Historic Wendover Airfield

Historic Wendover Airfield occupies the core of the former Wendover Air Force Base, an isolated complex on the Utah–Nevada border whose wide salt flats once supported some of the most demanding bomber training of the Second World War. Established in 1940 as a remote bombing and gunnery range, the site grew into the Army Air Forces’ largest such range, with long concrete runways, extensive dispersal areas, and functional wartime architecture that still frames the airfield’s footprint. During the war, Wendover hosted B-17 and B-24 heavy bombardment group training, and later became the crucial training base for the 509th Composite Group, the B-29 unit that carried out the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The sheer scale of the remaining ramp, hangars, and support buildings illustrates the logistical weight behind strategic air power: mass housing, maintenance infrastructure, and specialized facilities spread across the desert. Today the airfield’s persistence as a public airport and historic site highlights ongoing preservation challenges in a harsh environment, while offering an unusually intact layout for studying how late-war bomber and special weapons operations were organized and rehearsed far from any urban center.