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Postwar & ContemporaryProgressive & Modern Era

Edward H. White II Memorial Hangar, Brooks Air Force Base

San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Dedicated June 3, 1970. Edward H. White II Memorial Hangar Brooks Air Force Base Astronaut Lieutenant Colonel Edward H. White II (born at Fort Sam Houston, Nov. 14, 1930) was the first American to walk in space, while tethered to his Gemini spacecraft on June 3, 1965. Along with two companions, he died on Jan. 27, 1967, in a flash fire at the launch site while in training for the first moon flight aboard an Apollo spacecraft. The astronauts' flight heritage is tied closely to the pioneer flying schools of San Antonio. The father of astronaut White, Major General Edward H. White, learned to fly here at Hangar 9, as did Charles A. Lindbergh and many other pioneers. Hangar 9, one of over 30 of its type at Kelly and Brooks fields, was the standard hangar used by the U.S. Army Signal Corps to house the Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny" at flying schools during World War I. Brooks Field was named for San Antonio native Sidney J. Brooks, killed at Kelly Field, Nov. 13, 1917. Construction on Brooks Field began Dec. 11, 1917. Colonel H. Conger Pratt was the first commander. Long a primary school for heavier-than-air craft, it has been used for many pioneer roles, including development of aerospace medicine. (1970)

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

San Antonio was a cradle of American military aviation, and this hangar at Brooks Air Force Base honors astronaut Lt. Col. Edward H. White II, the first American to walk in space, tethered to his Gemini craft in June 1965. White died in the January 1967 Apollo launch-pad fire while training for the first Moon flight; his own father had learned to fly at nearby Hangar 9, as did Charles Lindbergh. That standard WWI-era hangar once sheltered Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny" trainers, linking the pioneers of powered flight to the astronauts who followed.

Why it matters

The site draws a direct line from the fragile biplanes of World War I to the space race, showing how San Antonio's flying fields helped carry America from the Jenny to the Moon.

The story behind this marker

AI context

The era

This hangar honors a chapter of American history in which San Antonio played an outsized role: the birth and rise of military aviation. When the United States entered World War I, the airplane was barely a decade old, and the Army needed places to turn young men into pilots in a hurry. The flat land and clear skies around San Antonio proved ideal, and flying fields sprang up here almost overnight.

Brooks Field was one of them. Construction began on December 11, 1917, under its first commander, Colonel H. Conger Pratt, part of a rush to build training grounds for a nation suddenly at war in the air. The standard hangar of that era, dozens of which stood at fields like Brooks and neighboring Kelly, was built to shelter the fragile Curtiss JN-4 'Jenny,' the biplane trainer on which a generation of American aviators first left the ground.

From those beginnings, San Antonio's fields became a continuous cradle of flight across the twentieth century. What started with wood-and-fabric biplanes evolved, decade by decade, into ever more advanced training, and eventually into the entirely new science of keeping human beings alive at the edge of the sky and beyond. The place that taught men to fly a Jenny would, in time, help prepare men to leave the planet.

People & events

The field carries the name of a local son lost early. Brooks Field was named for San Antonio native Sidney J. Brooks, killed at nearby Kelly Field on November 13, 1917, a reminder that the pioneers of flight paid a steep price from the very start. That sense of cost and courage runs straight through the site's story.

Among those who learned to fly at Hangar 9 was a young man who would become one of the most famous people in the world, Charles A. Lindbergh, who trained in San Antonio in the 1920s before his solo flight across the Atlantic. Also among the field's fliers was Major General Edward H. White, whose son would carry the family's connection to flight higher than anyone then could have imagined.

That son was Lieutenant Colonel Edward H. White II, born at Fort Sam Houston on November 14, 1930. On June 3, 1965, tethered to his Gemini spacecraft, he became the first American to walk in space, floating free above the Earth in one of the defining images of the age. Less than two years later, on January 27, 1967, he and his two crewmates died in a flash fire at the launch pad while training for the first Apollo flight to the Moon. The hangar was dedicated to his memory on June 3, 1970, five years to the day after his walk in space, binding the astronaut's story back to the flying fields where his father had first taken wing.

Its place in the American story

Few places let you see the whole arc of American flight in a single glance. This one does. Stand here and you can trace an unbroken line from the Curtiss Jenny of World War I to the Gemini and Apollo spacecraft of the space race, from canvas wings to the vacuum of space, all rooted in the same patch of Texas ground.

Edward White's spacewalk was a landmark in the Cold War contest that drove America to the Moon, a moment when the nation proved it could not only reach space but move freely within it. His death in the Apollo launch-pad fire was a national tragedy that forced hard lessons in safety, lessons that helped make the later Moon landings possible. His story holds both the triumph and the grief that the space program demanded.

There is a deeper significance, too, in the family thread the marker preserves. A father learns to fly a biplane; his son walks in space. In two generations the same family spans the entire heroic age of flight. It is a distinctly American story of pioneers building on pioneers, and it reminds us that the astronauts did not appear from nowhere. They stood on the shoulders of the young men who once wrestled Jennys into these very skies.

If you visit

The former Brooks base has been redeveloped in the years since the hangar's 1970 dedication, so it is no longer an active airfield; check locally for current access before you plan a visit. What draws you here is the chance to stand where American flight was taught from its earliest days, on ground that connects the first military pilots to the first American to walk in space.

If you can see it, look at the hangar itself as an artifact. It was one of dozens of identical, standard structures built to house those World War I trainers, plain and purposeful, and its very ordinariness is moving once you know what passed through fields like it. Imagine the doors rolled open and a Jenny being wheeled out into the Texas morning.

This is a stop for anyone drawn to aviation and the space age, and a natural one to pair with San Antonio's broader story as a center of military flight. Come with the two images held together in your mind, the fragile biplane and the astronaut adrift above the Earth, and let this quiet place show you how the country traveled from one to the other.

Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.

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  • Margaritaville
    6.0 mi away · 849 East Commerce Street, San Antonio, TX
  • Taco Bell
    6.1 mi away · 849 East Commerce Street, San Antonio, TX
  • Chipotle
    6.1 mi away · 849 East Commerce Street, San Antonio, TX
  • Which Wich?
    6.1 mi away
  • McDonald's
    6.1 mi away · 101 Alamo Plaza, San Antonio, TX
  • Colonial Room
    6.1 mi away · 204 Alamo Plaza, San Antonio, TX

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Related people

  • · Edward H. White II
  • · Charles A. Lindbergh
  • · Sidney J. Brooks

Related events

  • · Gemini 4 spacewalk
  • · Apollo 1 fire

Themes & tags

Innovation & FlightMemorial

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