Reese Air Force Base
Lubbock, Lubbock County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Ten years of concentrated efforts by city officials led to the establishment of a U. S. Army Air Corps Advanced Flying School at Lubbock in the summer of 1941. Built ten miles west of the city, where barracks, runways and other military facilities replaced cotton fields and grassland, the base officially opened in January 1942. Renamed Lubbock Army Flying School the next month as the first class of cadets arrived, the base provided training to more than 7,000 World War II pilots by the time of its deactivation in 1945. During the post-war years reserve units used the facilities here, and barracks were converted into housing for returning veterans and their families. By 1949 the base was reactivated and renamed in honor of First Lt. Augustus F. Reese, Jr., a Shallowater, Texas, native killed in action during World War II. Designated a permanent installation by 1950, Reese Air Force Base was transferred to Air Training Command in 1958. Thousands of pilots were trained here in the following decades, but by the 1990s the base was slated for permanent closure, leaving a 56-year legacy of excellence. More than 25,000 men and women earned their wings at Reese, including more than 600 international students from 40 allied countries. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
After a decade of lobbying by Lubbock officials, an Army Air Corps advanced flying school opened west of the city in January 1942, replacing cotton fields with barracks and runways. As the Lubbock Army Flying School it trained more than 7,000 pilots before deactivating in 1945, then reactivated in 1949 and was renamed for First Lt. Augustus F. Reese, Jr., a Shallowater native killed in action during World War II. Over a 56-year run, Reese Air Force Base sent more than 25,000 men and women — including hundreds from 40 allied nations — into the sky before its closure in the 1990s.
Why it matters
Training bases like Reese were the quiet engine of American air power, turning open Texas prairie into a place where tens of thousands of pilots earned their wings across half a century of war and peace.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · First Lt. Augustus F. Reese, Jr.
Related events
- · World War II pilot training
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Dagley Field
Lubbock, TX
On the eve of World War II, the United States realized it would need pilots by the thousands and launched the Civilian Pilot Training Program to turn college students into aviators. At Texas Technological College in Lubbock, roughly 6,500 cadets moved through the program, and half of them took to the air from this dirt-runway field run by local flyer 'Dag' Dagley. When the war's demand for pilots faded, the field closed and its quarter-section became the College Heights neighborhood.
Original Lubbock Municipal Airport
Lubbock, TX
Charles Lindbergh's 1927 solo Atlantic flight set off a nationwide aviation fever, and Lubbock answered by buying land north of town and completing a stylish art deco brick hangar in 1930. A WPA grant paved concrete runways in 1938, and as the nation edged toward World War II the city handed the field to the Army, where the South Plains Army Airfield trained glider pilots for the USAAF from 1942 to 1945. The city reclaimed the airport after the war and opened a new terminal in 1950.
South Plains Army Air Field
Lubbock, TX
During World War II, the Army leased and expanded Lubbock's municipal airport into the South Plains Army Air Field, a leading center for training combat glider pilots. Here men learned to fly the engineless Waco CG-4A, the workhorse glider that carried troops silently behind enemy lines. Remarkably, the field trained nearly 80% of America's combat glider pilots, who went on to fly in the D-Day landings, Operation Market Garden, and the crossing of the Rhine. Its story is now told at the Silent Wings Museum on this site.
Breedlove Airport
Lubbock, TX
When Lubbock lacked an airport in the 1920s, civic boosters raised money for a municipal field, opened in 1930 and managed by local flyer Clent Breedlove. In 1941 Breedlove opened his own 219-acre airport east of the Tahoka Highway, complete with four runways, hangars, a café and a control tower. During World War II the field trained thousands of cadet pilots through the Civilian Pilot Training Program and Texas Tech's pre-flight detachment, feeding the nation's desperate wartime need for aviators.