McConnell Air Force Base: Named for Brothers Who Flew and Fell
Near Wichita, Kansas
The base you are passing sits on land that has been part of Wichita's aviation identity since nineteen twenty-nine, when the city broke ground on its first municipal airport. In August of nineteen forty-one, the Kansas National Guard's One Hundred Twenty-Seventh Observation Squadron was the first military unit assigned here. Within months of Pearl Harbor, the airport had become one of the busiest military departure points in the United States, sending thousands of brand-new B-Twenty-Nine Superfortresses west toward the Pacific.
After the war the Cold War reshaped the base. In nineteen fifty-one, the Air Force acquired the entire facility. Two years later it was renamed Wichita Air Force Base, then renamed again in April of nineteen fifty-four to honor a pair of brothers who had grown up in Wichita and given their lives in the skies.
Thomas McConnell died on July tenth, nineteen forty-three, when his B-Twenty-Four Liberator crashed into a mountain in dense fog returning from a bombing mission over Bougainville Island in the South Pacific. Fred McConnell died on October twenty-fifth, nineteen forty-five, when his private plane struck telephone wires and went down near Garden City, Kansas. A third brother, Edwin, was added to the dedication in a rededication ceremony in nineteen ninety-nine. Three brothers from one Wichita family, all flyers, all gone.
Today McConnell is home to the Air Mobility Command, operating KC-One Thirty-Five Stratotankers and the newer KC-Forty-Six Pegasus, the aircraft that refuel America's bombers and fighters in mid-air over every ocean. The base employs roughly ten thousand military and civilian workers and remains the largest employer in the Wichita area.
And the Air Capital keeps flying.
