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From February 1943 to May 1945, more than 9,000 aircraft and over 70,000 combat crew members passed through Hunter Field in Savannah, Georgia, on their way to war. The field had begun as a small municipal airport among scrub pines and marshland. By 1945 it was processing planes and crews like a factory line — which is roughly how it was designed to work.
From airport to air base
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| May 1940 | the field is named for Major General Frank O'Driscoll Hunter, a Savannah native, World War I flying ace and later commanding general of the First Air Force. It is worth $750,000, with 4,500-foot runways and one small civilian hangar |
| September 1940 | the Army Air Forces takes over after negotiations between the city and the War Department; the city and federal government add 2,000 acres |
| October 1, 1940 | construction begins on a $3,000,000 project of over 182 buildings — 55 barracks for 3,500 men, 18 mess halls, 20 warehouses and 2 more hangars; the base begins operating on October 9 |
| 1940–1943 | a training base for light and medium bombardment groups: over 80 groups train there, and by 1942 it can hold more than 100 aircraft and 6,000 personnel. A 250-unit housing project alone requires draining eight square miles of swamp and marsh |
| February 1943 | the field shifts to staging: preparing aircraft and crews to go overseas |
An assembly line for war
Hunter Field's Staging Maintenance System borrowed assembly-line methods from manufacturing to service aircraft quickly and minimize delays. Its Combat Crew Center put crews through medical exams, administrative checks, briefings and outfitting before they flew overseas.
| Staging output | Aircraft |
|---|---|
| 1943, monthly average | 200 |
| late spring 1944, monthly average | 400 |
| June 1944 | 551 — a record until January 1945 |
| January 1945 | 557 |
An engine specialist stationed there later recalled the rhythm: new bombers arrived from the factory, were brought up to the latest specifications and assigned a combat crew, and were gone overseas within about a week. The B-17 "City of Savannah," now restored at the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force in nearby Pooler, was the 5,000th aircraft processed there. After V-E Day, the field reversed direction, processing aircraft and service members returning from Europe and the Mediterranean for redeployment.
Who served there
- Women. The 762nd Women's Army Auxiliary Corps Post Headquarters Company was activated on May 27, 1943, with two officers and 15 enlisted women; by July there were 154, and by 1945 about 300 enlisted women and three officers, working as clerks, hospital attendants and technicians, librarians, parachute riggers and more.
- African American service members served in a segregated unit, Squadron C, supporting staging, supplies and maintenance. The armed forces remained segregated until Executive Order 9981 in July 1948.
- Off duty, servicemen played in Savannah's Service-Defense Baseball League and intramural sports, and had a pool, a recreation center, base theaters and service-club dances.
One corporal's winter
The lesson draws on letters Corporal Edward Zahler of New York, of the 85th Airdrome Squadron, wrote to his sister from Hunter Field in the winter of 1943–44, now in the Library of Congress's Veterans History Project. He described Savannah's first snowfall in 20 years, movie nights, his first flight over the field and the Liberty ships in the shipyards, working on a B-25's radial engines for $66 a month, and the repeated false alarms before his unit finally shipped out in late January 1944.
For teachers
The lesson's essential question: How did Hunter Army Airfield contribute to the success of the Allied Forces? Students compare a background reading, an excerpt from the 1945 yearbook Third Air Force Staging Wing and Zahler's letters. Hunter Army Airfield remains an active installation for aviation units headquartered at Fort Stewart.
Sources
Based on "(H)our History Lesson: Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah and Chatham County, Georgia, WWII Heritage City," by Sarah Nestor Lane for the National Park Service's Cultural Resources Office of Interpretation and Education, funded through the National Council on Public History's cooperative agreement with the NPS; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The yearbook (Army and Navy Publishing Company, 1945) is in the Mighty Eighth Air Force Collection, digitized by the Digital Library of Georgia; Zahler's letters and a veteran's interview are in the Library of Congress Veterans History Project. They are summarized here, not reproduced.
В изданияхSavannah and Chatham County, Georgia, WWII Heritage City Lessons
Лицензия: CC0 1.0 (общественное достояние) · По материалам www.nps.gov
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