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Kelly Air Force Base

San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas

Marker Inscription

As World War I raged in Europe, the United States began to build up and expand its military aviation forces. In his search for a new army aviation training site, Maj. Benjamin Foulois found 700 acres of flat farmland with a water supply near the Missouri-Pacific rail line, then seven miles south of San Antonio. With the help of U.S. Senator Morris Sheppard of Texas, the site was acquired and cleared. Aviation operations began here on April 5, 1917, the day before the United States declared war on Germany. Kelly Field, named for George Edward Maurice Kelly, the first military pilot killed in a plane crash at nearby Fort Sam Houston in 1911, trained aviators, mechanics and support personnel for war duty. After additional land was acquired, the field was divided into Kelly Number 1 (later renamed Duncan Field) and Kelly Number 2. The Air Service Advanced Flying School, which headquartered at Kelly Number 2, trained pilots including Charles Lindbergh, Curtis LeMay and numerous future Air Force chiefs of staff. During World War II, Kelly saw a tremendous increase in its civilian and military workforce, including women, who were known as "Kelly Katies." After the Air Force became an independent military service in 1947, the field became known as Kelly Air Force Base. Personnel at Kelly were significantly involved with air transport and maintenance during the Korean conflict, the Cold War, Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Once the largest employer in San Antonio, Kelly Air Force Base realigned in 2001 in response to peacetime defense spending cuts. (2001)

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

When Major Benjamin Foulois scouted farmland south of San Antonio in 1917, he found the site that became Kelly Field, opened the day before the U.S. declared war on Germany. Named for the first military pilot killed in a crash, it trained aviators and mechanics for two world wars and taught fliers including Charles Lindbergh and Curtis LeMay. Through the Korean War, the Cold War, and Desert Storm it grew into San Antonio's largest employer before realigning in 2001.

Why it matters

Kelly stands at the birth of American military aviation and traces the arc of U.S. air power across nearly every conflict of the twentieth century.

The story behind this marker

AI context

The era

In the spring of 1917, the United States stood at the edge of a war it had spent nearly three years trying to avoid. Across the Atlantic, the airplane had gone from a fragile novelty to a weapon of war in barely a decade, and European armies were fielding fighters and bombers by the thousands. America, by contrast, had almost no military aviation to speak of — a handful of aircraft, a few trained fliers, and no real system for producing more.

South Texas was an unlikely cradle for a new kind of warfare, but it had exactly what early aviation needed: wide, flat, open country and reliable weather that let fliers train nearly year-round. The land near San Antonio — seven miles out from town, close to a rail line and a dependable water supply — offered room to build from nothing.

That combination of national urgency and local geography is what put an airfield here. The country needed pilots and mechanics faster than it had ever needed them, and the terrain around San Antonio made it possible to train them at scale. What began on 700 acres of farmland would grow, over the following decades, into one of the most important military installations in the region.

People & events

The story begins with a search. Major Benjamin Foulois, one of the Army's earliest aviators, went looking for a place to train the fliers a coming war would demand, and he found it in the farmland south of San Antonio. With the help of a Texas senator, the site was acquired and cleared, and aviation operations began on April 5, 1917 — one day before the nation declared war on Germany. The timing was almost poetic: the field opened for business the day before the business became urgent.

The name carried its own weight. The field honored George Edward Maurice Kelly, remembered as the first military pilot killed in a plane crash, at nearby Fort Sam Houston in 1911. In those years flying was so dangerous that the men who did it were, in a real sense, test pilots for the entire concept of military aviation. To name the field for one of them was to acknowledge the risk baked into every takeoff.

As the field grew it was divided, and its advanced flying school trained a remarkable roster. A young Charles Lindbergh learned his craft here before his famous solo crossing of the Atlantic; Curtis LeMay, who would go on to shape American air power for a generation, passed through as well, along with numerous future Air Force chiefs of staff. When World War II sent demand soaring again, the workforce swelled with civilians and military personnel alike — including the women known affectionately as the "Kelly Katies," who kept the aircraft and the mission moving.

Its place in the American story

Kelly's history is, in miniature, the history of American air power. The field opened at the very moment the United States committed to World War I, and it was still central to the mission through the Korean conflict, the long decades of the Cold War, and the deployments of Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Few places can trace an unbroken line through nearly every major American conflict of the twentieth century.

What makes that arc matter is the people who moved through it. When an airfield trains the man who first flew alone across the Atlantic and the man who later commanded the nation's strategic bombing force, it stops being merely a local landmark and becomes a seedbed for the country's aviation leadership. The chiefs of staff who trained here carried the field's influence into every corner of the modern Air Force.

There is an institutional milestone folded into the name itself. When the Air Force became an independent military service in 1947, the field became Kelly Air Force Base — a small change of words that marked a large change in American defense, as air power stepped out from under the Army's wing and became a service of its own.

If you visit

Come here thinking about scale and time. What started as 700 acres of cleared farmland became, for a stretch, the largest employer in all of San Antonio — a reminder that a military installation is also a community, a payroll, and a way of life for tens of thousands of families. The realignment in 2001, in response to peacetime spending cuts, closed one chapter of that story, but the imprint on the city remains.

As you take in the flat, open ground, picture why it was chosen: the same wide horizons that made this good farmland made it ideal for teaching nervous student pilots to take off, circle, and land, again and again, in the fragile aircraft of a century ago. The geography that drew Major Foulois is still legible in the landscape.

This is a good stop for anyone tracing the roots of flight across Texas and the Southwest. Pair it with San Antonio's other military-history sites and you can follow the thread from the earliest, most dangerous days of Army aviation all the way to the jet age — a full century of American flight rooted in one patch of South Texas prairie.

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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Related people

  • · Benjamin Foulois
  • · George Edward Maurice Kelly
  • · Charles Lindbergh
  • · Curtis LeMay

Themes & tags

Military & WartimeInnovation & FlightLandmark

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