Lt. Col. William E. Dyess

The base that took Dyess's name began as Tye Army Air Field in December 1942, an adjunct of Camp Barkeley. Deeded to Abilene after the war, it reopened in the Korean War buildup and was dedicated on April 15, 1956, as Abilene Air Force Base under the Strategic Air Command, taking his name that December. B-47s came first, then B-52s and KC-135 tankers that flew combat missions over Southeast Asia from 1965 to 1973, and in June 1985 the supersonic B-1B. In 2001 the Handbook of Texas put the base's economic impact at $307.1 million.

What the plaque says

(Aug. 9, 1916 - Dec. 22, 1943) A graduate of Albany High School, William Edwin Dyess was an aviation and infantry commander in the Phillipines during World War II. Captured at the fall of Bataan in 1942, he survived the Death March and escaped his captors a year later. Back in the U.S., his published accounts of enemy actions toward prisoners of war greatly aided the war effort and influenced world opinion. In November 1943, he made an appearance at the Albany football field on his way to California, where he died in a plane crash just weeks later. Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene is named for the much-decorated war hero. Recorded - 2004

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Jail Art Center — 1.1 mi
  An art museum in Albany's 1878 stone jail, where the masons carved their initials to be sure of pay, now holding Chinese tomb figures and works by Picasso and Klee.
• Fort Griffin State Historic Site — 13 mi
  The ruins of an 1867 cavalry post on a plateau above the Clear Fork of the Brazos, judged unfit for habitation and used nine more years, now home to the official state longhorn herd.
• Fort Phantom Hill — 24 mi
  A field of lone stone chimneys north of Abilene, left by the fire after the Army left in 1854, later a stage stop and a buffalo-hide town of more than 500 people.
• Conrad Hilton Center and Mobley Hotel — 30 mi
  The 40-room oil-boom hotel in Cisco that Conrad Hilton bought in 1919 when a bank deal fell through, now a museum of the Hilton start and of Cisco's 1927 Santa Claus bank robbery.

More markers nearby

• Fort Griffin Fandangle — 0.9 mi
• City of Albany — 1.0 mi
• Ledbetter Salt Work, C.S.A. — 1.0 mi
• Dr. Jack Shackelford — 1.1 mi