How much do you know about the Casper Army Air Base?
According to the Wyoming Historical Society, the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor led to the creation of the base. At that time, the U.S. Army Air Force got approval to create scores of new bases across the country. A Chamber of Commerce delegation from Casper lobbied for one to be built in their town. They marketed the “zephyr wind” that whips around the western end of Casper Mountain to help get the heavy warplanes into the air and give pilots valuable experience with unpredictable winds. The base took just six months from groundbreaking to opening on Sept. 1, 1942. By the end of WWII, almost 18,000 men had trained at the base. At the height of training, more than one million .50-caliber rounds and one thousand 100-pound training bombs were expended per month. The Casper Army Air Base closed in 1945 when the war ended and it’s now a museum. A series of murals about the area’s history that were painted by soldiers are still viewable today. And the evidence of the soldiers’ training is scattered across the high plains in the form of spent .50-caliber bullets, practice bomb fragments and the wreckage of more than 70 aircraft.
