Wendover Air Force Base


Wendover Air Force Base is a former United States Air Force base in Utah now known as Wendover Airport. During World War II, it was a training base for B-17 and B-24 bomber crews. It was the training site of the 509th Composite Group, the B-29 unit that carried out the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
After the war, Wendover was used for training exercises, gunnery range and as a research facility. It was closed by the Air Force in 1969, and the base was given to Wendover City in 1977. Tooele County, Utah, assumed ownership of the airport and base buildings in 1998, and the County continues to operate the airfield as a public airport. A portion of the original bombing range is now the Utah Test and Training Range which is used extensively by the Air Force with live fire targets on the range.

Origins

Wendover Air Force Base's history began in 1940, when the United States Army began looking for additional bombing ranges. The area near the town of Wendover was well-suited to these needs; the land was virtually uninhabited, had generally excellent flying weather, and the nearest large city was away. Though isolated, the area was served by the Western Pacific Railroad, and many of its citizens were employed by the railroad.
Construction of the base began on 20 September 1940 and on the range on 4 November 1940. Wendover Air Base became a subpost of Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City on 29 July 1941. By that time a total of had been acquired for the base and associated gunnery/bombing range long and wide. Ranchers protested the loss of their grazing land, which they claimed would wipe them out and cost the state of Utah $1.5 million annually. They took their complaints to Governor Henry Hooper Blood, but the War Department pressed on with the development of the bombing range. The first military contingent arrived on 12 August 1941, to construct targets on the bombing range. To provide water, a pipeline was run from a spring on Pilot Peak to the base.

World War II

With the entrance of the United States into World War II, Wendover Field took on greater importance. It was the Army Air Force's largest bombing and gunnery range. In March 1942 the Army Air Force activated Wendover Army Air Field and also assigned the research and development of guided missiles, pilotless aircraft, and remotely controlled bombs to the site. The new base was supplied and serviced by the Ogden Air Depot at Hill Field. In April 1942, the Wendover Sub-Depot was activated and assumed technical and administrative control of the field, under the Ogden Air Depot. The Wendover Sub-Depot was tasked to requisition, store, and issue all Army Air Forces property for organizations stationed at Wendover Field for training.
By late 1943 there were some 2,000 civilian employees and 17,500 military personnel at Wendover. Construction at the base continued for most of the war, including three paved runways, taxiways, a ramp, and seven hangars. By May 1945 the base consisted of 668 buildings, including a 300-bed hospital, gymnasium, swimming pool, library, chapel, cafeteria, bowling alley, two movie theatres, and 361 housing units for married officers and civilians.

Heavy Bombardment Group training

Wendover's mission was to train heavy bomb groups. The training of Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and Consolidated B-24 Liberator groups began in April 1942, with the arrival of the 306th Bomb Group flying B-17s. From March 1942 through April 1944, Wendover AAF hosted twenty newly formed B-17 and B-24 groups during one phase of their group training. The Second Air Force organized bombardment training into three phases. In the first, training focused on the individual crew members. In the second, training involved the whole crew, who would conduct training together. The third and final phase saw the group's crews training together, with formation flying and practice combat missions. Until the end of 1943, each phase of training was conducted at a different base.
GroupTypeDestinationTraining datesReference
306th Bomb GroupB-17Eighth Air ForceApril–August 1942
302d Bomb GroupB-24Operational Conversion UnitJuly–September 1942
308th Bomb GroupB-24Fourteenth Air ForceOctober–November 1942
100th Bomb GroupB-17Eighth Air ForceNovember 1942 – January 1943
379th Bomb GroupB-17Eighth Air ForceDecember 1942 – February 1943
384th Bomb GroupB-17Eighth Air ForceJanuary–April 1943
388th Bomb GroupB-17Eighth Air ForceFebruary–May 1943
393d Bomb GroupB-17Operational Conversion UnitApril–June 1943
399th Bomb GroupB-24Operational Conversion UnitApril–December 1943
445th Bomb GroupB-24Eighth Air ForceJune–July 1943
448th Bomb GroupB-24Eighth Air ForceJuly–September 1943
451st Bomb GroupB-24Fifteenth Air ForceJuly–September 1943
458th Bomb GroupB-24Eighth Air ForceJuly 1943 – September 1943
461st Bomb GroupB-24Fifteenth Air ForceJuly 1943
464th Bomb GroupB-24Fifteenth Air ForceAugust 1943
467th Bomb GroupB-24Eighth Air ForceAugust–September 1943
489th Bomb GroupB-24Eighth Air ForceOctober 1943 – April 1944
490th Bomb GroupB-24Eighth Air ForceOctober 1943
494th Bomb GroupB-24Seventh Air ForceDecember 1943 – April 1944
457th Bomb GroupB-17Eighth Air ForceDecember 1943 – January 1944

Fighter training

In April 1944, the role of Wendover Army Air Base changed with the arrival from Louisiana of P-47 fighters of the 72nd Fighter Wing.
The program ended in September after three groups, totalling 180 men, had been trained.

509th Composite Group

In June 1943, preparations began for the operational use of atomic bombs. Although not as suitable for the atomic mission as the British Avro Lancaster with its cavernous bomb bay, Major General Leslie R. Groves, Jr., the director of the Manhattan Project, and General Henry H. Arnold, the Chief of United States Army Air Forces, wanted to use an American plane, if this was at all possible, so the Boeing B-29 Superfortress was chosen, even though it required substantial modification. The modification project was codenamed Silverplate, but this codename eventually came to identify the training and operational aspects of the program as well.
Arnold selected Lieutenant Colonel Paul Tibbets, an officer with a distinguished combat record in Europe and North Africa, who had expert knowledge of the B-29 as one of its test pilots, to form and train a group to deliver atomic bombs. Tibbets chose the Wendover over Great Bend, Kansas, and Mountain Home, Idaho, as the location for his training program. It was remote, which was good for secrecy and security, but within reasonable distance by air from the Manhattan Project's Site Y, at Los Alamos, New Mexico, and the Naval Auxiliary Air Station Salton Sea, where bombing tables for the mission would be prepared. The base was given the code name "Kingman", and became the Manhattan Project's Site K. The activity to assemble, modify and flight test prototype bombs was named "Project W-47".
On 14 September 1944, the 393d Bomb Squadron arrived at Wendover from its former base at Fairmont Army Air Base, Nebraska, where it had been an operational training unit with the 504th Bombardment Group since 12 March. When its parent group deployed to the Marianas in early November 1944, the squadron was assigned directly to the Second Air Force until creation of the 509th Composite Group on 17 December 1944. As part of the formation of the 509th, about 800 people stationed at the field, were transferred to the new group. To make the 509th Composite Group as self-contained as possible, other units were assigned, including the 390th Air Service Group, with the 603d Air Engineering and 1027th Materiel Squadrons; the 320th Troop Carrier Squadron, known as the "Green Hornet Airlines"; the 1395th Military Police Company, and later the 1st Ordnance Squadron. A Manhattan Project unit, the 1st Technical Detachment, was attached to the group.
The 216th Army Air Forces Base Unit constructed prototype atomic weapons and drop tested them. Little was known about the flight characteristics of the prototype atom bomb designs and how the fusing mechanism would work. In February 1945, a Flight Test Section was created within the 216th Army Air Forces Base Unit to carry out testing with prototype bombs in the shape of the Little Boy and Fat Man bombs. It was originally equipped with five Silverplate B-29s, three flight crews and five maintenance crews. To help out with an increasingly demanding schedule, four crews from the 393d Bombardment Squadron were made available. The Flight Test Section carried out 24 drop tests in June and 30 in July. About two-thirds of the June tests were with Fat Man shapes and the rest with Little Boy ones. In July, all but four of the tests were with Fat Man shapes, some with explosive-filled Pumpkin bombs. Test drops were carried out at Wendover, at the Naval Ordnance Test Station at Inyokern, and at the Naval Auxiliary Air Station Salton Sea. Testing continued up to the last minute, with the Fat Man firing unit, known as the X-unit, only being successfully tested at Wendover on 4 August, and a final test of the X-unit was carried out six days later.
The aircrews trained continuously until May. Each bombardier completed at least 50 practice drops of inert pumpkin bombs before Tibbets declared his group combat-ready. The ground support echelon of the 509th Composite Group received movement orders and moved by rail on 26 April 1945 to its port of embarkation at Seattle, Washington. On 6 May the support elements sailed on the SS Cape Victory for the Marianas, while group materiel was shipped on the SS Emile Berliner. An advance party of the air echelon flew by C-54 to North Field, Tinian, between 15 and 22 May. It was joined by the ground echelon on 29 May 1945, marking the group's official change of station. It was from Tinian that it carried out the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The 216th Army Air Forces Base Unit moved to Oxnard Field in September 1945, where it was transferred to the Manhattan District's 9812th Technical Services Unit on 17 December 1945. Oxnard was later designated Sandia Base. The Special Ordnance Detachment took with it its special tools and equipment, and even some of its buildings. The test program resumed at Sandia in January 1946.