They erected an arsenal building on the sound side, launching pads on the oceanfront, and a series of seven concrete observation towers up and down the beach to track the rockets they were about to fire. Between 1946 and 1948 more than two hundred experimental missiles were launched from Topsail. The work pioneered the ramjet engine and the guidance systems that would eventually carry American spacecraft into orbit. Operation Bumblebee was, in effect, the beginning of the U.S. space program.

The Bumblebee tests ended in 1948 when the Navy moved its rocket program to facilities at Point Mugu in California. The federal government sold the Topsail land back to private buyers. The Town of Topsail Beach was incorporated in 1963. Many of the wartime structures were left where they stood. Several of the concrete observation towers still rise from the dunes today - some converted into private homes, others into restaurants and souvenir shops. The towers have walls fourteen inches thick, designed to withstand the blast of a rocket that went wrong, and they have outlasted hurricanes Bertha, Fran, Floyd, and Florence with very little damage. The assembly building where rocket sections were put together is now the Missiles and More Museum at 720 Channel Boulevard.

Just inland from Topsail, at Camp Davis in Pender County, the Women Airforce Service Pilots flew tow-target missions during World War II. They piloted fast aircraft pulling target sleeves behind them so that anti-aircraft gunners on the ground could practice. The work was dangerous - thirty-eight WASPs died in service across the country, some of them at Camp Davis - and for decades it went officially unrecognized; the women were classified as civilians and denied military honors. The Missiles and More Museum on Topsail opened a permanent WASP exhibit on April 4, 2011, telling the story of the first women trained to fly American military aircraft. The exhibit shares the museum with displays on Operation Bumblebee, Camp Davis, the pirate history, and an international shell collection - a strange combination that adds up to a remarkably accurate picture of what the island has actually been.

Topsail Beach is the southernmost of three towns on the twenty-six-mile island - Surf City to the north, North Topsail Beach further still. The town covers 5.8 square miles, of which less than three-quarters is dry land at high tide. The 2020 census counted 461 people. The median age is fifty-six. There is one road in and one road out. There are no high-rise hotels and the zoning has been written to keep it that way. The Sea Vista Motel, a long pink two-story building on the oceanfront, has been operating since 1953 and looks much as it did then. The Sears Landing Grill and Boat dock sits behind it. In summer the population swells with renters, but in February the streets are empty and the only sound on the beach is the wind through the sea oats and the surf. The pirates would not recognize the place. They might recognize the quiet.