Hensley Field

Under the Navy, Hensley Field was a repair shop as much as a flight school. During the Second World War the station overhauled thousands of radial engines and handled all air traffic for the neighboring North American plant, receiving 4,400 SNJ trainers built there. In 1950 its reserve squadron was the first air reserve squadron called to active service in the Korean War. Jets arrived in 1952, and in 1963 the base was the first to fly the F8 Crusader. By 1990 it counted 2,057 active-duty personnel and 6,789 reservists.

What the plaque says

Hensley Field The city of Dallas purchased land at this site in 1928 and leased it to the U.S. Army for a training airfield, as Love Field, established in Dallas in 1917, had become too busy to provide safe facilities for training. The field was named for Major William N. Hensley, an air officer for the Eighth Corps Army Area who helped select the base site before his death. Army air operations were moved here from Love Field, and Hensley Field became the center of all area Army air training operations and a key repair and refueling point in the southwest. As World War II loomed, the U.S. War Department granted the use of a part of Hensley Field to the Navy for a naval reserve aviation base. Known as "Prairie Navy" because of its inland location, it was commissioned in May 1941. Also in 1941, the North American Aviation Company transferred production of the T-6 and Navy SNJ "Texan" planes here from California, and the Army Air Corps moved its midwestern headquarters of the ferry command to Hensley Field. In 1943 the naval reserve aviation base was redesignated Dallas Naval Air Station. Personnel trained here included fleet, Coast Guard and Marine pilots, three future astronauts, a contingent of free French forces and women accepted for volunteer emergency service (WAVES). In 1944 the North American Aviation Facility was re-tooled to produce B-24 bombers. By the end of World War II, Hensley Field had expanded to include 4,104 people. After the war, Congress established a naval air training program to preserve the skills and expertise of ex-military personnel. The Navy officially took over Hensley Field on May 1, 1949, but the Air Force remained as tenant. Dallas Naval Air Station remained in operation until 1998. (2000)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cedar Ridge Preserve — 7.8 mi
  A 633-acre Audubon Dallas preserve at the western edge of Dallas County, with about nine miles of trails through prairie, woodland and escarpment hills.
• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 9.0 mi
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 9.6 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 10 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.

More markers nearby

• Jordan-Bowles House — 0.8 mi
• Jordan-Hight Family Cemetery — 0.9 mi
• Avion Village — 2.1 mi
• Dallas Baptist University (Decatur Baptist College) — 2.7 mi