BUNKER HILL — Grissom Air Reserve Base has become a fixture in the local economy and culture. But there’s a good chance it never would have come to Miami County at all if the Navy hadn’t opened Bunker Hill Naval Air Station 75 years ago Saturday.
The Navy opened up the base on July 1, 1942, as a training base for Navy, Marine and Coast Guard aviators.
The Navy trained hundreds of fighter pilots there in a short amount of time, including Ted Williams, a hall of fame baseball player with the Boston Red Sox.
Because the base was used to train naval aviators for carrier landings, large octagon pads are still visible today from the air in a few communities. The octagon landing pads allowed the students to land no matter the wind direction.
Jim Price, director of the Grissom Air Museum, said that first naval station isn’t what people today think of as a military base.
“We always see the end of something, but we seldom see the beginning,” he said. “The beginning of this station was just a big, old field with a fence around it. It was kind of just sitting out in the middle of nowhere.”
While the base began with World War II, and closed following the war, it was reopened as Bunker Hill Air Force Base by the Air Force in June 1954.
The base was renamed on May 12, 1968, in honor of Lt. Col. Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, a native of Mitchell, Indiana. Grissom was one of America’s original seven astronauts and was killed during a fire in his Apollo capsule at Cape Kennedy, Florida.
The Air Force Reserve became part of the Grissom community in 1971 when the 434th Special Operations Wing and its A-37 Dragonfly aircraft relocated to the base. For the next 23 years, Grissom was home to both active and reserve personnel.
In 1978, a second Air Force Reserve unit — the 931st Air Refueling Group — joined the scene. At the height of its operations, the base was home to one active duty and two Air Force Reserve wings, 60 KC-135 Stratotankers and 18 A-10 Thunderbolt II fighter aircraft.
Due to changes in the Air Force mission, two units — one reserve, one active duty — were deactivated in 1994. In October of that year, Grissom was realigned as an Air Force Reserve Command facility.
Today, the host-unit is the 434th Air Refueling Wing. While the Air Force has the largest contingent of personnel at Grissom, it is also home to Army and Marine Corps Reserve personnel.
Last year, the base had a total economic impact of $122 million for fiscal year 2016, according to base officials. Grissom spent $22.3 million in equipment, supplies, contracts and minor construction, which directly impacted local job creation by more than $26.8 million, officials said.
Grissom is home to the 434th ARW, the largest KC-135R Stratotanker unit in the Air Force Reserve Command, but also three Army Reserve units and a Marine Corps Reserve communications detachment.