Strother Army Airfield: Kansas Trains the Air Corps

Between Winfield and Arkansas City, the flat Kansas tableland along this stretch of Route Seventy-Seven once roared with the sound of training aircraft. Strother Army Air Field operated here from nineteen forty-two to nineteen forty-five, one of dozens of airfields the Army Air Forces constructed across the Great Plains to transform the sons of farmers and factory workers into combat pilots.

The field came into being through a joint decision by the city commissions of Arkansas City and Winfield, who in February of nineteen forty-one approved the construction of a shared municipal airport and authorized bond funding from the Kansas legislature. The federal government's interest in the site for a military flight school became known that same year, and construction of the full airfield complex began on May sixteenth, nineteen forty-two. The base was activated on September nineteenth, nineteen forty-two.

It was named for Captain Donald Root Strother, a native of Cowley County and the first Army Air Corps pilot from the county to be killed in the war. On January twenty-fourth, nineteen forty-three, Governor Andrew Schoeppal dedicated the base formally in Strother's memory.

The airfield served the Central Flying Training Command, putting aviation cadets through basic training before they advanced to combat aircraft. It later served II Fighter Command for additional training functions oriented toward the Pacific theater. At its peak the base employed thousands of civilian support workers drawn from the surrounding farm communities, bringing wartime wages and population to a part of Kansas that had spent most of the nineteen thirties in economic collapse.

The field was declared surplus in nineteen forty-six and conveyed to the cities of Arkansas City and Winfield in nineteen forty-eight. The runways that remain are used today as a general aviation airport. The land itself is flatter than most flight schools could ask for.