After Communist North Korea invaded the Republic of Korea on June 25, 1950, Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, was the Air Force’s only basic training facility and could not handle the influx of enlistees, so the Navy officially turned over Sampson Training Center to the Air Force on November 14, 1950, to prepare Americans for the Korean conflict. Many abandoned buildings required rehabilitation, and on December 10, 1950, the Air Force sent 268 officers and airmen to work with civilian contractors. The first group of recruits, Flight #1, began eight weeks of basic training on February 1, 1951. During its peak period, Sampson Air Force Base was one of the largest basic training centers, housing 21,000 military and civilian personnel, and over the five years it served as an air force base, 300,000 airmen received training there. Chapel One, known in Navy days as Royce Chapel, had a rotating altar with three faces to accommodate Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish worship. Before the Air Force arrived, the facilities were briefly used by Sampson College, a two-year junior college jointly operated by Associated Colleges of Upstate New York from 1946 to 1949 for World War II veterans using the GI Bill. After the Korean War armistice was signed on July 27, 1953, the need for the base as a recruit training center diminished, and it officially closed on April 12, 1956; by October there was no longer a distinct military presence there. Before New York State acquired the land in 1960 for a state park, most of the barracks and drill halls were sold, demolished, or salvaged for usable fixtures.