Tonopah Army Air Field
Tonopah Air Force Base
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| Part of Fourth Air Force | |
| Nye County, near Tonopah, Nevada | |
1944 Tonopah AAFld after a $3,000,000 project was completed for runways, new aprons, new water storage tanks, additional quarters and barracks, a new post exchange, supply buildings, crash stations, warehouses, operations buildings, a hangar, a school building, and range facilities. Most construction was complete by the beginning of November 1943.
World War II newspaper: Desert Bomber |
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| Coordinates | 38°03′19″N 117°05′19″W / 38.05528°N 117.08861°W |
| Type | air base |
| Code | 2096585 (GNIS) NV99799F603300 (FFID) J09NV0969 (FUDS) |
| Site information | |
| Controlled by | 413th Army Air Force Base Unit |
| Condition | municipal airport |
| footnotes | |
 Current photos
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Tonopah Air Force Base (Tonopah Army Air Field in World War II) is a Formerly Used Defense Site (FUDS) that was a Tonopah Basin military installation until shortly after it was designated an Air Force Base in 1948. Two of the runways still in use are maintained by Nye County, Nevada; and World War II building foundations and 3 hangars of the base remain at the municipal Tonopah Airport.
The Tonopah Mining District (38°07′29″N 117°15′02″W / 38.12472°N 117.25056°W with Tonopah Manhattan Stage Route (38°04′06″N 117°10′03″W / 38.06833°N 117.16750°W) was an area of the 1900-1921 silver rush, and in September 1939, GHQ Air Force considered improving the airdrome at Tonopah. After World War I, Nevada and other western inland states were surveyed by Capt. Lowell H. Smith and Sgt. William B. 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 McCarren Field north of Las Vegas was used by the Army Air Corps for 1930s training flights. After the 1939 Invasion of Poland, 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. "The 60 x 90 mile area at Tonopah was transferred to the War Department on 29 October 1940" by Executive Order 8578. The 1940 Tonopah Airport Committee was formed by the community to have an airstrip built and although use of the range was delayed until December 1941, the Civil Aeronautics Administration sponsored 1940 construction on a new airfield financed in part by the Works Progress Administration—the 79th Air Base Gp (adv det) became Las Vegas Army Airfield's 1st base operating unit on 17 June 1941, and its Air Corps Gunnery School began on 16 June.
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