Boca Raton Army Air Field was a World War II United States Army Air Forces airfield, located northwest of the 1940s borders of Boca Raton, Florida. During World War II, it operated the only training for the then new and secret technology of radar. Closed in 1946, due to annexation the former base is now within the city of Boca Raton; the land is currently occupied by the Boca Raton Airport, Florida Atlantic University and Palm Beach State College.
History
Origins
In 1936, the Boca Raton Airport was a small city airport. In 1941, in response to the emerging Axis threat, the United States began to rapidly mobilize and expand its armed forces. In addition to enlarging its Army and Navy, the US also sought to expand its air forces. With America entering into World War II, the Army Air Corps suddenly underwent rapid expansion. The mild winter climate and the flat terrain of South Florida marked the areas as ideal for flying and aviation training.
In the early-1940s, Boca Raton's population numbered only 723. This enabled the United States government to take thousands of acres of land for its use without having to relocate a large number of people. The decision to locate the base at Boca Raton was made because of the already existing city airfield and the land which was available for its expansion. The land was acquired from the farmers through the process of condemnation. However, this is not to say that the establishment of the military airfield was without controversy. A majority of the land was acquired from Japanese-American farmers from the failing Yamato Colony, the land having been seized through the process of eminent domain, leaving many Japanese-Americans little recourse in the early days of World War II.
Eventually three major air bases, Homestead in south Dade County, Morrison Field in West Palm Beach (which later became the Palm Beach International Airport), and Boca Raton Army Air Field were developed in the first years of the war.
Boca Raton AAF included 5,860 acres and stretched from Dixie Highway on the East to Military Trail on the West and from the current Spanish River Blvd. on the North to Palmetto Park Road to some point on the South. Areas like Old Floresta remained in private hands and many of the houses in the subdivision were rented to air force officers and their families.
Beginning with the then existing Boca Raton Airport, 3,500 construction workers and $11 million in government appropriations converted the facility into the Army Air Force's only radar training station during World War II.
Construction of the base began in June 1941 and continued to expand during the war. Over nine million dollars was spent constructing the facility and an average of 1,200 civilians worked on the base. As the Army Air Force's only radar training station during World War II, the Boca Raton base grew to eight hundred buildings with a troop strength of more than 16,000.
Eastern Technical Training Command
The new base was opened on 1 June 1942. Flight operations from the airfield began during the summer. Boca Raton AAF was placed under the jurisdiction of the Army Air Forces Eastern Technical Training Command 3501st Base Unit (Technical School, Radar).
Other units assigned to Boca Raton were the 319th Base Headquarters and Air Base Squadron, which performed the base housekeeping duties, and the Air Technical Service Command 13th Sub Depot, which provided logistical support for transient aircraft at the airfield, although no permanent aircraft were stationed at the Base other than some light transport and courier aircraft.
Although planned as a radar training base from the onset, one of the first missions of Boca Raton AAF was anti-submarine patrols over the Florida Atlantic coast. The 26th Anti-Submarine Wing, based in Miami, deployed A-29 Hudson, B-34 Lexington and Lockheed B-37 Ventura light bombers, all equipped with anti-submarine equipment, which operated from the new airfield. The antisubmarine forces remained until mid-1943 when the Navy took over the coastal patrol mission. The Boca Raton airfield also was used as a way-station for planes being ferried by Air Transport Command over the South Atlantic Ferry Route, its principal ferrying route for combat and transport aircraft being deployed to Europe, North Africa, the Soviet Union and the China Burma India Theater. The use of the field by Transport Command continued throughout the war.