Childress Army Air Field

The first class of cadets, graduating in May 1943, was nicknamed the "Valentine of Steel" class after Mrs. White, the commander's wife, decorated a dummy bomb as a valentine to Hitler. Later classes arrived every three weeks for eighteen weeks of training, later stretched to twenty-four. Childress produced the first classes qualified in both precision bombing and dead-reckoning navigation and graduated thirty-five classes of bombardier-navigators in all. On July 1, 1944, the field was renamed the 2,512th Army Air Forces Base Unit, and it closed on December 21, 1945.

What the plaque says

Childress Army Air Field During WWII, U.S. Army air forces initiated a bombardier and navigation school on about 2,400 acres west of Childress. By Oct. 1942 the field was active. Col. John W. White commanded Army Airfields (AAF) at Childress and Midland during the war. The first cadets arrived in Feb. 1943 to train for 18 weeks. "skip-bombing" practice at Lake Childress often drew large crowds. Practice targets were also located across several nearby counties. Childress AAF hosted six other fields for the first "All-American Precision Bombing Olympics" in May 1943. More than a tenth of all bombardiers (4,791) trained here. The war dept. also placed a prisoner of war camp at Childress AAF. After the field closed in Dec. 1945, the city received the land for a municipal airport and other public uses. (2022)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Childress County Heritage Museum — 4.2 mi
  A railroad division town's museum in its 1935 Spanish Colonial post office, in the town that won its county seat by renaming a rival and once employed Walter P. Chrysler.

More markers nearby

• Childress County — 4.4 mi
• Colonel Wm. Edgar Hughes of the Mill Iron — 4.4 mi
• Goodnight Trail — 4.5 mi
• Hall County — 25 mi