Pecos Municipal Airport is a city-owned

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 ...

two miles southwest of

Pecos Pecos may refer to: Places * Pecos River, rises near Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States * Pecos, Texas, a city in Reeves County, Texas, United States * Pecos County, Texas, named for the Pecos River ** Pecos Spring, a spring * Pecos, New Mexico, a ...

, in Reeves County,

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

, United States. The FAA's

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 2009–2013 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.

Facilities

Pecos Municipal Airport covers 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 2,613 feet (796 m). 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 ...

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: 9/27 is 5,953 by 80 feet (1,814 x 24 m) and 14/32 is 6,236 by 80 feet (1,901 x 24 m). In the year ending August 12, 2009 the airport had 20,050 aircraft operations, average 54 per day: 71%

and 29% military. 13 aircraft were then based at the airport: 84.6% single-engine, 7.7% multi-engine and 7.7%

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...

History

The airport opened as Pecos Airport on three miles (5 km) south and slightly west of Pecos. Proceeds of a $10,000 bond issue authorized in an election on September 14, 1940, were used for land purchase. The site was cleared, fenced, and graded under a Work Projects Administration contract. The attack on Pearl Harbor galvanized the Army Air Force into launching a training program, first for 50,000 and then for 70,000 pilots, and Pecos was chosen as one of five new training fields. Because more land was required for the long runways necessary for novice pilots, the town council promptly called another bond election to authorize an additional $50,000. The field's size was increased to , accommodating one runway long and two others of each. Following the formal announcement of a military base on March 25, 1942, construction contracts were let in May. Both the construction and the early flying phases of the base were handicapped by wind-whipped dust until late 1943, when extensive palliation efforts relieved the situation.

Pecos Army Airfield

Pecos Army Airfield - North American Cessna AT-17 Bobcat

Designated as Pecos Army Airfield (PAAF), the field was activated on 11 July 1942 while still under construction. It was assigned to 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 ...

Western Flying Training Command Flying Division, Air Training Command, was a training formation of the United States Air Force. The unit was established in 1926 as the Air Corps Training Center to be the primary pilot training center for the Air Corps. It was reorganized int ...

, 38th Flying Training Wing as a primary (level 1) pilot training airfield. The first commander, Col. Harry C. Wisehart, arrived on June 28, 1942, as project officer. The first military units to arrive were the 744th School Squadron (100 men) and the 341st Air Base Squadron (18 men). A week later five more school squadrons, each with 80 men, arrived from Lemoore Army Air Field, California, as the vanguard of the eventual population of 4,000. It first was used as a basic pilot school. Pilot training aircraft included the

Cessna AT-17 The Cessna AT-17 Bobcat or Cessna Crane is a twin-engine advanced trainer aircraft designed and made in the United States, and used during World War II to bridge the gap between single-engine trainers and larger multi-engine combat aircraft. The ...

and the

North American BT-14 The North American BT-9 was the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) designation for a low-wing single engine monoplane primary trainer aircraft that served before and during World War II. It was a contemporary of the Boeing-Stearman PT-13 Kay ...

. At its peak, on April 30, 1944, the field numbered 4,304 people, including 482 officers, 972 cadets and student officers, 2,218 enlisted personnel (including 200 WACs), and 604 civilian employees, of which 25 were

WASPs A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. T ...

. This population, nearly as large as that of Pecos itself, placed a great strain on the town's resources. PAAF consisted chiefly of "theater of operations" type buildings-cheap, rapidly constructed, single-story structures covered with black tarpaper. It also had two large hangars, extensive maintenance facilities, and barely adequate eating and living quarters. Off-base housing in Pecos and neighboring towns was very limited, for an even larger airfield, Pyote Air Force Base, had been built twenty miles (32 km) east. PAAF eventually set up dormitories and small apartments to house civilian employees and some military families on base. The first Pecos class, designated 43-A, graduated 133 cadets and student officers after nine weeks of combined ground school and flight training. In all, PAAF produced seventeen classes of basic pilots at roughly one-month intervals, the classes varying from ninety to 528 men. With an elimination rate ranging from 3 percent to 29 percent per class, a total of 3,367 finished the course. The field was re-designated an advanced pilot school (twin-engine) on December 29, 1943. As basic pilot training ended on January 7, 1944, no time was lost converting to advanced pilot training by the newly redesignated 3027th Army Air Forces Base Unit (Advanced 2-Engine). Col. Olin C. Bushey relieved Colonel Wisehart as commander on August 28, 1943, and was succeeded in turn by colonels Harry B. Fisher (August 19, 1944) and Harold D. Smith (March 3, 1945). Advanced classes ranged in size from 245 to 526, and fewer students were washed out than in basic training. When the last advanced class at PAAF, 45-B, received silver wings and commissions as second lieutenants or appointments as flight officers on April 15, 1945, the active mission of the field ended. Twelve classes had by then produced 4,215 pilots. The airfield was placed on "temporary standby" status on May 1, 1945, and was never again an active military installation. Although the city hoped for continuing federal use for the field, it was closed on May 12, 1945 and deactivated on August 30. A year later it returned to municipal control.

Airline service and civil use

Trans-Texas Airways (TTa) served the airport with scheduled passenger flights operated with

Douglas DC-3 The Douglas DC-3 is a propeller-driven airliner manufactured by Douglas Aircraft Company, which had a lasting effect on the airline industry in the 1930s to 1940s and World War II. It was developed as a larger, improved 14-bed sleeper version ...

"Starliners" from the early 1950s until the early 1960s.http://www.timetableimages.com, Jan. 1, 1952 & March 1, 1963 Trans-Texas Airways system timetables In 1963, Trans-Texas was operating DC-3 service on a once a day round trip routing of San Antonio – San Angelo – Midland/Odessa – Pecos – El Paso. The airline discontinued service to Pecos that same year. Over the years a section of the airfield was sold off, and the

Interstate 20 Interstate 20 (I‑20) is a major east–west Interstate Highway in the Southern United States. I-20 runs beginning at an interchange with Interstate 10, I-10 in Scroggins Draw, Texas, and ending at an interchange with Interstate 95, I-95 in Flo ...

freeway was constructed through a portion of it. Other portions were used for a hospital site, zoo and trailer park. The Pecos Municipal Airport continued to be located on the remaining airfield property, but most of the original military facilities were torn down. The last military hangar was dismantled in 1986, and the last barracks were torn down about 1987. In the 1990s the airport still used the four original runways that had been maintained since the 1940s. An original ramp and rotating beacon were still in use. The West of the Pecos Museum in Pecos maintained a permanent exhibit at Pecos Army Air Field.

References

;Other sources * * Manning, Thomas A. (2005), ''History of Air Education and Training Command, 1942–2002''. Office of History and Research, Headquarters, AETC, Randolph AFB, Texas
AirNav.Com – Pecos Municipal Airport (KPEQ)
* Thole, Lou (1999), ''Forgotten Fields of America : World War II Bases and Training, Then and Now'' – Vol. 2. Publisher: Pictorial Histories Pub,

External links

Aerial image as of 15 January 1996
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 ...