Wichita, Kansas: The Air Capital as a World War II Heritage City

Wichita, Kansas, is one of the cities designated an American World War II Heritage City, honoring places whose home front work helped win the war. It earned the title as the "Air Capital of the World."

The Air Capital at war

According to the City of Wichita's announcement of the designation in December 2022:

"Why pay rent?" A builder's sign in Wichita, a boom town crowded with new defense workers, September 1941. Marion Post Wolcott, Farm Security Administration; Library of Congress.

Men and women poured into the city for jobs. A 1942 film, Wings Over Wichita, described a city "wearing its war clothes," with thousands working around the clock at its three large aircraft factories — Beech, Boeing and Cessna — alongside the oil fields, stockyards and flour mills that made it part of the nation's breadbasket.

Stockyards and flour mill, Wichita, October 1941. Marion Post Wolcott, Farm Security Administration; Library of Congress.

From the middle of nowhere to the middle of everything

In May 1942, a Wichita Eagle editorial argued that Wichita's location deep in the country's interior, once seen as a drawback, had become an advantage. With war raging in Europe, Asia and Africa, the region's soldiers, grain, meat, oil and — above all — airplanes could be sent as easily east toward Russia as west toward Australia. The editorial predicted that, however short-handed, farmers would bring in the coming wheat harvest for the armed forces, and that the airplane had erased the disadvantage of distance.

What a Heritage City is

The designation comes from legislation directing the Secretary of the Interior to name at least one American World War II Heritage City each year. A 2018 House report on the bill, H.R. 6118, laid out the background:

• Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941; the United States declared war on Japan the next day, and Germany declared war on the United States on December 11.
• Sixteen million Americans, mostly young working-age men, served in the military, out of a population of 113 million.
• At the same time, the country dramatically increased war production for itself and its allies — what President Franklin Roosevelt called "the Arsenal of Democracy."
• The result was the largest internal migration in U.S. history, as people moved to industrial centers for good jobs and out of patriotic duty. Many became boomtowns: Richmond, California, for example, grew from under 24,000 people to more than 100,000 during the war.

Wichita's story — aircraft, oil, food and a booming population — is that national story in one Kansas city. Its contributions, including those of the many women who worked in its war industries, are explored in the National Park Service's Teaching with Historic Places lessons on Wichita.

Learn more

• Wichita, Kansas, National Park Service
• American World War II Heritage Cities
• World War II lessons from Teaching with Historic Places

Sources

Based on "(H)our History Lesson: Wichita, Kansas: Comparing and Connecting WWII Home Front Cities," a Teaching with Historic Places lesson, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The lesson draws on House Report 115-998 (2018), the Wichita Eagle (May 24, 1942), the City of Wichita's December 15, 2022, announcement, and the 1942 film Wings Over Wichita.