Scott Air Force Base

Scott Field opened on June fourteenth, nineteen seventeen, when the War Department leased six hundred twenty-four acres near Belleville, Illinois, weeks after the United States entered World War One. The Army needed pilots fast, and instructors here began teaching young men to fly Curtiss Jenny biplanes that September.

The base was named for Corporal Frank Scott, the first enlisted American serviceman to die in an aviation accident, making it the only Air Force installation in the country named for an enlisted airman. Redesignated Scott Air Force Base in nineteen forty-eight, it grew into a major logistics and communications hub, today serving as headquarters for the United States Transportation Command, which coordinates military transportation across the globe.