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Notes |
After the Japanese attack on the U.S. Navy and Army Air Forces in and around Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, the United States War Department needed bases for training military personnel. A 1,980 acre tract of agricultural land located between the rural Nebraska towns of Fairmont and Geneva was selected for an Army airfield. Within ninety days, from September to December, 1942, construction crews, working around the clock, built runways, hangars, barracks, the largest hospital in Nebraska, and other support buildings to house and train over 3,000 airmen. Another 600 civilian personnel were hired to work at the base. The official name for the base was the Fairmont Army Airfield. Over the next three years bomber and support crews went through their final preparations and training before being deployed overseas either to Europe or the Pacific. Units stationed at the airbase during those years included: the 451st Heavy Bombardment Group, the 485th, the 504th, the 16th (training in B-17 Flying Fortress and B-24 Super fortress heavy bombers). Eleven major airfields were constructed in Nebraska up to 1943. The Fairmont Army Airfield housed and trained airmen from all over the country were welcomed with open arms by people from the surrounding towns. The men were given home-cooked meals, taken to local church services, provided with a theater, a USO, and dances. Everyone knew that their stay would be a short one and then they would be gone. In September, 1944, Lt. Colonel Paul Tibbets came to the Fairmont Army Airfield and picked several crews and their support personnel for a secret mission. They were put on a train at night, sent to a special training area in the western U.S., and then were shipped to an island in the Pacific called Tinian for more secret training. Tibbets later commanded a B-29 heavy bomber called the Enola Gay which dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. A second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, a few days later. Japan surrendered and World War II was over. After Japan's surrender in August 1945, the Fairmont Army Airfield was deactivated. Buildings were dismantled, surplus materials were given to local schools and communities, auctions were held, and the land slowly converted back to pre-war status. Only four hangars, the water tower, runways, taxiways, cement foundations, and a few brick and cement structures remain. Now a state airfield, the former base is still used by crop-dusters, local civilian pilots, and as storage for corn in the hangars. In 2003, the airfield was chosen as a National Historic Site. It is hoped that the area can be preserved and some of its contents rebuilt for future generations to see and remember. |
