Hensley Field
Grand Prairie, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The city of Dallas purchased land at this site in 1928 and leased it to the U.S. Army for a training airfield, as Love Field, established in Dallas in 1917, had become too busy to provide safe facilities for training. The field was named for Major William N. Hensley, an air officer for the Eighth Corps Army Area who helped select the base site before his death. Army air operations were moved here from Love Field, and Hensley Field became the center of all area Army air training operations and a key repair and refueling point in the southwest. As World War II loomed, the U.S. War Department granted the use of a part of Hensley Field to the Navy for a naval reserve aviation base. Known as "Prairie Navy" because of its inland location, it was commissioned in May 1941. Also in 1941, the North American Aviation Company transferred production of the T-6 and Navy SNJ "Texan" planes here from California, and the Army Air Corps moved its midwestern headquarters of the ferry command to Hensley Field. In 1943 the naval reserve aviation base was redesignated Dallas Naval Air Station. Personnel trained here included fleet, Coast Guard and Marine pilots, three future astronauts, a contingent of free French forces and women accepted for volunteer emergency service (WAVES). In 1944 the North American Aviation Facility was re-tooled to produce B-24 bombers. By the end of World War II, Hensley Field had expanded to include 4,104 people. After the war, Congress established a naval air training program to preserve the skills and expertise of ex-military personnel. The Navy officially took over Hensley Field on May 1, 1949, but the Air Force remained as tenant. Dallas Naval Air Station remained in operation until 1998. (2000)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Dallas bought this land in 1928 and leased it to the Army for a training field, relieving an overcrowded Love Field, and named it for Major William N. Hensley. As World War II loomed the Navy took part of the base for a reserve aviation station — nicknamed the 'Prairie Navy' for its inland setting — and North American Aviation began building T-6 trainers and later B-24 bombers here. The field trained fleet, Marine, Coast Guard, and free French pilots, plus WAVES and three future astronauts, before finally closing as Dallas Naval Air Station in 1998.
Why it matters
Hensley Field shows how a modest municipal airfield became a linchpin of American air power, churning out warplanes and aviators across World War II and the Cold War.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the late 1920s, aviation had grown from daredevil novelty into serious business and serious defense, and Dallas was already an air town. Love Field had been established in 1917, during the First World War, and a decade later it had become too busy to safely double as a training ground. So in 1928 the city bought land at this site and leased it to the U.S. Army for a dedicated training airfield.
The field was named for Major William N. Hensley, an air officer for the Eighth Corps Army Area who helped choose the base site before his death. From the start, then, this was a place defined by the swift maturing of American military aviation between the wars.
Then the world darkened. As the 1930s closed and another world war loomed, quiet training fields across the country were suddenly needed for far more, and Hensley Field was pulled into the vast machinery of American mobilization.
People & events
Hensley Field became the hub of all Army air training in the area and a key repair and refueling point across the Southwest. As war approached, the War Department handed part of the field to the Navy for a naval reserve aviation base — commissioned in May 1941 and nicknamed the 'Prairie Navy' for the odd sight of naval aviation drilling far inland on the Texas plains.
That same year the field became a center of production as well as training. North American Aviation moved manufacture of the T-6 and Navy SNJ 'Texan' trainers here from California, and the Army Air Corps relocated its midwestern ferry-command headquarters to the base. In 1943 the naval reserve station was redesignated Dallas Naval Air Station, and by 1944 the North American plant had been re-tooled to build B-24 bombers.
The people who passed through are a roll call of the whole war effort: fleet, Coast Guard, and Marine pilots; a contingent of Free French forces training far from occupied home; women serving as WAVES; and three future astronauts. By war's end the field had swelled to more than 4,100 people. It kept flying long after — the Navy formally took over in 1949, and Dallas Naval Air Station remained in operation until 1998.
Its place in the American story
Hensley Field is a compact lesson in how the United States became an air power. The nation didn't build that strength only in great coastal shipyards and famous factories; it built it in hundreds of places like this — a municipal airfield a city bought in 1928 that, within little more than a decade, was training combat pilots and rolling heavy bombers off the line.
It also shows how thoroughly the Second World War fused training, production, and logistics in single locations. Here airmen learned to fly, aircraft were manufactured and ferried, and planes across the Southwest were repaired and refueled — all on the same ground, at the same time.
And its long afterlife tells the Cold War story. A base born to meet one war did not close when that war ended; it flew on for another half-century, a reminder that the mobilization of the 1940s hardened into the permanent military establishment of the decades that followed.
If you visit
Look out over this ground and picture the improbable scene the marker preserves: sailors and naval aircraft drilling on the open Texas prairie, hundreds of miles from any ocean — the 'Prairie Navy' at work. It is one of those details that makes the sweep of the war suddenly vivid and local.
Think, too, about the range of people who trained here — fleet and Marine and Coast Guard aviators, Free French airmen far from home, the women of the WAVES, and three young flyers who would one day go to space. For a stretch of the 1940s, a great cross-section of the war effort moved through this one field.
As a road-trip stop, this is a place to reflect on scale and endurance: a field that grew from a 1928 city purchase into a base of more than four thousand people, that helped win a world war and then served on until 1998. Stand here and let the quiet stand in for all the engines that once filled this sky.
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
- · Major William N. Hensley
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Avion Village
Grand Prairie, TX
With housing critically short near defense plants in the early 1940s, federal officials seized on Avion Village as an experiment in fast, low-cost quality housing through prefabrication and mutual home ownership. Designed by Roscoe DeWitt and David Williams with modernist architect Richard Neutra, the 300-unit project launched in May 1941 amid a publicized race that saw the first house framed in under an hour and the whole development finished in 100 days. Workers from North American Aviation were the first residents, and in 1948 they bought the community, which remains resident-owned.
Grand Prairie Airfield
Grand Prairie, TX
The Curtiss Flying Service bought this Grand Prairie tract in 1929 and opened an airport and flying school in 1930, only to see it shuttered within the year by the Depression. Aviator Lou Foote revived it as a flying school before the U.S. Navy bought the field in 1942 and built it into a primary flight-training facility, where about 1,000 men learned to fly during World War II, some practicing night landings without permanent lights. After the war the field passed to the Texas National Guard and the Army before closing in 1976.
Colonel Neel E. Kearby
Arlington, TX
Raised in Arlington, Neel Kearby earned a business degree and joined the Army Air Corps, rising to command the 348th Fighter Group in the Pacific during World War II. Flying the bulky P-47 Thunderbolt he had drilled his pilots to fight aggressively, he ran up 22 aerial victories—including a record six enemy planes downed in a single mission on October 11, 1943, which earned him the Medal of Honor. He was killed in action over New Guinea in March 1944.
Southwestern Medical College
Dallas, TX
Founded in 1943 amid the pressures of World War II, Southwestern Medical College set out to give Dallas and North Texas a medical school that met the rigorous national standards born of the Flexner Report. Classes for its first 200 students met in prefabricated military buildings beside Parkland Hospital, and during the war the school doubled as an Army specialized training unit whose students served as military medical officers. Affiliation with the University of Texas in 1949 and a growth surge beginning in 1968 built it into today's UT Southwestern Medical Center, home to multiple Nobel laureates.