Wright-Patterson Air Force Base


Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base and census-designated place just east of Dayton, Ohio, in Greene and Montgomery counties. It includes both Wright and Patterson Fields, which were originally Wilbur Wright Field and Fairfield Aviation General Supply Depot. Patterson Field is about northeast of Dayton; Wright Field is about northeast of Dayton.
The host unit at Wright-Patterson AFB is the 88th Air Base Wing, assigned to the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center and Air Force Materiel Command. The 88 ABW operates the airfield, maintains all infrastructure and provides security, communications, medical, legal, personnel, contracting, finance, transportation, air traffic control, weather forecasting, public affairs, recreation and chaplain services for more than 60 associate units. The Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence Center and the Space Force's National Space Intelligence Center are also garrisoned there and are the intelligence community's primary organizations for strategic air and space threat analysis.
The base began with the establishment of Wilbur Wright Field on 22 May 1917 and McCook Field in November 1917, by the Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps as World War I installations. McCook was used as a testing field and for aviation experiments. Wright was used as a flying field ; Fairfield Aviation General Supply Depot; armorers' school, and a temporary storage depot. McCook's functions were transferred to Wright Field when it was closed in October 1927. Wright-Patterson AFB was established in 1948 as a merger of Patterson and Wright Fields.
In 1995, negotiations to end the Bosnian War as part of the Yugoslav Wars were held at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. The talks were hosted by the United States and involved the leaders of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia. The negotiations produced the Dayton Agreement, which established Bosnia and Herzegovina as a single sovereign state composed of two entities and brought an end to more than three years of armed conflict.
The base had a total of 27,406 military, civilian and contract employees in 2010. The Greene County portion of the base is a census-designated place, with a resident population of 1,821 at the 2010 census.

History

Prehistoric Indian mounds of the Adena culture at Wright-Patterson are along P Street and, at the Wright Brothers Memorial, a hilltop mound group.
Aircraft operations on land now part of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base began in 1904–1905 when Wilbur and Orville Wright used an plot of Huffman Prairie for experimental test flights with the Wright Flyer III. Their flight exhibition company and the Wright Company School of Aviation returned 1910–1916 to use the flying field.
World War I transfers of land that later became WPAFB include along the Mad River leased to the Army by the Miami Conservancy District, the adjacent purchased by the Army from the District for the Fairfield Aviation General Supply Depot, and a complex for McCook Field just north of downtown Dayton between Keowee Street and the Great Miami River. In 1918, Wilbur Wright Field agreed to let McCook Field use hangar and shop space as well as its enlisted mechanics to assemble and maintain airplanes and engines under the direction of Chief of Air Service Mason Patrick.
After World War I, 347 German aircraft were brought to the United States—some were incorporated into the Army Aeronautical Museum. The training school at Wilbur Wright Field was discontinued. Wilbur Wright Field and the depot merged after World War I to form the Fairfield Air Depot. The Patterson family formed the Dayton Air Service Committee, Inc which held a campaign that raised $425,000 in two days and purchased northeast of Dayton, including Wilbur Wright Field and the Huffman Prairie Flying Field.
In 1924, the committee presented the deeds to President Calvin Coolidge for the construction of a new aviation engineering center. The entire acreage was designated Wright Field, which had units such as the Headquarters, 5th Division Air Service, and its 88th Observation Squadron and 7th Photo Section. New facilities were built 1925–27 on the portion of Wright Field west of Huffman Dam to house all of the McCook Field functions being relocated.

Wright and Patterson fields

Wright Field was "formally dedicated" on 12 October 1927 when "the Materiel Division moved from McCook Field to the new site" At the time of the dedication expenditures of approximately $5 million had been involved in the new facility after 18 months work, with the total amount expected to rise to between $7 and $8 million. The ceremonies included the John L. Mitchell Trophy Race and Orville Wright raising the flag over the new engineering center.
On 1 July 1931, the portion of Wright Field east of Huffman Dam was redesignated "Patterson Field" in honor of Lieutenant Frank Stuart Patterson. Lt. Patterson was the son of Frank J. Patterson, co-founder of National Cash Register.
Shortly before the end of WW1, 1Lt Patterson and observer 2Lt LeRoy Swan, both of the 137th Aero Squadron, were killed at Wright Field in the crash of their de Havilland DH.4 after its wings collapsed during a dive while firing at ground targets with a new synchronized-through–the–propeller machine gun. Patterson's grave and memorial arch is at Woodland Cemetery and Aborateum in Dayton, Ohio.

World War II

The area's World War II Army Air Fields had employment increase from approximately 3,700 in December 1939 to over 50,000 at the war's peak. Wright Field grew from approximately 30 buildings to a facility with some 300 buildings and the Air Corps' first modern paved runways. The original part of the field became saturated with office and laboratory buildings and test facilities. The Hilltop area was acquired from private landowners in 1943–1944 to provide troop housing and services.
The portion of Patterson Field from Huffman Dam through the Brick Quarters at the south end of Patterson Field along Route 4 was administratively reassigned from Patterson Field to Wright Field. To avoid confusing the two areas of Wright Field, the south end of the former Patterson Field portion was designated "Area A", the original Wright Field became "Area B", and the north end of Patterson Field, including the flying field, "Area C."
In February 1940 at Wright Field, the Army Air Corps established the Technical Data Branch. After Air Corps Ferrying Command was established on 29 May 1941, on 21 June an installation point of the command opened at Patterson Field. The Flight Test Training unit of Air Technical Command was established at Wright Field on 9 September 1944.
Two densely populated housing and service areas across Highway 444, Wood City and Skyway Park, were geographically separated from the central core of Patterson Field and developed almost self-sufficient community status. They supported the vast numbers of recruits who enlisted and were trained at the two fields as well as thousands of civilian laborers, especially single women recruited to work at the depot. Skyway Park was demolished after the war. Wood City was eventually transformed into Kittyhawk Center, the base's modern commercial and recreation center.
In the fall of 1942, the first twelve "Air Force" officers to receive ATI field collection training were assigned to Wright Field for training in the technical aspects of "crash" intelligence
The first German and Japanese aircraft arrived in 1943, and captured equipment soon filled six buildings, a large outdoor storage area, and part of a flight-line hangar for Technical Data Lab study. The World War II Operation Lusty returned 86 German aircraft to Wright Field for study, e.g., the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter, while the post-war Operation Paperclip brought German scientists and technicians to Wright Field, e.g., Ernst R. G. Eckert

UFO studies / sightings

was WPAFB's T-2 Intelligence investigations of unidentified flying objects reports that began in July 1947. In 1951, the Air Technical Intelligence Center began analysis of crashed Soviet aircraft from the Korean war. In March 1952, ATIC established an Aerial Phenomena Group to study reported UFO sightings, including those in Washington, DC, in 1952. By 1969, the Foreign Technology Division and its predecessor organizations had studied 12,618 reported sightings: 701 remained unexplained when the Air Force closed its UFO investigations, and a 1968 report concluded that "there seems to be no reason to attribute to an extraterrestrial source without much more convincing evidence."
The FTD sent all of its case files to the USAF Historical Research Center, which transferred them in 1976 to the National Archives and Records Service in Washington, DC, which became the permanent repository of the Project Sign/Grudge/Blue Book records. In a 1988 interview, Senator Barry Goldwater claimed he had asked Gen. Curtis LeMay for access to a secret UFO room at WPAFB and an angry LeMay said, "Not only can't you get into it but don't you ever mention it to me again."

Technical base

The Army Air Forces Technical Base was formed on 15 December 1945, under Brig Gen Joseph T. Morris, during the World War II drawdown by merging Wright Field, Patterson Field, Dayton Army Air Field, and—acquired by Wright Field for 1942 glider testing—Clinton Army Air Field. The Jamestown Radar Annex became a leased installation of the Technical Base in 1946, and the "custodial units at Dayton and Clinton County AAFlds were discontinued in 1946".
An 8000-foot concrete runway with 1000-foot runoffs at each end was built 1946–1947 in Area C to accommodate very heavy bombers, initially referred to locally as the "B-36 runway". The 1947 All-Altitude Speed Course at Vandalia became a detached installation of the Technical Base. After the USAF was created in September 1947, Morris' base headquarters was redesignated Headquarters, Air Force Technical Base, on 15 December 1947.