Major W.F. Long
Terrell, Kaufman County, Texas
Marker Inscription
MISSOURI NATIVE WILLIAM FRANCIS “BILL” LONG WAS 17 WHEN HIS FAMILY MOVED TO TEXAS. DURING WORLD WAR I, HE WAS AN AERIAL OBSERVER AND PILOT IN THE 24TH AERO SQUADRON, FIRST ARMY OBSERVATION GROUP. AFTER THE WAR, HE ESTABLISHED SAN ANTONIO AVIATION AND MOTOR SCHOOL AT STINSON FIELD. IN 1925, HE BOUGHT 251 SURPLUS CURTISS AIRPLANES AND A HANGAR AT LOVE FIELD AND MOVED HIS FLIGHT TRAINING SCHOOL THERE AS DALLAS AVIATION SCHOOL AND AIR COLLEGE. NEVER IDLE, LONG, SOMETIMES REFERRED TO AS “MR. LOVE FIELD,” BUILT A NEW AIRFIELD, CURTISS-WRIGHT FIELD, WITH PARTNERS IN 1929 AT GRAND PRAIRIE. IN 1939, LONG ATTENDED GEN. “HAP” ARNOLD’S WASHINGTON, D. C. BRIEFING ON THE USE OF CIVILIAN CONTRACT SCHOOLS TO TRAIN U. S. ARMY PILOT CADETS IN ANTICIPATION OF WORLD WAR II. LONG RECEIVED A CONTRACT AND THE PROGRAM’S SUCCESS LED TO A SECOND CONTRACT, FOR A SCHOOL AT THE REACTIVATED HICKS FIELD IN FORT WORTH AND FOR AN AIRPLANE MECHANICS TRAINING SCHOOL AT LOVE FIELD. LONG OPENED ANOTHER SCHOOL AT CURTIS FIELD IN BRADY IN MARCH 1941. ENGLAND ALSO SENT ITS ROYAL AIR FORCE (RAF) CADETS TO TRAIN IN THE U. S., CONTRACTING WITH LONG TO OPEN THE NO. 1 BRITISH FLYING TRAINING SCHOOL AT TERRELL. DURING THE WAR, LONG AND ASSOCIATES ACQUIRED ESSAIR AIRLINES WHICH PROVIDED AIRMAIL SERVICE FROM HOUSTON TO AMARILLO, WITH STOPS ACROSS TEXAS. RENAMED PIONEER AIRLINES IN 1946, THE CARRIER ATTESTED LONG’S BELIEF THAT SUCH FEEDER AIRLINES WOULD PROMOTE PASSENGER FLIGHTS WHEN IT EXPANDED TO DOZENS OF CITIES IN TEXAS AND NEW MEXICO. UNDER SIGNIFICANT PRESSURES OF TIME AND WARTIME SHORTAGES, LONG OPERATED FOUR SCHOOLS, TRAINING ABOUT ONE-TENTH OF U. S. ARMY AVIATORS AND ONE-THIRD OF RAF CADETS IN THE U. S. HIS ACCOMPLISHMENTS GARNERED HIM HONORS FROM PRESIDENT HARRY S. TRUMAN AND KING GEORGE VI, AS WELL AS A PLACE IN TEXAS AVIATION HISTORY.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
William Francis "Bill" Long came to Texas as a teenager and found his life's work in the air, flying as an observer with an aero squadron in World War I before building a chain of flight schools across the state. Known as "Mr. Love Field," he trained pilots and mechanics through the 1920s and 30s, then answered the nation's call as war loomed again. During World War II his four schools trained roughly a tenth of U.S. Army aviators and a third of Britain's RAF cadets who came to America, including the No. 1 British Flying Training School at Terrell.
Why it matters
Long's contract flight schools show how private aviation entrepreneurs became essential to Allied victory, mass-producing the pilots who won the air war and helping make Texas a cradle of American aviation.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When Bill Long came of age, the airplane was barely older than he was. Powered flight had begun only a few years into the new century, and when the United States entered the First World War, military aviation was still an improvised, dangerous craft — men learning to fly and to fight at the same time, often in machines of wood, wire, and doped fabric. To serve as an aerial observer or pilot in those years was to be a pioneer twice over.
Texas, meanwhile, was becoming one of the great nurseries of American flight. Wide skies, long stretches of flat open land, and mild winters made it ideal for airfields, and cities like San Antonio and Dallas grew into hubs of early aviation. It was here, in the years after the war, that a generation of veterans turned their wartime skills into livelihoods — barnstorming, carrying mail, and above all teaching others to fly.
The 1920s and '30s were the barnstorming age, when war-surplus aircraft could be bought cheaply and flying was equal parts spectacle and enterprise. By the end of the 1930s, though, the mood had darkened. War was gathering again in Europe and Asia, and the United States began, slowly, to prepare — a preparation in which the men who had built the country's civilian aviation would suddenly prove essential.
People & events
William Francis "Bill" Long was a Missouri boy who came to Texas as a teenager and never quite came back down to earth. In the First World War he flew as an aerial observer and pilot, and when peace came he did what many restless young aviators did — he turned flying into a business. He opened a school at San Antonio's Stinson Field, then in the mid-1920s made a bold bet, buying a fleet of surplus Curtiss aircraft and a hangar at Dallas's Love Field and moving his operation there.
He seems never to have sat still. He built up his Dallas school, earned the affectionate nickname "Mr. Love Field," and joined partners to open a brand-new airfield near Grand Prairie at the close of the 1920s. But his defining moment came in 1939, when he was called to Washington to hear General "Hap" Arnold lay out a daring idea: that private, civilian flight schools could be enlisted to train the flood of military pilots a coming war would demand.
Long said yes, and the results multiplied. One contract became several — a school at a reactivated field near Fort Worth, a mechanics' school back at Love Field, another out at Brady. When Britain sent its Royal Air Force cadets across the ocean to learn to fly in American skies, Long opened the No. 1 British Flying Training School at Terrell to receive them. Running four schools at once under wartime shortages, he helped train a remarkable share of the airmen who would fly for both the United States and Britain — work that earned him the personal recognition of President Truman and King George VI.
Its place in the American story
The story told on this marker is really the story of how a democracy improvises an air force. The United States did not enter the Second World War with enough pilots, or enough places to train them. Rather than build that capacity from scratch, the government turned to entrepreneurs like Long who already knew how to teach flying — and paid them to do it at scale. It was a very American solution: public purpose delivered through private hands.
The British Flying Training School at Terrell is a particularly moving chapter. Britain's own skies were a battleground and its airfields under threat, so young Britons crossed a submarine-haunted Atlantic to earn their wings under the wide, safe skies of Texas. That thousands of Allied airmen trained in the American heartland is a quiet testament to how the war knit the two nations together.
Long's later ventures point to the other half of aviation's American story. The wartime feeder airline he acquired and renamed became one of the regional carriers that stitched Texas and the Southwest together, part of the great postwar democratization of air travel that turned flying from a daredevil's stunt into something an ordinary family might someday do.
If you visit
Terrell today is a quiet Texas town, and the marker asks you to imagine it as it was in the early 1940s — filled with the drone of training aircraft and the unfamiliar accents of young British cadets far from home. Stand a moment and picture the traffic pattern overhead, the flight line, the sheer improbability of RAF blue in Kaufman County.
Terrell has kept faith with that memory; the town preserves the story of the British Flying Training School and the airmen who trained here, including those who never made it home and are remembered in a nearby cemetery. If your route brings you east of Dallas, it makes a rewarding stop for anyone drawn to the human side of the air war.
From here you can trace Long's whole arc across the region — the historic fields around Dallas and Fort Worth that grew from the same barnstorming era. It's a fine reminder that the ordinary airports you fly out of today were, within living memory, frontier ground for a brand-new way of moving through the world.
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
- · William Francis Long
- · Henry "Hap" Arnold
- · Harry S. Truman
- · King George VI
Themes & tags
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