Flexible gunnery training ended in September 1945, : 2–3 and the base became a demobilization center for soldiers' separation physicals and final pay.
The subsequent population peaked with nearly 11,000 officers and enlisted personnel including more than 4,700 students. In March 1945, the base switched to B-29 gunnery training which included the manipulation trainer on the ground with camera guns. : 18 By 1944, gunnery students utilized B-17, B-24 Liberator and B-40 Flying Fortress gunship aircraft (for example by firing at aircraft-towed targets).
The 82d Flying Training Wing (Flexible Gunnery) was activated at the base as one of ten Army Air Forces Flying Training Command wings on 23 August 1943.
#WEATHER LAS VEGAS RADAR MOVIE#
More than 45,000 B-17 gunners were trained the USAAF training movie The Rear Gunner was filmed at the airfield in 1943. The first B-17 Flying Fortresses arrived in 1942 and allowed training of 600 gunnery students and 215 co-pilots from the field every five weeks at the height of the war. : 2–3 Many pieces of the destroyed aerial drone targets litter the hillside north of the gunnery range, and can be seen in town when the sun reflects off them. Gunnery training began in January 1942, with guntruck platforms being used in January and February. Las Vegas Army Airfield was both activated and began flying training on 20 December 1941. Las Vegas Army Airfield The Las Vegas Army Airfield had three runways in 1942, the year Tonopah Army Airfield opened in August (the Tonopah Bombing Range had been divided in 1941 into the Tonopah and Las Vegas General Ranges). Permanent construction for barracks to house 3,000 people began in mid-1941, and by 7 December, 10 AT-6 Texan advanced flight trainers and 17 Martin B-10 bombers were at the airfield. Vehicle parts were from local service stations and gasoline and oil from the Civilian Conservation Corps (the Block 16 brothels in Las Vegas were closed). WPA barracks in Las Vegas were used for enlisted men, and the motor pool with 6 vintage trucks and a semi-trailer was next to the WPA barracks.
#WEATHER LAS VEGAS RADAR PLUS#
Martinus Stenseth), and a month later 5 administrative NCOs plus other support personnel arrived.
: 2–1 The city's Federal Building became the May 1941 location of the 79th Air Base Group detachment (5 staff officers commanded by Lt. McCarran Field was bought on 2 January 1941 by the City of Las Vegas, was leased to the Army on 5 January, and was "signed over" to the Quartermaster Corps on 25 January-Army construction began in March 1941. Renamed to McCarran Field in the mid-1930s, there were "difficulties in securing the use" of the airfield north of Las Vegas for a Nevada World War II Army Airfield. Not to be confused with the 1942 "Alamo Airport" south of Las Vegas and named for Senator McCarran in 1948. "The 60 × 90 mile area at Tonopah was transferred to the War Department on 29 October 1940" by Executive Order 8578. After the Invasion of Poland in 1939, the "western site board" had located a southern Nevada area "near Tonopah, Nev" by April 1940 for a military range, and in October 1940, Air Corps Major David Schlatter surveyed the southwest United States for a military airfield. Whitefield for landing sites, and by "mid-1925 the Air Service possessed information on nearly thirty-five hundred landing places, including more than twenty-eight hundred emergency landing areas, in the United States." The 1929 airfield (dirt runway, water well, and small operations shack) north of Las Vegas-operated by the 1925 Western Air Express for Contract Air Mail (CAM) Route #4, LA-to- SLC-was used by the Army Air Corps in the 1930s for training flights. The base also has the Combined Air and Space Operations Center-Nellis.įor this base's eponym who was KIA in the 1944 European Theater of Operations, see 1st Lt William Nellis.Īfter World War I, Nevada and other western inland states were surveyed by Capt. Nellis hosts air combat exercises such as Exercise Red Flag and close air support exercises such as Green Flag-West flown in " Military Operations Area (MOA) airspace", associated with the nearby Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR). Nellis Air Force Base (" Nellis" colloq.) is a United States Air Force installation in southern Nevada. IATA: LSV, ICAO: KLSV, FAA LID: LSV, WMO: 723865
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