Davis-Monthan Air Force Base

Davis-Monthan Air Force Base
Characteristics
ICAO code	KDMA
IATA code	DMA
Coordinates	32 ° 9 '59 " N , 110 ° 52' 59" W Coordinates: 32 ° 9 '59 " N , 110 ° 52' 59" W
Height above MSL	824 m (2703 ft )
Transport links
Distance from the city center	8 miles southeast of Tucson
Street	I-10 / AZ 210
Basic data
opening	September 23, 1927
operator	US Air Force
Start-and runway
12/30	4158 m × 61 m

Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, 1982

The Davis-Monthan Air Force Base is a base of the United States Air Force in Tucson , Arizona .

It belongs to the Air Combat Command and is known for the nearby 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG), a large warehouse for discarded aircraft of the US armed forces. Davis-Monthan is home to the 12th Air Force , which trains here with A-10 Thunderbolt II and OA-10. The EC-130H , HC-130 and HH-60G are also stationed here.

The base has a start and runway (12/30) of 4160 meters in length and employed 2004 about 6900 soldiers .

history

On October 6, 1925, the US Army decided to build an airfield in Tucson for military purposes. The Army Air Service chose the name Davis-Monthan Landing Field on November 1, 1925 , after Lieutenants Samuel Howard Davis , who was killed in a plane crash on December 28, 1921 in Florida as a passenger on a Curtiss JN-6 , and Oscar Monthan who had a fatal accident in his Martin NBS-1 on March 27, 1924 while taking off in Hawaii. Both had attended Tucson high school.

When the construction work for the new airfield was completed in the fall of 1927, Charles Lindbergh inaugurated it on September 23rd during a grand celebration. Davis-Monthan was initially a city-own airfield, which was also called Tucson Municipal Airport in the next few years ; When it opened, it was the first and largest of its kind in the country.

The War Ministry completely converted the base into a military airfield on September 26, 1940, extensive expansion work began in December 1940 and the official reopening took place on April 1, 1941. The name of the base changed to Davis-Monthan Field on December 3, 1941 . Further expansion work followed to prepare the base for training with B-29 Superfortress by 1944 .

After the end of the Second World War, the airfield initially served as a parking space for B-29 bombers and C-47 transport aircraft that had become superfluous . The 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG) developed from this in the following years .

The Strategic Air Command (SAC) took over Davis-Monthan on March 31, 1946. On January 17, 1953, a new 3,500 meter runway was completed, in the same year the US Air Force stationed the first B-47 Stratojet , followed in February 1954 F-86 Saber . To this end, the storage areas and maintenance halls were expanded by the end of 1954. In the fall of 1956, the slope was given its current length of around 4,160 meters.

In the spring of 1960 the US Air Force selected the base as the stationing site for 18 Titan II intercontinental ballistic missiles, the unit responsible (390th Strategic Missile Wing) was activated on January 1, 1962. The first missile arrived on November 27, 1962 on board a C-133 Cargomaster . Construction work on the underground silos continued until December 1963, and the rockets remained in use until 1984. In July 1963, U-2 reconnaissance planes came to Davis-Monthan until they were transferred to Beale Air Force Base in California in October 1976 . From 1964 to 1971, combat training for the crews of the F-4 Phantom II took place on the basis .

Due to the reorganization of the command structure in the US Air Force, Davis-Monthan AFB lost the U-2 unit on October 1, 1976 and switched from Strategic Air Command to Tactical Air Command . It has been a training location for A-10 pilots since 1979.

Davis-Monthan Air Force Base has belonged to Air Combat Command since the dissolution of Tactical Air Command in July 1992 .

Web links

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