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.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1941 the United States was racing to prepare for a war it had not yet entered, and open, dry, endlessly clear country suddenly became a strategic asset. The plains around Lubbock offered exactly what a flying school needed: room to build and skies you could count on. Ten years of persistent effort by city officials finally brought a U.S. Army Air Corps Advanced Flying School to the area.
Built ten miles west of the city, the new base rose where cotton fields and grassland had been, as barracks, runways, and military facilities replaced the crops. It officially opened in January 1942, just as the country was mobilizing in earnest.
The timing tells the whole story. A place that had been farmland one season was training military pilots the next — a small, vivid example of how quickly wartime America could reinvent a stretch of prairie.
People & events
The following month, in February 1942, the base was renamed the Lubbock Army Flying School as its first class of cadets arrived. Over the war years it became a factory for airmen, training more than 7,000 World War II pilots before it was deactivated in 1945.
Peace did not retire the field for long. During the postwar years reserve units used the facilities, and the barracks were converted into housing for returning veterans and their families — the same buildings that had launched pilots now sheltering the men who had flown and fought.
By 1949 the base was reactivated and given the name it would keep. It was renamed in honor of First Lt. Augustus F. Reese, Jr., a native of nearby Shallowater, Texas, who was killed in action during World War II. Naming the field for a local man lost in the war tied this national installation directly to the community that had worked so hard to bring it there.
Its place in the American story
Bases like Reese were the quiet engine of American air power. Battles are remembered for the pilots in the cockpit, but every one of those pilots first had to be trained somewhere, and training fields across the country's interior did that unglamorous, essential work at enormous scale.
Reese's numbers make the point. Designated a permanent installation by 1950 and transferred to Air Training Command in 1958, it went on to graduate pilots for decades. Across its life more than 25,000 men and women earned their wings there, including over 600 international students from 40 allied countries — a reminder that American training grounds also helped hold together a wider alliance.
When the base was closed in 1997, it left behind a 56-year legacy spanning World War II, the Cold War, and beyond. Few local sites can claim to have shaped half a century of the nation's military aviation.
If you visit
Approach the site with the contrast in mind. This is farm country, and for generations it grew cotton; then, almost overnight, it grew pilots. Holding both of those facts at once is the best way to feel what happened here.
Remember, too, that the name is a memorial. Reese honors a young man from just up the road at Shallowater who did not come home from the war, so the field carries both the achievement of tens of thousands of graduates and the memory of one local loss.
For a traveler, this is a stop about scale and sacrifice rather than scenery. It fits naturally into a South Plains route that looks at how the twentieth century remade this landscape — and it invites you to imagine the sound of training aircraft over ground that had lately known only the wind and the crops.
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
- · First Lt. Augustus F. Reese, Jr.
Related events
- · World War II pilot training
Themes & tags
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