Lowry Air Force Base (Lowry Field from 1938 to 1948) is a former United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) training base during World War II and a United States Air Force (USAF) training base during the Cold War. From 1955 to 1958, it served as the initial site of the U.S. Air Force Academy. It is a U.S. Formerly Used Defense Site (B08CO0505).
Background The City of Denver, Auraria, and Highland was chartered as the 1859 territorial capital after the start of the 1858 Pike's Peak gold rush. In 1887, Fort Logan was established in the modern Denver Metropolitan Area. East of the state capital, military training at Montclair, Colorado, began at the future airfield when the 1887 Jarvis Hall Military School opened. Montclair was incorporated into Denver in 1903 and Jarvis Hall burned down in 1904. At the military school site the Agnes Phipps Memorial Sanatorium was established as a tuberculosis hospital in 1904 at 520 Rampart Way (cf. "East 6th Avenue and Quebec Street") by Lawrence C. Phipps Sr., and in the 1930s the sanatorium included 17 buildings designed by the Gove and Walsh firm.
"After several fires at Chanute Field and deterioration of the buildings" in Illinois, a 1934 Air Corps announcement solicited a replacement training location and Denver submitted a bid. The City of Denver purchased the sanatorium for an airfield after a 1935 municipal bond vote. On 27 August 1937, the Denver Branch, Air Corps Technical School, was formed with Departments of Photography and Armament ("photography training moved from Chanute Field"), and the WPA converted the sanatorium grounds into a Colorado military airfield. In February 1938 the airfield being installed adjacent to Fairmont Cemetery was assigned to the Air Corps Technical School headquartered at Chanute, and "the Denver branch of the Army Air Corps became an Army post of 880 acres."
Original Lowry Field The name Lowry Field was originally assigned to an airfield consisting of property taken over by the Colorado National Guard, having a southern border along East 38th Avenue between Dahlia & Holly Streets. It was named for Second Lieutenant Francis Lowry, the only Colorado pilot killed in combat in World War I. The airfield was used by the 120th Observation Squadron, 45th Division Aviation. In 1924, the 120th began flying Curtiss JN-4Es (better known as Jennies) at the new airfield.
A 28 October 1926 photo shows the Fokker BA-1 trimotor Josephine Ford of the Byrd Arctic Expedition being refueled at the original Lowry Field. Charles Lindbergh and his Spirit of St. Louis made a scheduled stop at Lowry on 1 September 1927 during his 48 state sponsored tour. Jack Taylor died on the maiden voyage of the Cheyenne-Pueblo-Denver contract airmail route from Lowry to Cheyenne when his aircraft exploded on 10 December 1927. He was flying a large Douglas mail plane for Western Air Express Inc. near Lowry.
During the latter part of 1937 the name "Lowry Field" was transferred from the Colorado National Guard facility to the new Denver Branch, Air Corps Technical School. In early 1938, after about a year of overlapping operations, the 120th Observation Squadron moved to their new quarters at the Denver Municipal Airport; remaining there until mobilization for World War II took place on 6 January 1941. The 19 officers and 116 enlisted members of the squadron then moved to Biggs Army Airfield, Texas.
In 1938, the former Lowry Field was renamed Combs Field when Harry B. Combs began leasing the airfield. He and a partner opened Mountain State Aviation, a fixed-base operation and flight training facility. Mountain State would go on to train over 9,000 pilots for World War II through the Civilian Pilot Training Program at the location. In 1936, Combs had joined the 120th Observation Squadron, flying the 0-19 E variant and gaining enough flying time to earn his instructor’s rating.
Lowry Field
Lowry Field was assigned to the new Army Air Field on 11 March 1938. Photographic courses began prior to the field's completion and runway paving. The paved runway opened on 4 April (first used by a B-18 Bolo). The sanatorium's main building became the Army post's headquarters, and the largest single barracks (3,200 men) was completed in mid-1940. The "Northeast-Southwest runway was completed in 1941" and on 1 March 1941, the Air Corps Technical School moved an "A.A.F. Clerical School" for Air Corps Clerks (384 hours) to Fort Logan from Lowry. (Craven and Cate cite the "Hist. AC Tech. Tng., 1917 to 7 Dec. 1941, I, 94, 97.") Beginning 16 July 1940, the 1st class of the AAF bombardier schools was at Lowry and used the nearby bombing and gunnery range through 14 March 1941, graduating three classes of instructors who opened the Barksdale Field bombardier school. (from Volume Icited by ancestry.com)
Fourth Technical Training District Lowry training for Boeing B-29 Superfortress pilot qualification and for B-29 operational crew readiness began in 1943, and the base had a July 1943–Jan 1944 clerical school. In 1944 expansion of Lowry's airfield was planned and Lowry gained B-29 Flight Engineer training.
Lowry transferred under Technical Training Command in mid-October 1945 (Air Training Command on 1 July 1946) and by the end of 1945, Lowry's separation center was processing an average of 300 discharges a day. The nearby bombing range was transferred from Buckley Field, by authority of Technical Division, Air Training Command, to Lowry A.F.B. on 20 September 1946. (The webpage's 'Site Survey Summary Sheet' cites the Summary of LAFB Activities since 1937, Lowry Area History 29 September 1958 to 16 December 1961.) In July 1947, formal courses in Intelligence Training were established at Lowry for combat reporting, photographic intelligence, prisoner of war interrogation, and briefing and interrogation of combat crews.
USAF base Lowry Air Force Base was designated on 24 June 1948 and on 26 August 1948 established all Lowry training organizations under the 3415th Technical Training Wing (redesignated "Lowry Technical Training Center" on 1 Jan 1959). Lowry provided Operation Hayride emergency response for people and livestock threatened by eighteen December 1948January 1949 snowstorms from Utah to Kansas (e.g., a C-47 of the 2151st Air Rescue Unit delivered 115 blankets and 30 cases of C rations on 4 January to 482 people at Rockport, Colorado.) By 25 August 1949, the 3903rd Radar Bomb Scoring Squadron had a unit based at Lowry which operated a Strategic Air Command radar station (Lowry's radar annex was at Genesee Mountain Park.)
In 1951, plans called for the headquarters of Technical Training Air Force to be at Lowry and after expansion at the beginning of the Korean War, Lowry courses included photography, armament, rocket propulsion, electronics, radar-operated fire-control systems, computer specialties, gun and rocket sights, and electronically operated turret systems. The 3415th Wing formed a Guided Missiles Department on 7 June 1951 and from 1952 to 1955, Lowry functioned as President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Summer White House. Beginning in September 1954, the 3415th TTW moved intelligence, comptroller, and transportation training programs to Sheppard AFB. On 11 July 1955, the first class of 306 USAF Academy cadets was sworn in at Lowry.
In 1956 Lowry's bombing range support ended when the bombing range mission was terminated and Lowry's first general courses for missiles were developed. Courses were for Falcon, Rascal, Snark, and Navajo missiles and in 1958, Nuclear Weapons Training. Also early in 1958, the USAF concluded that the new NORAD headquarters (different from the planned Cheyenne Mountain nuclear bunkers for NORAD and the Denver ADS) should be relocated from Ent AFB to Lowry AFB (CO Springs' Chidlaw Building became the new NORAD HQ). p. 110 ("Location of NORAD" chapter) "USAF concluded that the best location tor NORAD was Lowry AFB, Denver, Colorado (which would have quarters vacant because of the move of the Air Force Academy from Lowry to its permanent campus near Colorado Springs). … NORAD made a preliminary reply to the JCS on 31 July. NORAD recommended that the headquarters complex be located in the Colorado Springs area, with either the Air Force Academy site or Fort Carson preferred as the location." (cf. the nuclear bunker candidates for the command post at the nearby Blodgett Peak or Cheyenne Mountain.) In 1960, Lowry was the 3rd ranked technical training base of ATC.
ICBM headquarters and training The Air Force Ballistic Committee, formed in 1955, approved the former bombing range on 13 March 1958 for the first Titan I ICBM launch complex (the Titan missile plant was built at Waterton Canyon.) The 703d Strategic Missile Wing was activated on 25 September 1958 and redesignated the 451 SMW on 1 July 1961, at the same time the 848th and the 849 SMS were redesignated the 724th and 725 SMS. Construction on all nine silos at the three launch complexes for the 724 was completed by 4 August 1961. On 18 April 1962, Headquarters SAC declared the 724th SMS operational, and 2 days later the first Titan Is went on alert status. A month later, the sister 725th SMS (initially designated the 849th SMS) declared it had placed all nine of its Titan Is on alert status, which marked a SAC first. Both the 724th and 725th Strategic Missile Squadrons formed components of the Lowry-headquartered 451st Strategic Missile Wing.703/451 SMW operational history USAFHRA September 1958 – June 1965 The "original class of instructors" for the Mace missile course at Lowry graduated from the "G.L. Martin factory training course in Baltimore MD in 1960" and by early 1961, Lowry's personnel course moved to Greenville AFB.
By 1962, Lowry's Department of Missile Training was graduating over 1,000 trained missile specialists per year, and the "Tactical Missile School at Lowry" (e.g., for Matador missile training) in January 1962 "was located in the Black Hangar". (message 1060) On 25 June 1965, the 724th and 725th Strategic Missile Squadrons were inactivated, and the last missile supported by Lowry was removed on 14 April 1965.
Air Intelligence Training Center
The Armed Forces Air Intelligence Training Center was established at Lowry effective 1 July 1963 with student training beginning on 17 July (by 14 March, "the Defense Department had assigned responsibility for all DOD air intelligence training and advanced training in photographic, radar, and infrared interpretation to the Air Force.") In 1965, the runway was closed, and all Lowry AFB flying activities moved to nearby Buckley Air National Guard Base. Ten courses from Amarillo AFB were planned to be moved to Lowry in mid-1968, and Amarillo's 3320th Retraining Group for convicted airmen moved to Lowry 1 July1 September 1967. In 1974, the Air Staff approved Lackland AFB's Special Treatment Center to transfer to the 3415th Special Training Group at Lowry AFB. In addition to Air Force personnel, the U.S. Navy also sent junior officers (ensigns and lieutenants) for initial intelligence training at Lowry, along with enlisted personnel newly graduated from boot camp for their "A" school instruction as intelligence specialists.
Construction began in 1970 for enlisted and officer billeting facilities to replace World War II vintage barracks, five 1,000-man dormitories and completed by 1974, a 187-space mobile home park. Other added facilities included a youth center, a child-care center, a chapel (in addition to the 1941 chapel), and a new Airmen's Open Mess. In 1976, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (formerly Air Force Accounting & Finance Center) & the Air Reserve Personnel Center opened in the Gilchrist Building (Building 444).