W.A.S.P. Training Base: Avenger Field

After the WASPs, the Handbook of Texas says, the field was expanded in 1945 to train P-47 Thunderbolt pilots for combat, but it closed in November 1945 and returned to the city on June 3, 1947. The Korean War brought the Air Force back, and from April 1, 1952, it served as an auxiliary field for pilots from Webb Air Force Base at Big Spring. In 1956 it became an aircraft control and warning radar site. It closed on November 30, 1969, and a Texas State Technical Institute campus opened there on July 31, 1970.

What the plaque says

Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) trained here in military aircraft during World War II, from February 21, 1943, through final graduation day, December 7, 1944. Avenger Field first served as a training base for British Royal Air Force Cadets in 1942, then for U.S. Army Air Forces Cadets August 1942 - April 1943. The WASP program was started under General H.H. ("Hap") Arnold to train women to fly every kind of mission short of combat, releasing male pilots for overseas duty. Jacqueline Cochran was director of women pilots; Ethel A. Sheehy, WASP staff field executive; Nancy Harness Love, WASP staff executive-ferrying division; and Leoti Clark Deaton, WASP staff executive-training bases. Of 25,000 girls who applied for WASP flight training. 1,830 were accepted; 1,074 won their silver wings. The WASPs flew 60 million miles on operational duty; 37 lost their lives serving their country. WASPs had civil service--not military--status, but were granted eligibility to apply for reserve commissions in the Air Corps after the WASP program ended when the allies were winning the war in Europe and the U.S.A. pilot shortage was past. Avenger Field was closed after a short post-WASP span of service as a missile base. (1972)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• National WASP WWII Museum — 0.6 mi
  Hangar 1 at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, where the women of the WASP trained to fly every aircraft in the Army's arsenal in World War II, then waited thirty-three years to be called veterans.
• Pioneer Museum — 4.3 mi
  Nolan County's settlement story in a dozen rooms of Judge R. A. Ragland's 1906 house in Sweetwater, a town that started as a dugout store for buffalo hunters and a post office called Blue Goose.
• Heart of West Texas Museum — 23 mi
  Colorado City's museum in a restored downtown house, from a mammoth dug up at Lake Champion in 2001 to an Ice Age bison and the wartime telegrams sent to a local family.
• Scurry County Museum — 30 mi
  Snyder's county museum on the Western Texas College campus, with the rifle used to shoot the white buffalo, an 1878 chuckwagon and the millionth barrel of the Canyon Reef oil boom.

More markers nearby

• Women Airforce Service Pilots — 0.7 mi
• Sweetwater Cemetery — 2.9 mi
• Roscoe Cemetery — 3.1 mi
• S.D. Myres — 3.9 mi