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    McConnell Air Force Base
    McConnell Air Force Base
    McConnell Air Force Base
    Ebook181 pages58 minutes

    McConnell Air Force Base

    By Steve A. Larsen

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Beginning from its earliest days as an empty parcel of pasture that became a major hub airport for transcontinental air travel to its present use as the busiest refueling operation in the U.S. Air Force, the slice of land known as McConnell Air Force Base is inextricably connected to aviation to nearly the dawn of manned flight. Its military history began in 1941 with the arrival of the Air National Guard, and the base grew to a multifaceted operation that extends air power globally through intelligence and air refueling missions performed by its three partner units: the 22nd Air Refueling Wing, the 184th Intelligence Wing, and the 931st Air Refueling Group. This book offers a glimpse into the military history of McConnell Air Force Base through many rarely seen or previously unpublished images drawn primarily from the repository of the 22nd Air Refueling Wing Office of History and the Kansas Aviation Museum.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateDec 8, 2008
    ISBN9781439636923
    McConnell Air Force Base
    Author

    Steve A. Larsen

    Steve A. Larsen is a military historian and adjunct instructor of history at Butler Community College. He has written numerous articles related to air force and American history and contributed to several historical studies for the United States Air Force. He also speaks on topics ranging from air force history to current military operations in Southwest Asia.

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      Book preview

      McConnell Air Force Base - Steve A. Larsen

      them.

      INTRODUCTION

      In June 1862, Brig. Gen. Fitz-John Porter climbed aboard an observation balloon named the Intrepid belonging to self-proclaimed Professor Thaddeus Lowe near Yorktown, Virginia, to have a look at Confederate activity. The balloon’s gas bag was filled with hydrogen gas produced by pouring sulfuric acid over iron filings. Porter went up alone, and the tether meant to hold the balloon in place broke free from the ground. Porter was then on his own. As the balloon drifted over Confederate lines, Porter quite literally needed the intervention of divine providence to save him from capture, and he got it. The wind direction changed, and the balloon drifted back to safety among the Union lines. So ended one of the first uses of airpower in American military operations—an abortive attempt at what is now called intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, or ISR. In Porter’s day and for a long time thereafter it was simply called observation. While Wichita did not perhaps launch its bid into aviation in such a precarious manner, it nonetheless was built by men as colorful as Porter and Lowe.

      Wichita might well appear to be a natural fit for the aviation industry from our modern perception. Many assume the central location, the wind, or the flat lands hold the keys to this city’s far-reaching aviation footprint. It was not the central location, flat topography, or generally favorable winds. Oil created aviation here; specifically, the money oil brought to one man. Jake Mollendick’s single-minded stubbornness made the aircraft industry possible here. Through his efforts, pioneers of aviation’s golden age, Matty Laird and Lloyd Stearman both came to Wichita. Walter Beech, a former army-enlisted pilot, was already here and also worked with Mollendick and Laird. Clyde Cessna, who came from Iowa, began flying his Silverwing airplane first on the Oklahoma salt flats in 1911, less than 10 years after the Wright brothers’ seminal flight, also came to Wichita to build and sell airplanes.

      How U.S. Air Force bases come to be what they are and where they are located is a complex question that does not offer an easy answer. U.S. Air Force members have long cheekily joked that the common methodology used to site and place U.S. Air Force bases boiled down to a relatively simple thing: the senior leadership looks for a golf course then builds a base around it. This is certainly an amusing response to the question though not the correct one. The actual rationale employed changes with the times and the service’s mission requirements. When one adds in the political push and shove that occurs within the halls of the U.S. Capitol building, then everything becomes all the more murky. While some bases often maintain the same basic mission year in and year out from their founding, such as Langley Air Force Base and its assignment of pursuit and fighter aircraft, others like McConnell Air Force Base take on a more evolutionary development and frequent mission changes as determined by the nation’s strategic defense needs.

      The history, creation, and further evolution of McConnell Air Force Base provides a glimpse into how sometimes the political push and shove is a secondary concern. Wichita as a community is aviation. All apologies to Dayton and Kitty Hawk, but American aviation was indeed largely born in what was, for the time, a relatively insignificant town better known for cowboys and gunslingers. The city’s economy had been tied to the cattle industry, but by the start of the 20th century, railroads made Wichita largely irrelevant where such bovine activity was concerned. The city’s economy needed a boost and that boost came from aviation. The aircraft industry in fact spans more years of Wichita’s history than cowboys and cattle drives ever did. The era of the cowboy was a relatively short-lived one. Wichita is not the Old Cowtown, but it is very much the Old Airtown.

      Originally a hay field that was then six miles southeast of Wichita, the California Section was a mere slip of land at 600 acres compared to the roughly 2,600 acres that now comprise McConnell Air Force Base. Wichita realized its first aviation extravaganza at a fair, the Peerless Prophets’ Jubilee, in 1908, a mere five years after the Wright brothers’ first flight. The fair was to feature a dirigible flight by Frank Goodale, a gentleman billed back east as the world’s youngest boy aeronaut. He was 19 years old at the time of the Wichita event. Goodale was to fly a Knabenshue airship over the city but nothing resulted except several aborted attempts stopped by the notorious Kansas wind. Wichita’s first aerial demonstration ended for naught. That same year, the U.S. Army Signal Corps began soliciting bids for their first military aircraft. U.S. Army Signal Corps Aeroplane No. 1 would eventually be a Wright B model aircraft and based at Fort Sam Houston. It was in 1924 when the California Section realized its point of no return and the parcel’s years as an insignificant hay field and ersatz flying field came to an end.

      The National Air Congress of 1924 was the single largest air meet held in the United States that year outside of the well-established International Air Races held at Wright Field (now, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) in Dayton. These races were in large part an attempt to first put Wichita into the national spotlight where aviation was concerned and second to drum up support of the local citizenry. The local chapter members of the National Aeronautic Association were determined to see a major airfield constructed to service transcontinental air travel as no passenger conveyance or airmail plane in the country flew non-stop coast-to-coast.

      The success of the meet drove construction

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