Patrick Space Force Base

Patrick Space Force Base is a United States Space Force installation located between Satellite Beach and Cocoa Beach, in Brevard County, Florida, United States. It is named in honor of Major General Mason Patrick, USAAC. It is home to Space Launch Delta 45, known as the 45th Space Wing when it was part of the Air Force. In addition to its "host wing" responsibilities at Patrick SFB, the 45 SW controls and operates Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and the Eastern Range.
The base was originally opened and operated from 1940 to 1947 as Naval Air Station Banana River, a United States Navy airfield. It was then deactivated as a naval installation in 1947 and placed in caretaker status until it was transferred to the United States Air Force in late 1948. After briefly taking on the name Joint Long Range Proving Ground, the base was known as the Patrick Air Force Base beginning in 1950. The base took on its current name in 2020 upon its transfer to the recently established U.S. Space Force.
Additional tenant activities at Patrick SFB include the 920th Rescue Wing, the Air Force Technical Applications Center, and the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute. Total employment is 10,400. There are 13,099 military, dependents, civilian employees, and contractors on base.
The base is a census-designated place and had a resident population of 1,642 as of the 2020 census, up from 1,222 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Palm Bay—Melbourne—Titusville, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area.
The base also administers the Malabar Annex in Palm Bay.

History

Naval use in World War II

Authorized by the Naval Expansion Act of 1938, Naval Air Station Banana River was commissioned on 1 October 1940 as a subordinate base of the Naval Air Operational Training Command at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Florida. The Navy bought of scrub land south of Cocoa Beach.
With the advent of war with Japan and Germany in December 1941, the Navy began anti-submarine patrols along the Florida coast using PBY Catalina and PBM Mariner seaplanes based at this facility. PBMs returned to training duty in March 1942 when replaced on patrol by OS2U Kingfisher seaplanes. Landing strips were constructed in 1943, allowing shore-based aircraft to operate concurrently. The Free French Naval Air Service officers also trained in PBMs at NAS Banana River. Various military-related activities took place at NAS Banana River, including maritime patrol aviation operations against German U-boats, air search and rescue operations, patrol bomber bombardier training, seaplane pilot training, and communications research. Other activities included a blimp squadron detachment, an Aviation Navigation Training School, and an experimental training unit termed Project Baker, a confidential program that developed and tested instrument landing equipment. NAS Banana River hosted a significant aircraft repair and maintenance facility. Later in the war, a small detachment of German POWs from Camp Blanding worked at NAS Banana River on cleanup details. At its peak, the base complement included 278 aircraft, 587 civilian employees, and over 2,800 officers and enlisted personnel.

Units

Transition Training Squadron Atlantic
VS-1D7
Flight 19 probe

Three months after the end of World War II, on 5 December 1945, NAS Banana River had an ancillary role in the search for Flight 19, five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers that had departed Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale, Florida on a routine over-water training mission. When the flight failed to return to home station, multiple air and naval units undertook a search and rescue operation. After sunset on 5 December, two PBM Mariner seaplanes from NAS Banana River, originally scheduled for their own training flights, were diverted to perform square pattern searches in the area west of 29°N 79°W/29, -79. One of these aircraft, a PBM-5, Bureau Number 59225, took off at 19:27 Eastern Time from NAS Banana River, called in a routine radio message at 19:30 Eastern Time, and was never heard from again.
At 19:50 Eastern Time, the tanker SS Gaines Mills reported seeing a mid-air explosion, then flames leaping high and burning on the sea for 10 minutes. The position was 28°35′N 80°15′W / 28.59, −80.25. Captain Shonna Stanley of the SS Gaines Mills reported searching for survivors through a pool of oil but found none. The escort carrier reported losing radar contact with an aircraft at the same position and time. No wreckage of PBM-5 BuNo 59225 was ever found.
During a board of inquiry investigation regarding the entire Flight 19 incident, attention was given to the loss of the NAS Banana River-based PBM. Several witnesses from both NAS Banana River and other PBM Mariner operating locations were questioned concerning occurrences of aviation gasoline fumes collecting in the bilges of PBM series aircraft and associated no-smoking regulations, which were reportedly well posted and rigidly enforced aboard all PBMs. Although the board's report is not a verbatim record and no accusations were made, there seems to be enough inference present to cause one to suspect that the board was aware of the PBM's nickname as "the flying gas tank." As such, it is possible that the PBM-5 was destroyed by an explosion resulting from either violation of the no-smoking regulations in the aircraft or a stray electrical spark in the lower aircraft hull that may have ignited AvGas fumes in the bilges.

Land pollution

The Navy buried its solid waste southeast of the base, on private land, from 1942 to 1947. The dump was estimated at up to, of which may be eligible for a federal government funding cleanup. Discarded material probably included munitions and practice bombs.
Contractors bought the land, naming it "South Patrick Shores". They constructed housing on it from 1956 to 1961. Homeowners had no mandatory solid waste removal until 1982.
Residents reported health complaints starting in the 1990s and again in 2018. Responding to these complaints, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers investigated the site to determine whether a cleanup was necessary.

Transition

NAS Banana River closed in September 1947 after a gradual deactivation and was placed in a caretaker status. In September 1948, the facility was transferred to the U.S. Air Force. Several of NAS Banana River's original structures, including runway segments, particular hangars, support buildings, seaplane parking areas and seaplane ramps into the Banana River remain part of modern-day Patrick Space Force Base.

Use under the United States Air Force

NAS Banana River was transferred to the United States Air Force on 1 September 1948 and renamed the Joint Long Range Proving Ground on 10 June 1949. The installation was renamed Patrick Air Force Base in August 1950.
From 1966 to 1975, the Space Coast was the second-most-visited spot by VIPs, after Washington, D.C., due to the Space Program. A protocol officer was assigned to Patrick to coordinate these visits, about three weekly, consisting of 10 to 150 people.
In 1971, the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute was established at Patrick AFB.
Five of the victims of the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996 were home stationed at Patrick AFB as part of the 71st Rescue Squadron. The 71 RQS relocated to Moody AFB, Georgia, in 1997.
The 9/11 attacks prompted the Air Force to close the heavily used four-lane State Road A1A, which ran immediately in front of the AFTAC Headquarters building. A1A was later reopened to two-lane traffic with car inspections, followed by two-lane traffic without inspections until a barrier was constructed in front of the building, and the building was reinforced with steel and concrete with the windows sealed.
In February 2005, the Patrick AFB Officers Club was destroyed by an accidental fire.
In 2010, the Air Force announced its intention to replace the existing AFTAC building in front of State Road A1A with a new facility costing $100 million to $200 million. At the time of this announcement, this constituted the largest single military construction project in the United States for the Air Force. Completed in 2014, the new facility is a multistory command and control building with a radiochemistry laboratory, central utility plant and a 600-space parking garage located approximately west of the original AFTAC headquarters building.
US Navy Boeing E-6 Mercury aircraft, part of Operation Looking Glass, were sometimes seen at Patrick AFB during the 2010–2011 time frame and were often mistaken by onlookers for the previously retired VC-137 Presidential aircraft, which looks similar.

Use under the United States Space Force

Following the establishment of the United States Space Force on 20 December 2019, the base was transferred from the Air Force. The facility was due to be renamed Patrick Space Force Base in February or March 2020, but this was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The facility, alongside Cape Canaveral SFS, became the first two facilities to bear the name of the new branch at a ceremony with Vice President Mike Pence on 9 December 2020.

Operational history

On 17 May 1950, the base was renamed the "Long Range Proving Ground Base" but three months later was renamed "Patrick Air Force Base", in honor of Major General Mason Patrick.
On 3 May 1951, the Long Range Proving Ground Division was assigned to the newly created Air Research and Development Command. The following month the division was redesignated the Air Force Missile Test Center.
Cost comparison studies in the early 1950s indicated the desirability of letting contractors operate the station. Pan American World Services signed the first range contract on 31 December 1953. The Air Force Missile Test Center began transferring property and equipment to Pan American World Services at the end of that year. Pan American operated under contract to the Air Force for the next 34 years. In 1988, the old range contract was divided into the Range Technical Services and the Launch Base Services contracts. The RTS contract was awarded to Computer Sciences Raytheon in June 1988, and the LBS contract was awarded to Pan American World Services in August 1988.
File:AFTAC2.jpg|thumb|350px|Rocket and missile display in front of the Air Force Technical Applications Center, Patrick AFB, Florida, c. 1970. These static displays have since been relocated to the Air Force Space and Missile Museum at Cape Canaveral SFS.
The Eastern Range supported various missile, crewed, and uncrewed space programs in the 1960s, making it a regular focus of media attention. In the 1960s, a test range office at Patrick AFB with a missile backdrop was used to film scenes for the TV sitcom I Dream of Jeannie, which was set in nearby Cocoa Beach. But by the mid-1970s, the demise of the Apollo space program and the end of land-based ballistic missile development at nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station signaled a downturn in fortunes, and on 1 February 1977, the "Air Force Eastern Test Range" organization was inactivated and its functions transferred to Detachment 1 of the Space and Missile Test Center until the activation of the Eastern Space and Missile Center in 1979 on 1 October 1979. In 1990, ESMC was transferred from the inactivating Air Force Systems Command to the newly established Air Force Space Command. On 12 November 1991, ESMC was inactivated, and the 45th Space Wing assumed its remaining functions.