Wendover Air Force Base

Wendover Air Force Base
Part of Second Air Force
Located near: Wendover, Utah
Control Tower at Wendover
Wendover AFB Show map of Utah Wendover AFB Show map of the US
Coordinates	40°43′07″N 114°01′51″W / 40.71861°N 114.03083°W / 40.71861; -114.03083Coordinates: 40°43′07″N 114°01′51″W / 40.71861°N 114.03083°W / 40.71861; -114.03083
Type	Army Airfield/Bombing Range/Test and Development
Site information
Owner	Tooele County, Utah
Condition	Still in use
Site history
Built	1940–45
In use	1941–1965
Wendover Air Force Base
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Nearest city	Wendover, Utah
NRHP Reference #	75001827
Added to NRHP	1 July 1975

1941–1965

Wendover Air Force Base is a former United States Air Force base in Utah now known as Wendover Airport. During World War II, it was a training base for B-17 and B-24 bomber crews. It was the training site of the 509th Composite Group, the B-29 unit that carried out the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

After the war, Wendover was used for training exercises, gunnery range and as a research facility. It was closed by the Air Force in 1969, and the base was given to Wendover City in 1977. Tooele County, Utah, assumed ownership of the airport and base buildings in 1998, and the County continues to operate the airfield as a public airport. A portion of the original bombing range is now the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR) which is used extensively by the Air Force with live fire targets on the range.

Wendover Air Force Base's history began in 1940, when the United States Army began looking for additional bombing ranges. The area near the town of Wendover was well-suited to these needs; the land was virtually uninhabited, had generally excellent flying weather, and the nearest large city (Salt Lake City) was 100 miles (160 km) away (Wendover had around 100 citizens at the time). Though isolated, the area was served by the Western Pacific Railroad, and many of its citizens were employed by the railroad.

Construction of the base began on 20 September 1940 and on the range on 4 November 1940. Wendover Air Base became a subpost of Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City on 29 July 1941. By that time a total of 1,822,000 acres (737,000 ha) had been acquired for the base and associated gunnery/bombing range 86 miles (138 km) long and 18 to 36 miles (29 to 58 km) wide. Ranchers protested the loss of their grazing land, which they claimed would wipe them out and cost the state of Utah $1.5 million annually. They took their complaints to Governor Henry Hooper Blood, but the War Department pressed on with the development of the bombing range. The first military contingent arrived on 12 August 1941, to construct targets on the bombing range. To provide water, a pipeline was run from a spring on Pilot Peak to the base.