Lexington Minuteman
Thursday, September 16, 2004

Hanscom Air Force Base's transformation:
From farms to fighters to defense

By Michael Rosenberg

These days, local political, business and educational officials are
working overtime, campaigning not only to preserve Hanscom Air Force Base
but also to expand its mission. Who could have imagined such a scenario back
on Jan. 29, 1941, when a special Town Meeting voted against "the
establishment of an airport within the confines of the town of Bedford."

It didn't matter, of course. Military officials had been eyeing the
expanse of South Bedford for its airfield potential since 1939. Indeed,
former Town Historian Louise Brown wrote in her 1968 local history
"Wilderness Town" that the prospects were identified during officials'
aerial inspection of damage from a major brush fire.

Current Town Historian John Brown , son of Louise, has written that
"the concept of 'eminent domain' was used to take farmlands, close Lincoln
Road, our route to the south, and cut off Forest Street. ... The heart of
Bedford was not in resisting because we were at war and the country needed a
fighter base."

Thus began Bedford's association with the U.S. Army Air Corps, and
eventually the Air Force. And it has really been a romance for most of the
past 63 years.

"Bedford had very little trouble with the hundreds of servicemen to
pass through Bedford Base," wrote Mrs. Brown. "All were welcomed as if they
were natives of the town."

Although nearly half of the original 512 acres were acquired from
Lincoln and Concord, the facility was opened as Bedford Airport. In 1943 it
was renamed Laurence G. Hanscom Field, honoring the memory of a
reporter-turned-pilot who was killed in 1941 during flight training.

Only a visionary could have conceived Hanscom Field's evolution, from
training site for P-40 Warhawk pilots bound for North Africa to today's
epicenter of defense communications and electronics research. The airport
always has been under state ownership, with a long-term lease agreement
signed in 1952. Today it is a regional corporate and personal jetport, a
pilot training haven and a potential source of scheduled commercial service
that has engendered intense opposition in area towns.

Yet to thousands of Bedford families, past and present, Hanscom is The
Base. It is the source of high school classmates, customers, jobs and human
resources offered by military retirees who remain.

There are still several residents who vividly remember the tranquility
of South Bedford before the advent of the airfield. Ruth Hartwell, 83, grew
up on the Kelly family farm on Hartwell Road, and she recalls the
neighboring Pedersen and McGovern farms stretching into the valley.

"It was beautiful down there - like the Ponderosa," she laughed,
referring to the Western ranch on the 1960s television program "Bonanza."

"As kids, we used to work on those farms," said George Swallow, 83, of
South Road.

Much of the southern portion of the town was replete with working
farms; Swallow still can name many of the owners.

"In those days there was a surplus of pigs; the government paid one
farmer not to raise any more pigs," Swallow reported. "So he raised pigs on
the next farm with money he got for not raising them on the first."

"It was all country," Swallow continued, noting that much of South road
was a dirt road. "There was quite a swampy area ... we used to skate back
there. A pair of skates never wore out in those days. They were passed down
to somebody with smaller feet."

He remembers the topographical transformation that took place beginning
in the summer of 1941. Most of a hill was removed; "they dug and dug and had
mountains of peat." Former Town Historian Ina Mansur wrote about that in a
1977 Bedford Minuteman column. "Five hundred men, eight steam shovels, 20
tractors, 50 trucks and several rollers were working three eight-hour shifts
during July. By the end of the month they were burning brush and stumps on
the site. ... The peat and loam from 300 acres had been removed because it
prevented a good base for a plane weighing 150 tons."

"The young people of Bedford loved the excitement, but older people
were rightfully worried about the future," Mrs. Brown wrote in her book. "A
great war was on, Bedford men and women were in it, and although the new
base seemed one more thing that they could do for their own in the
emergency, the town knew the base was here to stay."

During the second World War, Bedford women staffed a USO in the Town
Hall and the American Legion ran bock dances for GIs stationed nearby.

On July 2, 1942, the 79th Pursuit (Interceptor) Group, equipped with
P-40 fighter aircraft, arrived at the airfield.

"I witnessed the first plane to land there. It was a C-47," reported
John Dodge of Elmbrook Road.

"It was a Sunday morning ... I got on my bike and went down there.
People drove their cars right up on the runway to look at it. They had just
finished laying down the hot top on the runway."

For the next 31 years, says a 1984 USAF Hanscom chronology, the
facility "was host to a multitude of operational units and aircraft,"
including fighters, cargo planes, trainers and bombers.

Cambridge Research Center and Lincoln Laboratory, nascent electronic
research efforts involving the military and MIT, moved to Hanscom in 1951.
That was the beginning of the base's central role in the development of
command and control systems and air defenses. In 1961 the Air Force created
the Electronics Systems Division, which was responsible for managing the
development and acquisition of electronic systems not only for the Air Force
but also for other military services and Department of Defense agencies.

Jason Korell, former editor of The Concord Journal, described the
mission in a 1984 regional publication.

"The bulk of the work at Hanscom revolves around the development of
what the military calls 'command, control and communications' systems. A
simpler description of that might be 'the information business;' that is,
providing the tools for a military commander to gather information on
potential enemies and the capabilities of his own forces, to organize and
display this data in a way to help the decision-maker employ his resources
in the most effective way, and to get his orders out to his forces
accurately and rapidly." The ESD became the Electronics Systems Center in
1992.

As the research demands increased, the facility's operational mission
declined, and Air Force flying activities at Hanscom officially ended on
Sept. 1, 1973. The next year, the Air Force lease of the airfield portion
ended, and Hanscom Field became Hanscom AFB. The Massachusetts Port
Authority assumed management of the runways.

A recent installation guide notes that "With its specialized mission
and its location in a heavily populated suburban area, Hanscom isn't a
typical Air Force base. ... The base workforce is predominantly civilian.
... Officers outnumber enlisted members (and) nearly half of the civilian
employees are in professional grades. They work as an integrated team with
military members in all areas of the base...

"Military traditions are alive and well at Hanscom AFB, however."

Today, there is much organized opposition to corporate and commercial
use of the airport. But the Air Force presence is cherished, not the least
because its annual impact on the state economy is measured in billions of
dollars. Base supporters now are not just anticipating next year's Base
Realignment and Closing (BRAC) recommendations on the future of Hanscom;
they are pledging some $240 million in state funds to expand infrastructure,
promoting the growth of the mission.

Ruth Hartwell, for one, would appreciate that.

"We're lucky to have it," she declared. "I hope they never shut it
down."

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