WWII echoes
I love passing by the Trent Lott Gulfport Combat Readiness Center, which houses various Guard and Air Guard units, just outside the municipal airport from which I often fly out.
It is a historic base, with the Guard’s AVCRAD unit having a great display of an AH-1S Cobra, OH-58A, and OH-58D Kiowa Warrior on pedestals. That part of the base, besides lots of use in the recent sandbox wars, was a training area for the helicopter crews of Eagle Claw back in 1979.
Moving past the Guard area to the Air Guard portion, the old 200×80-foot circa 1942 Army Air Corps hangar, which has recently been restored, features an early WWII U.S. “meatball” roundel.
Back during WWII, Gulfport Army Airfield trained ground crews on B-17s, B-24s, B-26s, and B-29s.
It became a primer of sorts for units headed to the South Pacific. If they could endure the 95-degree/95-percent humidity/95-percent chance of rain/Hurricane inbound days that is the Mississippi Gulf South summer, odds were they would do Okay in New Guinea or the Solomon Islands.
It lived on into the Cold War as the Gulfport Air Force Base until 1957, continuing as a Guard base.
And, true to form, the hangar had a group of visiting F-35s aboard, likely from Eglin.
Do you ever get over to the Seabee base, the Naval Construction Battalion Center at Gulfport? I spent many a summer there and at Camp Shelby up the road. They have, or had, a small museum there.
They still do! It’s a great little museum