Kingman Army-Airfield Base

In 1942, when the Kingman community agreed to dig another water well to provide water to the base, the United States Military decided that they would establish a Army base, the Army Air Force Flexible Gunnery School, in Kingman, Arizona.  In May, 1943 it officially became the Kingman Army Air Field (KAAF).  The climate was perfect, and the new Route 66 provided easy access along with the Santa Fe Railroad.

At the height of the war, in late 1943, the U.S. had 345 main bases, 116 sub-bases and 322 auxiliary fields.  KAAF was a main base with one sub-base and five auxiliary fields.  But in the beginning there was nothing here in Kingman, so the airmen located in the Harvey House hotel downtown.   Eventually, there were 400 buildings and almost 6,000 aircraft, making KAAF the 6th largest U.S. Army Air Corp facility.

By mid-January, 1943 the base had established Bugs Bunny (with the permission of Leon Schlesinger, "Bugs'" producer) as the official mascot in honor of all the rabbits around the Kingman area.  At about the same time the first flexible gunnery training classes were started with about 25 men per class.  At the height of the war, KAAF was turning out 200-300 trained men every six weeks.

The Gunnery School was activated on August 4, 1942.  Trainees included one of the first B-17 outfits, the 1120th, a detachment of Chinese gunners, the 334th Aviation Squadron of African-Americans, and detachments of the WASP (Women's Aircorp Service Pilots).  White, black, Chinese, men, women ... no racism out here in the west!  The WASP's were used to ferry new planes from America to the European theaters. 

KAAF trained about 36,000 gunners.  They weren't trained to just shoot guns and drop bombs, they were trained to be able to disassemble those guns in the dark in case the guns jammed during an engagement in those nighttime raids over Germany.

 

One of those gunnery teams was known as the "Lucky Partners:" 

 

After the war, this was cut from the fuselage before the plane was sent for scrap. 

 

The war ended September 2nd, 1945 and so did the KAAF mission.  The field was ordered shut down as of February, 1946.  It's designation was changed to "Storage Depot 41."

 

Most of Kingman's planes (over 5,500) were bought after the war for $2,780,000 by Martin Wunderlich of Jefferson City, Missouri.  The fuel left in the planes at the time of their decommissioning was almost worth that price all by itself.  But, Wunderlich melted the planes down, and from 1946 - 1948, he shipped 70 million pounds of scrap aluminum from Kingman.  (Contrary to some rumors, no planes were buried in the desert.)