Air Force Bases

From 1937 to 1994, Lowry Air Force Base, located on the eastern edge of the city of Denver, served the nation and the surrounding community in many distinguished ways. The air base, primarily a technical training center, graduated more than 1.1 million enlisted members and officers in skills ranging from armament to photography, tremendously strengthening the countrys war efforts in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War. In addition, from the 1980s, Lowry Air Force Base remained one of Colorados largest employers, with approximately 10,000 military and civilian men and women, providing an economic impact approaching $1 billion annually. Thus Lowry significantly contributed to maintaining the worlds largest air force and to promoting the accelerated growth of the Denver metro area and Colorado.

This anthology discusses the converging operational issues of air base defense and counterinsurgency. It explores the diverse challenges associated with defending air assets and joint personnel in a counterinsurgency environment. The authors are primarily Air Force officers from security forces, intelligence, and the office of special investigations, but works are included from a US Air Force pilot and a Canadian air force officer. The authors examine lessons from Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other conflicts as they relate to securing air bases and sustaining air operations in a high-threat counterinsurgency environment. The essays review the capabilities, doctrine, tactics, and training needed in base defense operations and recommend ways in which to build a strong, synchronized ground defense partnership with joint and combined forces. The authors offer recommendations on the development of combat leaders with the depth of knowledge, tactical and operational skill sets, and counterinsurgency mind set necessary to be effective in the modern asymmetric battlefield.

Hill Air Force Base is located 30 miles north of Salt Lake City, Utah. It was named in honor of Maj. Ployer Peter Hill, who was killed in a crash of a Boeing B-17 at Wright Field. In World War II, the base became a maintenance, supply, and temporary surplus aircraft storage depot. Hill supported US forces in the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. It also became a maintenance and support facility for the Air Force's turbojet aircraft and missiles during the Cold War. One of the base's important missions is support for the Utah Test and Training Range. Currently, Hill Air Force Base has 78 F-35s assigned to the 388th and 419th Fighter Wings.

This volume is the second in a series on active Air Force bases and a continuation of a recent line of works prepared for the Center for Air Force History under the Reference Series. These reference books contain specific information about a number of topics of interest to the United States Air Force and other arms of the Department of Defense. They are designed to present fundamental data about such diverse subjects as Air Force aircraft, combat action, unit lineage and honors, campaign medals and streamers, and air bases, for those who will write more extensive narrative accounts about Air Force activities and operations. Volume II in the Air Force Bases series provides important background information about overseas installations that are less well known than domestic stations. The active installations included in this volume, to be sure, represent only a fraction of the overseas bases, fields, and stations operated by the United States Air Force and its predecessor organizations since the beginning of World War II. Nevertheless, many of the most significant and enduring air bases appear in these pages, some of which are essential to America's defense posture. This work represents a starting point for military students and staff officers involved in defense research or planning, and for scholars interested in serious research of air bases and the Air Force organizations that operated from them.

In April 1917, as the United States entered World War I, the Aviation Section of the U.S. Army Signal Corps had only a handful of usable flying fields. This number quickly grew, ultimately exceeding 40 by the end of the war. Several uncompleted fields at the time of the Armistice were abandoned, and in the period between the world wars, the number of fields decreased more until only a relatively few were in use in 1939, when the country again began to rebuild its land and air forces. By the end of 1943, these few fields had grown to an astounding peak of 783-345 main bases, 116 subbases, and 322 auxiliary fields - a number not including the many depots and ranges. Of the 89 bases described in this volume, only Langley and Kelly, which were both under construction in April 1917, remain from the pre-World War I era. Eight others were completed during that war, 11 were established between the wars, and 11 more have been opened since the end of World War II. The remaining 57 bases were built as part of the tremendous growth during the latter war. This volume deals, in a statistical format, with the histories of these bases, a topic of particular interest both inside and outside the Air Force. The book provides a ready reference for basic information on active USAF bases within the United States as of 1982, the 75th anniversary of military aviation in the United States and the date established as the cutoff for research in assembling this volume. The history contained in these bases is as old and as new as the history of aviation: the area where the Wright brothers conducted their early experiments is now included within Wright Patterson AFB, while tests of the latest experimental aircraft and space vehicles take place at Edwards AFB. Each base has its own special history and its own place in history. Air Force Bases should serve as a convenient resource for those interested in dates of activation, occupancy, closure, and transferral; in lists of units stationed at each installation; in the chief support organizations; and in the names of commanders. While numerous unit or organizational histories are available, much less has been written about the bases from which these units actually operated and trained. This volume fills that void.