Fairmont Army Air Field near Fairmont, Nebraska, began construction on September 17th, 1942, as one of eleven training airfields built in Nebraska during World War II, with a railroad spur from Fairmont hauling materials and about 1,000 laborers building the base while nearby Geneva and Fairmont struggled to house them. First called the Fairmont Satellite Airfield and designated a satellite of Topeka Army Air Base in Kansas, it was renamed Fairmont Army Airfield by early 1943 when its mission became training heavy bomber groups. Military personnel arrived in November 1942, and under Second Air Force Headquarters in Colorado Springs the 241st Army Air Force Base Unit served as the Operational Training Unit, first assigned to the 15th Bombardment Training Wing from September 1943 to March 1944 and then to the 17th Bombardment Training Wing in March 1944 for B-29 training, while the 511th Army Air Force Base Unit commanded support elements as part of the Air Technical Service Command. The airfield trained twenty-seven bombardment squadrons, provided complete engine and airframe repairs for Consolidated B-24 Liberator bombers and later Boeing Superfortress bombers in five hangars, and included extensive concrete runways, a 350 bed hospital serving Fairmont, Harvard AAF, and Bruning AAF, and quarters for nearly 6,000 officers and enlisted men. Units known to have trained there included the 485th Bombardment Group from September 20th, 1943 to March 11th, 1944, the 451st Bombardment Group from September 9th to November 16th, 1943, the 16th Bombardment Group from August 15th, 1944 to March 7th, 1945, the 504th Bombardment Group from March 12th to November 5th, 1945, the 98th Bombardment Group from May 6th to June 25th, 1945, the 467th Bombardment Group from July 25th to August 25th, 1945, and the 489th Bombardment Group from July 3rd to August 25th, 1945. In September 1944 Lt. Col. Paul Tibbets visited Fairmont and selected the 393rd Bombardment Squadron of the 504th to join the 509th Composite Group at Wendover AAD, Utah, the group that dropped both atomic bombs on Japan. The base was inactivated on December 31st, 1945, declared surplus in spring 1946, and its buildings were sold, dismantled, or moved, with the chapel moved to Friend, Nebraska, and the Enlisted Men's Service Club rebuilt in Shickley as St. Mary's Church. In 1946 the Nebraska Dept of Aeronautics acquired the airfield from the U.S. government as a state-owned civilian airport, and because of its rural setting and surviving hangars, support buildings, commander's house, hardstands, aprons, runways, roads, and World War II era planted trees, it became the best remaining collection of Army airfield buildings in Nebraska and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places as a historic district.