Site of Old Midland Army Flying School

The field was named for Samuel A. Sloan, who leased 240 acres of pasture in October 1927 for a private landing field and flying school; he died in a crash on January 1, 1929, and his brother and sister kept it going. It became an Army Airways Station in May 1930. In July 1941 the city leased the airport to the government for a dollar a year. Besides training cadets, the base took over the Central Bombardier Instructor School from Carlsbad, New Mexico, in 1943, ran twenty-three bombing ranges and helped develop photographic and sonic scoring of hits.

What the plaque says

Site of Old Midland Army Flying School Old Sloan Field, built 1931, in 1942 became Midland Army Flying School, for bombardier cadets. At one time it was called largest bombardier training center in the world. One of over 25 World War II airfields in Texas, its cadets flew 861,510 hours in Beech "AT-11" aircraft, dropping 1,245,107 bombs. Last class of cadets graduated in Jan. 1945. The field was used as an Army Air Forces instructor school (Bombardier) until World War II ended later that year. After military phase-out, 1947, commercial field opened 1950. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Midland Army Air Field Museum — 0.5 mi
  A hangar museum at Midland's airport, run by Commemorative Air Force volunteers, telling how a 1927 grass field became the bombardier college that graduated 6,627 officers in World War II.
• Permian Basin Petroleum Museum — 7.6 mi
  Midland's museum of the oil basin it sits on, from a restored diorama of the Permian reef to a 40-acre yard of drilling rigs and Jim Hall's Chaparral race cars.
• Museum of the Southwest — 7.8 mi
  Midland's art and science museum in the 1937 house of oilman Fred Turner and his wife Juliette, with added galleries, a children's museum and a planetarium on the grounds.
• Bush Family Home State Historic Site — 8.0 mi
  The small 1939 frame house on West Ohio Avenue where George and Barbara Bush raised their young family in Midland's 1950s oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site.

More markers nearby

• Midland County — 1.0 mi
• Homer Robert Henderson — 6.4 mi
• Comanche War Trail — 6.6 mi
• Ector County — 6.6 mi