Williams Air Force Base


Williams Air Force Base is a former United States Air Force base, located in Maricopa County, Arizona, east of Chandler, and about southeast of Phoenix. It is a designated Superfund site due to a number of soil and groundwater contaminants.
It was active as a training base for both the United States Army Air Forces, as well as the USAF from 1941 until its closure in 1993. Williams was the leading pilot training facility of the USAF, supplying 25% of all pilots.
Since its closure, the base has largely been annexed by the city of Mesa, Arizona. It was converted into the civilian Williams Gateway Airport, later renamed Mesa Gateway Airport. In recent years, the land has emerged as an educational and industrial campus anchored by Arizona State University Polytechnic Campus and Chandler-Gilbert Community College.

History

During March 1941, some citizens of Mesa, Arizona, were actively working on obtaining a U.S. Army Air Corps facility located near their city. One of the sites seriously considered for the new airfield was on the Gila River Indian Reservation located near Chandler, Arizona. At the time, the land on which Williams would eventually be built was vacant and not used for agriculture due to a lack of irrigation. It had no homes or farms and was essentially desert with a few Indian ruins scattered on it. On their own initiative, the city of Mesa began to acquire rights to the property that was divided among 33 different owners. Agreements were made for a railroad spur line, along with the appropriate electric, water, telephone and gas services.
The hard work paid off with the announcement in June 1941 that the War Department had approved the site for an Army Air Corps base. Construction of the new base started on 16 July 1941 with a ceremony attended by Mesa, Arizona, mayor George Nicholas Goodman and Arizona governor Sidney P. Osborn, who both attended the groundbreaking of Falcon Field that morning. Initial construction was completed in December, making the base operational.
As of 10 December, the airfield had no name and a debate ensued on what to call the new base. It was initially named Mesa Military Airport. the name was changed October 1941 to Higley Field, the base being in the proximity of the town of Higley, Arizona. In February 1942, the growing military airfield's name was changed to Williams Field in honor of Arizona native 1st Lt Charles Linton Williams. Lieutenant Williams died on 6 July 1927 when his Boeing PW-9A pursuit aircraft crashed near Fort DeRussy, Hawaii.
As a flying school, numerous runways and auxiliary airfields were constructed. The main airfield consisted of three concrete runways aligned NE/SW, ENE/WSW and NE/SW. A blacktop landing area was aligned E/W to the south of the main field and a blacktop landing area was aligned E/W to the south of the main field.
Known auxiliary airfields were:
During World War II, Williams Field was under the command of the 89th Army Air Force Base Unit, AAF West Coast Training Center. The flying organization was the 38th Flying Training Wing. Thousands of future P-38 Lightning pilots learnt their twin-engine flying skills flying the Beech AT-10 Wichita at Williams. By July 1942, there were 79 AT-10s assigned to the field, however the hot, dry climate of Arizona tended to dry out the wood and glue of the wooden AT-10s, causing at least 10 flying cadets to lose their lives in crashes. Training with the AT-10 was stopped and the aircraft were flown to more humid locations. They were replaced by the Cessna AT-17 Bobcat twin engine trainers, however the AT-17 was seen as "too easy to fly" and were replaced by the more demanding Curtiss-Wright AT-9. By January 1943, almost 200 AT-9s were at the airfield.
The RP-322 training version of the P-38 began to arrive also in early 1944, and by May, the flying school was involved in four courses of instruction. By far, the largest course was a single-engine advanced course where cadets received instruction on the AT-6 Texan. Graduates advanced to the twin-engine AT-9, then on to the RP-322. This training was intended to prepare pilots for photo-reconnaissance missions. Another course was given to experienced pilots who were transitioning to twin-engine aircraft, also in the RP-322. Later, a night fighter training program was established for pilots on the RP-322 for later transition to the P-61 Black Widow at Hammer Field, California.
By late 1944, there was an ample supply of twin-engine pilots in training and by late 1944, the single-engine T-6 training was discontinued. Williams then began to offer four-engine training with Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers in December. Its students would be experienced pilots who were transitioning to the large four-engine bomber. The B-17 pilot training ended in April 1945, graduating 608 officers for the Flying Fortress program.
The training mission of the base also conducted flexible gunnery training, and radar observer training.
After the United States entered the war, the Army Air Forces also developed a pilot training program for the Chinese Air Force. The Air Corps conducted most of the training for the Chinese at Luke AFB, Williams, and Thunderbird Field in Arizona. Training the Chinese presented some special challenges because, due to their small stature, some students could not reach all the controls. That problem was usually solved through the use of extra cushions and occasionally by switching them to another type of airplane. A bigger problem was the language barrier. It took all the interpreters the Air Force could muster to support the training programs for the Chinese. In the end, 3,553 Chinese received flying and technical training, including 866 pilots.

Postwar era

After the end of the war in September 1945, most of the temporary training bases were put on inactive status and eventually closed. This was particularly true for bases like Williams that had sprung up overnight and were built with temporary wooden structures. However, Williams was an exception and remained open after World War II.
In early 1945, the first P-80 Shooting Star jet pilot school was opened at Williams. Army Air Forces Training Command was re-designated as Air Training Command, and in 1946 all flight instruction was integrated into a new consolidated program. The P-80 jet fighter pilot transition and fighter gunnery schools at Williams Field remained; however, the gunnery school existed only to fulfill research obligations.
Fighter gunnery training was reestablished in early 1947. The new program studied the use of fighter gunnery, bombing, and rocketry equipment. Students flew P-51 Mustangs, P-47 Thunderbolts, and beginning at midyear, P-80s. The gunnery school, however was again discontinued on 1 June 1948 and moved to Las Vegas AFB, Nevada.
By early 1947 the AAF had sped up its conversion to jet aircraft. However, the training program was handicapped by the fact that no twin-seat jet aircraft trainers yet existed. Putting untrained jet pilots into a single-seat fighter endangered personnel and expensive equipment. To overcome this problem, Air Training Command decided to use a newly developed "captivair" training device. It was received and installed at Williams in early 1947. In 1949, T-33 Shooting Star jet trainer derivatives of the F-80 began to arrive.

3525th Pilot Training Wing

With the establishment of the United States Air Force in September 1947, Williams Army Airfield was re-designated Williams Air Force Base on 13 January 1948. In addition, the 89th AAFBU was discontinued and the 3525th Pilot Training Wing was established as the host unit at the new Air Force Base. Training squadrons under the 3525th Pilot Training Group were:
  • 3525th Training Squadron, 26 August 1948
  • 3526th Training Squadron, 26 May 1949
Through the Mutual Defense Assistance Program began in 1952, international students received flying or technical training at various ATC bases. Students from Taiwan began to arrive at Williams, and training of Taiwanese pilots continued until the closure of the base in 1993.
Air Training Command redesignated the 3525th Pilot Training Wing at Williams on 1 January 1956. It became the 3525th Combat Crew Training Wing. A month later, on 1 February 1956, ATC reassigned the 3525th from its Flying Training Air Force to Crew Training Air Force. It also discontinued the single engine basic pilot school at Williams and replaced it with an advanced fighter school with T-33s exclusively.
In 1958, Air Training Command transferred its combat pilot training to Strategic Air Command and Tactical Air Command. ATC would concentrate on Primary and Basic flying training. As a result, jurisdiction of Williams was passed to TAC on 1 July. This was a brief transfer, as on 1 October 1960, TAC transferred Williams AFB back to ATC. Williams would become part of ATC's new consolidated pilot training program. On the same date, Tactical Air Command reassigned its 4530th Combat Crew Training Wing and subordinate units at Williams to ATC and ATC discontinued the wing. Concurrently, Air Training Command used
assets from the 4530th to organize and establish the 3525th Pilot Training Wing.
Pilot training continued throughout the 1960s. The T-33s began to be phased out in 1962, being replaced by the T-38 Talon as the primary jet training aircraft. T-38s were used until the closure of Williams in 1993 along with the Cessna T-37 Tweet Both trainers were two-seat, dual-engine jet aircraft, the T-38 being capable of supersonic flight.
Students began with academic classroom and simulator instruction. After initial training in a Cessna T-41 at an offsite location, the first jet flight was largely a 'demo' flight in the T-37 aircraft with the instructor orienting the student to the aircraft, the local training area, and some basic flight maneuvers.
The undergraduate flight training program lasted just less than one full year and involved classroom, simulator, and aircraft training activities. Graduates were selected to remain as instructors, after an intensive training course, or went on to train in their primary weapon system aircraft.