Lincoln Army Air Field/Air Force Base

The plaque's one Atlas squadron was spread across a dozen farm towns. The 551st Strategic Missile Squadron, organized at Lincoln Air Force Base in April 1961, kept twelve Atlas F missiles, one to a site, in underground concrete and steel silos near Avoca, Eagle, Nehawka, Nebraska City, Palmyra, Tecumseh, Firth, Beatrice, Wilber, Bradshaw, Tamora and Brainard. It came under the 98th Strategic Aerospace Wing on January 1, 1964, went nonoperational on April 12, 1965, and was inactivated that June 25 as the Atlas was phased out, a year before the base itself closed.

What the plaque says

Lincoln Army Air Field Lincoln Air Force Base Lincoln Army Air Field was constructed in 1942 on the former Lincoln Municipal Airport. The 2,750- acre property was leased to the army by the City of Lincoln. The base provided technical training for aircraft mechanics, basic training for army aviation cadets, and served as an overseas deployment staging area for bombardment groups and fighter squadrons. It was one of eleven U.S. Army Air Forces training centers built in Nebraska during World War II. At war's end the airfield served as a military separation center for aircrews returning from over- seas. It closed in December 1945 and was returned to the City of Lincoln for a municipal airport. In 1952 the Strategic Air Command activated the airfield as Lincoln Air Force Base under a joint-use lease agreement between the U.S. Air Force and the City of Lincoln. Bomber wings, air refueling squad- rons, and an Atlas ICBM squadron were assigned to the base. In 1966 the base closed and the property was transferred to the City of Lincoln for use as a municipal airport, industrial park, and public housing community. Lincoln Airport Authority Preservation Association of Lincoln Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Nebraska State Capitol — 5.8 mi
  Bertram Goodhue's 400-foot tower on the prairie, built in four phases from 1922 to 1932 and paid off on completion, home of the only one-house legislature in the country.

More markers nearby

• Nine-Mile Prairie Memorial — 1.3 mi
• Giant Glacial Boulder — 4.4 mi
• The North Bottoms — 4.8 mi
• The University of Nebraska — 5.1 mi