Breedlove Airport

The program that trained cadets at Breedlove began in 1939 under the new Civil Aeronautics Authority, after President Roosevelt announced in December 1938 a plan to train 20,000 college students a year. The government paid for a 72-hour ground school and 35 to 50 hours of flying with private operators, who had to own one aircraft for every ten students. After Pearl Harbor it became the War Training Service and mostly screened pilot candidates. By summer 1944 it had qualified 435,165 trainees through 1,460 contractors, and Tuskegee Institute was among its schools.

What the plaque says

Breedlove Airport WHEN CHARLES LINDBERGH WAS TRAVELLING THE U.S. BY AIRPLANE ON A SPEAKING TOUR, HE WAS UNABLE TO LAND AT LUBBOCK BECAUSE THERE WAS NO AIRPORT AT THE TIME. CITY LEADERS AND AVIATION ENTHUSIASTS, DETERMINED TO SEE THAT LUBBOCK WOULD NOT MISS OUT ON THE NEW WAVE OF AVIATION, RAISED THE FUNDS FOR A MUNICIPAL AIRPORT. THE AIRPORT WAS ESTABLISHED IN 1930 AT ITS PRESENT LOCATION NORTH OF THE CITY, AND WAS MANAGED BY CLENT BREEDLOVE, A WELL-KNOWN LOCAL AVIATOR. IN SEP. 1939, BREEDLOVE LEFT HIS POSITION TO OPEN HIS OWN FLYING SERVICE LOCATED AT THE SECOND HANGAR AT THE LUBBOCK MUNICIPAL AIRPORT. THEN ON DEC. 20, 1941, HE OPENED BREEDLOVE AIRPORT JUST EAST OF THE TAHOKA HIGHWAY (NOW MLK BOULEVARD) ON EAST 50TH STREET. BREEDLOVE LIVED AT THE AIRPORT WITH HIS WIFE AULYNE AND DAUGHTER MARY LOUISE. HE AND HIS WIFE OWNED AND OPERATED THE AIRPORT UNTIL 1947. IT CONSISTED OF FOUR LARGE RUNWAYS, A HANGAR, SHOP AND PARTS ROOM, STORAGE HANGAR, DOPING ROOM, CAFÉ, RESTROOMS AND TWO-STORY ADMINISTRATION BUILDING WITH CONTROL TOWER. DURING WORLD WAR II, BREEDLOVE AIRPORT, SITUATED ON 219 ACRES OF LAND, WAS USED TO TRAIN THOUSANDS OF CADET PILOTS IN THE CIVILIAN PILOT TRAINING PROGRAM (CPTP) AND THE TEXAS TECH PRE-FLIGHTS PROGRAM (309TH COLLEGE TRAINING DETACHMENT). THE SITE ALSO SERVED AS LUBBOCK'S COMMERCIAL AIRPORT DURING THE WAR YEARS. ON FEB. 6, 1943, CONGRESSMAN GEORGE H. MAHON ANNOUNCED THAT A NEW MILITARY CORPS WAS TO USE TEXAS TECH'S FACILITIES FOR WAR-TIME TRAINING. THE PRE-FLIGHT PROGRAM WAS A WAY FOR COLLEGES AND CIVILIAN CONTRACTORS TO PROVIDE THE INITIAL TRAINING FOR PILOTS, WAS CRITICAL TO FULFILLING THE DESPERATE NEED FOR PILOTS DURING THE WAR, AND ALSO GAVE A LARGE ECONOMIC BOOST TO LUBBOCK-AREA BUSINESSES. THE CPTP AND PRE-FLIGHT PROGRAMS EDUCATED AN ESTIMATED 3,750 MILITARY STUDENTS IN THE BASICS OF FLIGHT, CIVIL AIR REGULATIONS AND VARIOUS COLLEGE-LEVEL COURSES. (2012)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• American Windmill Museum — 2.4 mi
  Lubbock's park of restored water-pumping windmills and early wind chargers, more than 70 of them turning outdoors and the rare ones under roof, with a megawatt-era turbine overhead.
• Buddy Holly Center — 2.7 mi
  The city's museum of Buddy Holly and West Texas music in a 1928 railway depot, with the house where the Crickets worked on That'll Be the Day moved next door.
• National Ranching Heritage Center — 5.1 mi
  A Texas Tech outdoor museum where ranch houses, barns, windmills and a depot from across the ranching country were moved one by one onto a single park beside the campus.
• Lubbock Lake Landmark — 6.8 mi
  A bend of Yellow House Draw on Lubbock's north edge where digging has found nearly 12,000 years of people on the Southern High Plains, layer on layer, from Clovis to the 1880s.

More markers nearby

• Lubbock Cotton Club — 0.6 mi
• Paul Whitfield Horn — 1.1 mi
• Bradford Knapp — 1.2 mi
• Mary & Mac Private School — 1.6 mi