First, it was a plateau of farm land populated only by a few farmers and their live stock, then it was the location chosen for the new Waco municipal airport. Construction was begun, and then came the war. The Army Air Forces leased the site with construction only partially completed, expanded the project and rushed the task to completion. That's the pre-flight history of Blackland Army Air Field.

Waco had completed three runways when the city leased the site to the Army. As construction plans were changed to meet the specifications of the training field, barracks, mess halls, a hospital, a church, a theater, administrative buildings, hangars, and control towers were built at the edge of the rams and runways.

Even before this construction was finished, the Army Air Forces began training pilots; not bomber pilots, but glider flyers, and the noise of the tow planes lifting their silent partners mingled with the noise of the graders and tractors working on the ground. Then came the sound of the first two-engine planes landing at Blackland in October, 1942, and soon the almost continuous roar of hundreds of the multi-engined planes could be heard flying day and night over the air base.

A nucleus of experienced Air Force soldiers was brought to Blackland from other fields in the Gulf Coast Training Center, and then civilian specialists were recruited from all over the United States to supplement these men, learn Army aviation and fill hundreds of skilled jobs necessary to the pilot training program.

Today, hundreds of officers, thousands of enlisted men, doctors, nurses, cooks, mechanics, and clerks, specialists all, are busy "keeping 'em flying" at Blackland Army Air Field.

Commanded by Colonel Emmett F. Yost, it is now one of the largest two-engine advanced training fields in the Army Air Forces Gulf Coast Training Center. In addition, it is the location of the headquarters for the 33rd Flying Training Wing, under the command of Brigadier General Luther S. Smith, which directs the training policy for 14 other advanced schools in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, including a four-engine, a B-24 school at Fort Worth and a B-26 school at Del Rio, as well as a bombing and machine gun range on the Texas coast.

In the space of a few short months, Blackland has trained hundreds of pilots for Uncle Sam's expanding Army Air Forces and has directed the training of many hundreds more. Representing millions of dollars in investments for American control of war skies, it has repaid its dollar cost many times in trained man-power.

The primary function of Blackland Army Air Field is to train American youths to fly. Fledgling pilots who have learned the fundamentals of power flight, maneuvers, formation flying, and basic navigation in pre-flight, primary, and basic schools and who have shown tendencies which indicate that they will make good pilots for heavy or medium bombers are brought to Blackland for their multi-engine training.

After nine weeks of intensive flight training, mixed with ground school classes including radio, navigation, aircraft and naval identification, armament, photo interpretation, weather forecasting and other courses, several hours of instrument training in the Link Trainers, which are "planes" that never leave the ground, the cadet receives his coveted wings and commission and goes on to other advanced training fields where he receives training on the bombers which he is to fly.

It is the task of Blackland Army Air Field and other similar training fields to supply the pilots for the B-17 Flying Fortresses, B-24 Liberators, B-25 Billy Mitchells, and B-26 Marauders who are fighting in the skies wherever the enemy is found. That there is not one single plane idle because of lack of a pilot proves that they are doing their job.