Breedlove Airport
Lubbock, Lubbock County, Texas
Marker Inscription
WHEN CHARLES LINDBERGH WAS TRAVELLING THE U.S. BY AIRPLANE ON A SPEAKING TOUR, HE WAS UNABLE TO LAND AT LUBBOCK BECAUSE THERE WAS NO AIRPORT AT THE TIME. CITY LEADERS AND AVIATION ENTHUSIASTS, DETERMINED TO SEE THAT LUBBOCK WOULD NOT MISS OUT ON THE NEW WAVE OF AVIATION, RAISED THE FUNDS FOR A MUNICIPAL AIRPORT. THE AIRPORT WAS ESTABLISHED IN 1930 AT ITS PRESENT LOCATION NORTH OF THE CITY, AND WAS MANAGED BY CLENT BREEDLOVE, A WELL-KNOWN LOCAL AVIATOR. IN SEP. 1939, BREEDLOVE LEFT HIS POSITION TO OPEN HIS OWN FLYING SERVICE LOCATED AT THE SECOND HANGAR AT THE LUBBOCK MUNICIPAL AIRPORT. THEN ON DEC. 20, 1941, HE OPENED BREEDLOVE AIRPORT JUST EAST OF THE TAHOKA HIGHWAY (NOW MLK BOULEVARD) ON EAST 50TH STREET. BREEDLOVE LIVED AT THE AIRPORT WITH HIS WIFE AULYNE AND DAUGHTER MARY LOUISE. HE AND HIS WIFE OWNED AND OPERATED THE AIRPORT UNTIL 1947. IT CONSISTED OF FOUR LARGE RUNWAYS, A HANGAR, SHOP AND PARTS ROOM, STORAGE HANGAR, DOPING ROOM, CAFÉ, RESTROOMS AND TWO-STORY ADMINISTRATION BUILDING WITH CONTROL TOWER. DURING WORLD WAR II, BREEDLOVE AIRPORT, SITUATED ON 219 ACRES OF LAND, WAS USED TO TRAIN THOUSANDS OF CADET PILOTS IN THE CIVILIAN PILOT TRAINING PROGRAM (CPTP) AND THE TEXAS TECH PRE-FLIGHTS PROGRAM (309TH COLLEGE TRAINING DETACHMENT). THE SITE ALSO SERVED AS LUBBOCK’S COMMERCIAL AIRPORT DURING THE WAR YEARS. ON FEB. 6, 1943, CONGRESSMAN GEORGE H. MAHON ANNOUNCED THAT A NEW MILITARY CORPS WAS TO USE TEXAS TECH’S FACILITIES FOR WAR-TIME TRAINING. THE PRE-FLIGHT PROGRAM WAS A WAY FOR COLLEGES AND CIVILIAN CONTRACTORS TO PROVIDE THE INITIAL TRAINING FOR PILOTS, WAS CRITICAL TO FULFILLING THE DESPERATE NEED FOR PILOTS DURING THE WAR, AND ALSO GAVE A LARGE ECONOMIC BOOST TO LUBBOCK-AREA BUSINESSES. THE CPTP AND PRE-FLIGHT PROGRAMS EDUCATED AN ESTIMATED 3,750 MILITARY STUDENTS IN THE BASICS OF FLIGHT, CIVIL AIR REGULATIONS AND VARIOUS COLLEGE-LEVEL COURSES.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When Lubbock lacked an airport in the 1920s, civic boosters raised money for a municipal field, opened in 1930 and managed by local flyer Clent Breedlove. In 1941 Breedlove opened his own 219-acre airport east of the Tahoka Highway, complete with four runways, hangars, a café and a control tower. During World War II the field trained thousands of cadet pilots through the Civilian Pilot Training Program and Texas Tech's pre-flight detachment, feeding the nation's desperate wartime need for aviators.
Why it matters
Breedlove Airport shows how a remote West Texas town plugged itself into both the aviation age and the WWII mobilization that turned ordinary civilian fields into engines of the war effort.
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Related people
- · Clent Breedlove
- · Charles Lindbergh
- · George H. Mahon
Related events
- · Civilian Pilot Training Program
- · World War II pilot training
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Original Lubbock Municipal Airport
Lubbock, TX
Charles Lindbergh's 1927 solo Atlantic flight set off a nationwide aviation fever, and Lubbock answered by buying land north of town and completing a stylish art deco brick hangar in 1930. A WPA grant paved concrete runways in 1938, and as the nation edged toward World War II the city handed the field to the Army, where the South Plains Army Airfield trained glider pilots for the USAAF from 1942 to 1945. The city reclaimed the airport after the war and opened a new terminal in 1950.
Dagley Field
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On the eve of World War II, the United States realized it would need pilots by the thousands and launched the Civilian Pilot Training Program to turn college students into aviators. At Texas Technological College in Lubbock, roughly 6,500 cadets moved through the program, and half of them took to the air from this dirt-runway field run by local flyer 'Dag' Dagley. When the war's demand for pilots faded, the field closed and its quarter-section became the College Heights neighborhood.
South Plains Army Air Field
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During World War II, the Army leased and expanded Lubbock's municipal airport into the South Plains Army Air Field, a leading center for training combat glider pilots. Here men learned to fly the engineless Waco CG-4A, the workhorse glider that carried troops silently behind enemy lines. Remarkably, the field trained nearly 80% of America's combat glider pilots, who went on to fly in the D-Day landings, Operation Market Garden, and the crossing of the Rhine. Its story is now told at the Silent Wings Museum on this site.
Reese Air Force Base
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After a decade of lobbying by Lubbock officials, an Army Air Corps advanced flying school opened west of the city in January 1942, replacing cotton fields with barracks and runways. As the Lubbock Army Flying School it trained more than 7,000 pilots before deactivating in 1945, then reactivated in 1949 and was renamed for First Lt. Augustus F. Reese, Jr., a Shallowater native killed in action during World War II. Over a 56-year run, Reese Air Force Base sent more than 25,000 men and women — including hundreds from 40 allied nations — into the sky before its closure in the 1990s.