Historic Midland

❖
Right: A bombardier cadet in training
at the Midland Army Bombardier
School even had a “matching” pet.
Below, left: Bombardiers at the Army
Air Forces Bombardier School at
Midland demonstrated precision
bombing using the secret Norden
bomb sight.
Below, right: Jim Allison, Sr., left,
publisher of the Midland Reporter-
Telegram, and Bill Collyns, center,
manager of the Midland Chamber of
Commerce, dine with military
personnel at the combat range station
at Midland Army Air Base prior to
viewing training during World War II.
allowed the Chamber of Commerce to take care
of “all the housing needs” of thousands of MAAF
citizens by 1942.
“It was something,” Collyns said. “It was big
time back then. Everything was military then.
The war was on and that was the number-one
effort.” Initially, the Army invested more than
$5.5 million in 1941 and 1942 dollars in building
MAAF.
The site of MAAF, now Midland International
Airport and home of the American Airpower
Heritage Museum and the 1957-established
Confederate Air Force, whose purpose is to
restore and maintain in flying condition examples
of World War II combat aircraft, once was
ranch grassland.
Today, Midland International Airport, which
is undergoing a $34.5-million construction project
that includes a new terminal and expanded
parking, has developed into “the gateway” to the
Midland-Odessa area and has taken on the role
performed by the railroads in the late 1800s and
well into the 1900s.
Midland oilman Sam Addison Sloan, a World
War I aviator, had leased grassland from
Midland rancher Clarence Scharbauer, Sr. to
establish Sloan Field. It began in 1927 and 1928
as a graded dirt landing strip on 220 acres.
Sloan flew in France in an Aero Squadron of
the U.S. Army Air Service. He was killed at age
41 on New Year’s Day of 1929 in the crash of his
OX5 Waco biplane. In August of 1929, famed
woman pioneer, aviatrix Amelia Earhart, landed
at Sloan Field.
One June 12, 1941, on the eve of the government’s
announcement that an Army Air
Corps’ Advanced Bombardier College would be
built in Midland, then-Congressman Lyndon B.
Johnson made a plea for patriotism on the
Midland County Courthouse square.
In 1939, the city of Midland purchased Sloan
Field and established Midland Municipal
Airport on the former Scharbauer ranchland.
The airport was expanded by more than 1,000
acres. The WPA in 1941 appropriated funds for
runway and taxi-way improvements.
As the war raged, Midland leased the airport
to the War Department for a dollar a year in
54 ✦ HISTORIC MIDLAND