Fort Sumner Municipal Airport is a village owned, public use

airport An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial air transport. Airports usually consists of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surface ...

located two

nautical mile A nautical mile is a unit of length used in air, marine, and space navigation, and for the definition of territorial waters. Historically, it was defined as the meridian arc length corresponding to one minute ( of a degree) of latitude. Today ...

s (4 km) northeast of the

central business district A central business district (CBD) is the commercial and business centre of a city. It contains commercial space and offices, and in larger cities will often be described as a financial district. Geographically, it often coincides with the "city ...

Fort Sumner Fort Sumner was a military fort in New Mexico Territory charged with the internment of Navajo and Mescalero Apache populations from 1863 to 1868 at nearby Bosque Redondo. History On October 31, 1862, Congress authorized the construction of For ...

, a village in

De Baca County, New Mexico De Baca County is a county in the U.S. state of New Mexico. As of the 2010 census, the population was 2,022, making it New Mexico's second-least populous county. Its county seat is Fort Sumner. The county is named for Ezequiel Cabeza De Baca, t ...

, United States. It is included in the

National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems The National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems (NPIAS) is an inventory of U.S. aviation infrastructure assets. NPIAS was developed and now maintained by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). It identifies existing and proposed airports tha ...

for 2011–2015, which categorized it as a ''

general aviation General aviation (GA) is defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) as all civil aviation aircraft operations with the exception of commercial air transport or aerial work, which is defined as specialized aviation services ...

'' airport.

History

The airfield's origins date to the 1920s when the

Transcontinental Air Transport Transcontinental Air Transport (T-A-T) was an airline founded in 1928 by Clement Melville Keys that merged in 1930 with Western Air Express to form what became TWA. Keys enlisted the help of Charles Lindbergh to design a transcontinental network t ...

airline built an airfield in Fort Sumner as part of its coast-to-coast air passenger network, but the site was abandoned when the airline's ambitious plans collapsed in the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

. The airfield was reopened in February 1941, and was rebuilt in 1942 by the

United States Army Air Forces The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...

as a

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

training airfield. It was assigned to the AAF Flying Training Command West Coast Training Center and was known as Fort Sumner Army Air Field. The flying cadets at the airfield were trained in advanced twin engine aircraft as phase three of their pilot training. The airfield had at least seven auxiliary landing fields, two of which have been identified:
Fort Sumner Army Auxiliary Airfield #5
aka Taiban Field/Airport- Taiban * Fort Sumner Army Auxiliary Airfield #7 - Tucumcari : The Tucumcari facility later became a Prisoner of War Camp in March 1944 as pilot training was phasing down. It is now

Tucumcari Municipal Airport Tucumcari Municipal Airport is about six miles east of Tucumcari, New Mexico. History Opened in August 1941, Tucumcari Municipal Airport was built by the United States Army Air Forces and at the time it was known as Fort Sumner Army Auxiliary A ...

. On August 6, 1944, the airfield was transferred to

Second Air Force The Second Air Force (2 AF; ''2d Air Force'' in 1942) is a USAF numbered air force responsible for conducting basic military and technical training for Air Force enlisted members and non-flying officers. In World War II the CONUS unit defended ...

, where it became a replacement facility for

B-17 Flying Fortress The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is a four-engined heavy bomber developed in the 1930s for the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC). Relatively fast and high-flying for a bomber of its era, the B-17 was used primarily in the European Theater ...

and

B-24 Liberator The Consolidated B-24 Liberator is an American heavy bomber, designed by Consolidated Aircraft of San Diego, California. It was known within the company as the Model 32, and some initial production aircraft were laid down as export models des ...

crew training. The facility was inactivated on November 15, 1945 and returned to civil control. It is now a public airport providing

service. The airport retains the large parking ramp from its training use. Two of the three wartime runways are still in use, the 00/18 runway now abandoned. The cantonment area street pattern still exists, with large numbers of foundations of wartime buildings still in evidence, including the foundations of a large cluster of what were probably the barracks of the POW Camp on the north side of the station.

NASA use

In the 1980s, the airport was chosen as a launch site for

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

high-altitude balloon High-altitude balloons are crewed or uncrewed balloons, usually filled with helium or hydrogen, that are released into the stratosphere, generally attaining between above sea level. In 2002, a balloon named BU60-1 reached a record altitude of . ...

program (see

Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility The Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility (CSBF) (established in 1961, formerly known as the National Scientific Balloon Facility (NSBF)) is a NASA facility responsible for providing launch, tracking and control, airspace coordination, telemetry ...

). NASA spent about $100,000 to construct large insulated walls and air conditioning inside the one remaining wartime hangar so payloads could use the place in a controlled environment. Three bays with tall sliding doors that opened into the main hangar area provided a workable area for scientists and their payloads with large steel A-frames used to suspend the payloads. Other NASA buildings were constructed at the airport. Currently two operational balloon launch campaigns are conducted at the airport each year. These occur in the May–June and September–October timeframe surrounding the two stratospheric turnaround events. The NASA Ft. Sumner facility has grown in capability over the years and now includes a machine shop and still utilizes the old World War II hangar as a work area, storage area for support vehicles, and a hangar for NSBF aircraft during balloon flight operations.

Facilities and aircraft

Fort Sumner Municipal Airport covers an area of 960

acre The acre is a unit of land area used in the imperial Imperial is that which relates to an empire, emperor, or imperialism. Imperial or The Imperial may also refer to: Places United States * Imperial, California * Imperial, Missouri * Imp ...

s (388 ha) at an

elevation The elevation of a geographic location is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational surface (see Geodetic datum § Vert ...

of 4,165 feet (1,269 m) above

mean sea level There are several kinds of mean in mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. ...

. It has two

asphalt Asphalt, also known as bitumen (, ), is a sticky, black, highly viscous liquid or semi-solid form of petroleum. It may be found in natural deposits or may be a refined product, and is classed as a pitch. Before the 20th century, the term a ...

paved

runway According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a runway is a "defined rectangular area on a land aerodrome prepared for the landing and takeoff of aircraft". Runways may be a man-made surface (often asphalt concrete, as ...

s: 3/21 is 5,802 by 75 feet (1,768 x 23 m) and 8/26 is 5,254 by 60 feet (1,601 x 18 m). For the 12-month period ending April 9, 2011, the airport had 150

aircraft operations, an average of 12 per month. At that time there were five aircraft based at this airport: 60% single-

engine An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy. Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power gen ...

and 40% multi-engine.

References

* * Shaw, Frederick J. (2004), Locating Air Force Base Sites History’s Legacy, Air Force History and Museums Program, United States Air Force, Washington DC, 2004.
Scientific Balloon Flight Facility

External links

Aerial image as of March 1997
from

USGS The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, a ...

The National Map ''The National Map'' is a collaborative effort of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and other federal, state, and local agencies to improve and deliver topographic information for the United States. The purpose of the effort is to prov ...

'' *
{{New Mexico during World War II Airports in New Mexico Buildings and structures in De Baca County, New Mexico Transportation in De Baca County, New Mexico 1941 establishments in New Mexico Airfields of the United States Army Air Forces in New Mexico NASA facilities USAAF Western Flying Training Command American Theater of World War II

History

NASA use

Facilities and aircraft

See also

References

External links