Sewart Air Force Base

This airport was once Sewart Air Force Base, and for a stretch of the Cold War it was one of the most important airlift fields in the country.

It began as Smyrna Army Airfield, ordered built near Nashville just weeks after Pearl Harbor, and during World War Two it trained crews on four engine bombers. In nineteen fifty the base was renamed for Major Allen J. Sewart Junior, a Nashville native and veteran of Midway who was killed in action over the South Pacific in nineteen forty-two, earning two Purple Hearts.

Sewart became a hub for troop carrier and tactical airlift wings flying the Flying Boxcar and later the C One Thirty Hercules. In fact, in nineteen fifty-eight it was the only operational C One Thirty base in the entire United States. The last Hercules left the runway in nineteen seventy-one, and the field has served as a public airport ever since.