Bomber Group Training
The reason for this change was that the range could not be used successfully as a fighter training area. Possibly due to Tonopah's 6,000-foot (1,800 m) elevation and design problems with the Airacobras, the planes and pilots were being lost in crashes at an unacceptable rate. In addition, the extreme temperatures of over 100 degrees in summer had a negative effect on the P-39's performance. It was decided to change the operation to a high altitude bomber training base to train crews of the Consolidated B-24 Liberators.
To accommodate this change, in September 1943 the base was shut down for a large expansion project that would convert it to a B-24 training center. By October 1943, about half of the personnel were moved temporarily to Bishop Army Air Field, California, in order to provide housing at Tonopah for contractors engaged in the extensive construction program at the base. The project, which cost $3,000,000, included extensions of runways, new aprons, new water storage tanks, additional quarters and barracks, a new post exchange, supply buildings, day rooms, crash stations, warehouses, operations buildings, a hangar, a school building, and other additions to the airfield as well as additional facilities on the range. By the beginning of November, 1943, most of the construction had been completed. The training equipment and areas included a rifle range, pistol range, skeet ranges, turret trainers, bomb trainers equipped with Norden or Sperry sights, flexible gunnery trainers, navigation trainers, and schools for gunners and radio operators, with the range being available for practicing bombing and aerial gunnery.
On November 1, 1943, the men who had been sent to Bishop returned, and the 458th Bombardment Group arrived for training. Upon the departure of the 458th at the beginning of January, 1944, the 470th Bombardment Group arrived at Tonopah to serve as a replacement training unit to prepare B-24 crews for service with heavy bomber units overseas. In a reorganization on March 31, 1944, the 470th was disbanded, its training functions being taken over by the 442nd Army Air Force Base Unit.
Read more about this topic: Tonopah Army Air Field, Operational Use
Famous quotes containing the words group and/or training:
“My routines come out of total unhappiness. My audiences are my group therapy.”
—Joan Rivers (b. 1935)
“The triumphs of peace have been in some proximity to war. Whilst the hand was still familiar with the sword-hilt, whilst the habits of the camp were still visible in the port and complexion of the gentleman, his intellectual power culminated; the compression and tension of these stern conditions is a training for the finest and softest arts, and can rarely be compensated in tranquil times, except by some analogous vigor drawn from occupations as hardy as war.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)