Sheppard Air Force Base

From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.

The information on this page may change as a result of the 2005 U.S. Base Realignment and Closure Program (BRAC 2005).

Sheppard Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base in Wichita Falls, Texas. It is home of the 82nd Training Wing and the 80th Flying Training Wing.

History

Sheppard Air Force Base, officially opened as an Army Air Corps training center in October 1941. It was established on 300 acres (1.2 km²) just south of Kell Field. The land was sold to the military for one dollar by a Texas cattleman

The base was named Sheppard Field, in honor of Texas senator John Sheppard. Within six months after VJ day at the end of World War II, orders were issued to deactivate the field. Over the next two years the National Guard used the base. In April 1948 the Air Force asked that Sheppard Field be disposed of, because in December 21,000 servicemembers arrived to reactivate the base, which was renamed Sheppard Air Force Base.

Over the next three decades three training schools were stationed at the base training students in aircraft maintenance, transportation, communication, civil engineering, and field training. The base conducted two undergraduate pilot-training programs from 1961-1971, one for West Germany and the other for South Vietnamese helicopter pilots. Between 1960 and 1965 the Strategic Air Command had units stationed at the base that conducted aerospace rescue schools and weather instruction. The Air Force School of Health Care Sciences offered training in dentistry, medicine, nursing, and health-services administration. The population of the base had declined to 3,825 in 1990.

The Department of Defense has proposed a major realignment of the base, with a projected loss of over 2,600 military personnel, as part of the Base Realignment and Closure program announced on May 13, 2005.

External links

• Official website (http://www.sheppard.af.mil/)
• Sheppard AFB, Texas (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/sheppard.htm) from the ad-supported GlobalSecurity.org
• The Handbook of Texas - Sheppard Air Force Base (source of History) (http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/SS/qbs6.html)
• BRAC 2005: Closings, Realignments to Reshape Infrastructure (http://www.defenselink.mil/news/May2005/20050513_1081.html)
• Base list leaves Texas cities relieved or rethinking plans (http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3181711), a May 2005 Houston Chronicle article

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) Sheppard_Air_Force_Base (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheppard_Air_Force_Base) version history (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sheppard_Air_Force_Base&action=history) GNU Free Documentation Lizenz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License) CC-by-sa (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/)

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