San Angelo Army Air Field operated under Commander Col. George M. Palmer from 1942 to 1945. Its first training class, 42-17, began in September 1942, with cadets arriving from preflight schools at Ellington Field in Houston and Santa Ana, California. During World War II, the Santa Fe Orient Depot served as the train station where many GIs came to and left the training field. Ground school trained 5,381 men as bombardiers in forty-one different classes. The field used the secret Norden bombsight and the Beech Aircraft Corp. AT-11 Bomb Trainer, with airmen delivering the bombsight to the bombardier inside the AT-11, armed airmen delivering bombsights to trainers, and men working in the bomb dump. The field closed on November 30, 1945, and was renamed Mathis Field to honor Lt. Jack Mathis, a bombardier killed over Germany in 1943. Midland, Big Spring, and Childress were the other bombardier training AAC fields in Texas. In 1942, Nancy Love founded the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, and Walt Disney's "Finnella" became the mascot for the Women Airforce Service Pilots.