Cut Bank Army Air Base

The Cut Bank airport beneath you was a wartime secret in plain sight. When the Second World War began, the town offered its municipal airfield to the Army Air Forces, and by November of nineteen forty-two the base was operational as a satellite of the Great Falls Army Air Base. B-seventeen Flying Fortresses rumbled in immediately, and over the next year four different bombardment groups cycled through here, training crews in navigation and high-altitude bombing before shipping them directly to the European theater.

The four hundred twenty-ninth, five hundred fiftieth, five hundred sixty-ninth, and six hundred thirteenth Bomb Squadrons all called Cut Bank home at various points. By October of nineteen forty-three the last group departed, and the base quietly went inactive. Today the civilian airport still occupies those same two wartime runways, carrying forward a piece of Montana's quiet contribution to winning the war.