Foster Army Air Field
Victoria, Victoria County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Prior to World War II, in an effort to match the powerful air armadas of the Axis nations, the U.S. Army Air Corps (later U.S. Army Air Forces) rapidly increased its number of training installations throughout the country. The city of Victoria secured an advanced single engine aerial gunnery training command here, with construction beginning on April 25, 1941. Initially named Victoria Field, the military renamed the site in honor of 1st Lt. Arthur L. Foster, an instructor at Brooks Field (San Antonio) killed when his plane crashed in 1925. The first class of cadets arrived in Sept. 1941 and subsequent classes arrived throughout the war. Cadets received both classroom flight instruction and gunnery training on site, with aerial gunnery practice at ranges on Matagorda Island and Matagorda Peninsula. In 1942, the military assigned a unit of the Women's Army Corps here. Cooperation between the U.S. and Allied nations brought foreign aviators here during the war for training, most notably the 201st Fighter Squadron, Mexican Expeditionary Air Force (The Aztec Eagles). The end of World War II brought the closure of military sites across the nation. Foster Army Air Field (AFF) closed on October 31, 1945; however, the airfield's inactivation was short lived. In 1951, the Korean War created a need for additional jet training facilities and once again the people of Victoria rallied behind efforts to secure a military installation. As a result of local solicitation, the military reactivated Foster AFF on April 1, 1952, with the first class of jet aviation cadets arriving in March 1953. On July 1, 1954, Foster Air Force Base (AFB) became a permanent military installation and later became the tactical air command control center for the western U.S. In Dec. 1958 the military closed Foster AFB. Two years later the federal government turned the airfield over to Victoria County in exchange for nearby Aloe Field, which the governemnt sold to private investors. In 1976, Foster Field became Victoria Regional Airport. (2008)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
As the United States raced to build an air force before entering World War II, Victoria secured an advanced aerial gunnery training field, opened in 1941 and named for a young instructor killed in a 1925 crash. Cadets trained here throughout the war, firing over ranges on the Matagorda coast, and the base even hosted the Aztec Eagles — Mexico's 201st Fighter Squadron — as Allied fliers trained side by side. Closed at war's end, it was reactivated for jet training during the Korean War, became a permanent Air Force base, and finally passed into civilian hands as Victoria's regional airport.
Why it matters
Foster Field shows how mid-century wars turned Texas into a vast training ground for American air power, and how those installations reshaped the economies and infrastructure of the towns that hosted them.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the last anxious months before the United States entered World War II, the country looked across two oceans at the massed air forces of the Axis powers and realized how far behind it stood. The response was a crash program: the U.S. Army Air Corps, soon reorganized as the Army Air Forces, threw up training installations across the nation at astonishing speed. The bottleneck in modern air war was never just planes — it was trained crews, and they had to be produced by the tens of thousands.
Texas, with its wide skies, flat terrain, and long flying weather, became one of the great training grounds of that effort. Towns competed to host fields, understanding that a base meant payrolls, contracts, and a permanent mark on the map. Victoria, on the coastal plain of South Texas, secured an advanced single-engine aerial gunnery training command, and construction began on April 25, 1941 — months before Pearl Harbor pulled the country into the fight.
What rose from that ground was part of an enormous, hurried machine for turning civilians into aircrew. The nearby Matagorda coast, with its open ranges over water, offered exactly what gunnery practice demanded: room to shoot without hitting anyone.
People & events
The field was first called Victoria Field, but the military soon renamed it for 1st Lt. Arthur L. Foster, an instructor at San Antonio's Brooks Field who had been killed when his plane crashed in 1925. It was a fitting choice — a base built to teach flying, named for a man who had died teaching it, more than a decade before the war that gave the field its purpose.
The first cadets arrived in September 1941, and class after class followed as the war ground on. They took classroom instruction and flight training on site, then practiced aerial gunnery over ranges on Matagorda Island and the Matagorda Peninsula. In 1942 a unit of the Women's Army Corps was assigned here, part of the vast expansion of women's roles that the war forced across American life.
The field's most memorable chapter came through Allied cooperation. Foreign aviators trained at Foster, most notably the 201st Fighter Squadron of the Mexican Expeditionary Air Force — the famous "Aztec Eagles." Mexican and American fliers preparing side by side on the Texas coast was a small, vivid emblem of a genuinely international war effort. When victory came in 1945, the great demobilization swept away bases nationwide, and Foster Army Air Field closed on October 31 of that year.
Its place in the American story
Foster's story did not end with World War II, and that second act is what makes it so revealing. In 1951 the Korean War created a sudden need for jet-training facilities, and once again the people of Victoria organized to bring a base back. Their solicitation worked: the field was reactivated on April 1, 1952, and the first class of jet cadets arrived in March 1953. In 1954 it became Foster Air Force Base, a permanent installation, and later served as a tactical air command control center for the western United States before closing for good in December 1958.
That cycle — build for one war, close, reopen for the next, then close again — is the American mid-century writ small. The nation's defense infrastructure expanded and contracted with each conflict, and towns like Victoria lived on that rhythm, rallying each time to secure the payrolls and prestige a base brought.
The final chapter is the most common fate of all. In 1960 the federal government handed the airfield to Victoria County, and in 1976 it became Victoria Regional Airport. All across the country, the runways and hangars built for wartime pilots were converted into the civilian aviation infrastructure Americans still use today — a peacetime dividend hidden inside the machinery of war.
If you visit
You'll find this history at what is now Victoria Regional Airport, and that is precisely the point: the ordinary regional airport you might fly into carries the bones of a wartime base beneath it. Look at the scale of the runways and the layout of the field with that in mind, and the place reads differently.
Let your imagination stretch to the coast. The gunnery ranges lay out over Matagorda Island and the Matagorda Peninsula, where cadets fired over open water — a reminder that this inland-feeling field was tied to the Gulf. If your travels take you along the South Texas coast, you're moving through the same landscape those young fliers trained over.
Most of all, hold onto the human details the marker preserves: the instructor killed in 1925 whose name the field still bears, the Women's Army Corps unit stationed here, and the Aztec Eagles of Mexico's 201st Squadron preparing for combat on Texas soil. A modern airport rarely announces such things. Read the marker, then watch a plane take off, and let the two eras sit together for a moment.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Arthur L. Foster
Related events
- · World War II aviation training
- · 201st Fighter Squadron (Aztec Eagles)
- · Korean War jet training
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
201st Fighter Squadron, Mexican Expeditionary Air Force (The Aztec Eagles)
Victoria, TX
After German U-boats sank its oil tankers, Mexico declared war on the Axis in 1942 and negotiated to train a fighter squadron in Texas. The 201st Fighter Squadron of the Mexican Expeditionary Air Force—the "Aztec Eagles"—brought 300 volunteers to Foster Field near Victoria in 1944 before deploying to the Philippines in 1945. Flying with the U.S. Fifth Air Force, the unit carried out 96 combat missions against Japanese forces.
Sidney Roper Weisiger
Victoria, TX
Sidney Roper Weisiger grew up in a pioneer Victoria County family, steeped in the region's early history. After serving as county sheriff and in the Navy during World War II, he spent his final years preserving local heritage, writing "Vignettes of Old Victoria" and "Sidney's Journal" for The Victoria Advocate from 1971 until his death in 1975. His widow Hilda later gave his research collection to Victoria College.
Gilbert Onderdonk and Nursery, Texas
Nursery, TX
Pioneer horticulturist Gilbert Onderdonk (1829–1920) left New York for the warmer Texas coast in 1851 for his health, and after the Civil War built a renowned nursery business in Victoria County. When the railroad reached the area, his family opened a branch nursery in 1883 around which the town of Nursery grew, complete with a post office where Onderdonk served as postmaster and shipping agent for his mail-order trade. He earned a national reputation developing new varieties of peach and other fruit trees.
Dr. Edward Fred Knipling
Port Lavaca, TX
Born near Port Lavaca in 1909, Edward F. Knipling grew up watching the screwworm fly ravage livestock, an experience that shaped his life's work. As a USDA entomologist he pioneered the sterile insect technique—flooding a population with sterilized males to collapse it—a once-controversial idea that eventually wiped the pest out of the United States by 1972. His wartime work on insect control also earned him national and international honors.