Nellis Air Force Base ("Nellis" colloq.) is a United States Air Force installation in southern Nevada. Nellis hosts air combat exercises such as Exercise Red Flag and close air support exercises such as Green Flag-West flown in "Military Operations Area (MOA) airspace", associated with the nearby Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR). The base also has the Combined Air and Space Operations Center-Nellis.
After World War I, Nevada and other western inland states were surveyed by Capt. Lowell H. Smith and Sgt. William B. Whitefield for landing sites, and by "mid-1925 the Air Service possessed information on nearly thirty-five hundred landing places, including more than twenty-eight hundred emergency landing areas, in the United States." The 1929 airfield (dirt runway, water well, and small operations shack) north of Las Vegas—operated by the 1925 Western Air Express for Contract Air Mail (CAM) Route #4, LA-to-SLC—was used by the Army Air Corps in the 1930s for training flights. After the Invasion of Poland in 1939, the "western site board" had located a southern Nevada area "near Tonopah, Nev" by April 1940 for a military range, and in October 1940, Air Corps Major David Schlatter surveyed the southwest United States for a military airfield. "The 60 × 90 mile area at Tonopah was transferred to the War Department on 29 October 1940" by Executive Order 8578.
Renamed to McCarran Field in the mid-1930s, there were "difficulties in securing the use" of the airfield north of Las Vegas for a Nevada World War II Army Airfield. McCarran Field was bought on 2 January 1941 by the City of Las Vegas, was leased to the Army on 5 January, and was "signed over" to the Quartermaster Corps on 25 January—Army construction began in March 1941. The city's Federal Building became the May 1941 location of the 79th Air Base Group detachment (5 staff officers commanded by Lt. Col. Martinus Stenseth), and a month later 5 administrative NCOs plus other support personnel arrived.
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The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress is an American long-range, subsonic, jet-powered strategic bomber. The B-52 was designed and built by Boeing, which has continued to provide support and upgrades. It has been operated by the United States Air Force (USAF) since the 1950s. The bomber can carry up to of weapons, and has a typical combat range of around without aerial refueling. Beginning with the successful contract bid in June 1946, the B-52 design evolved from a straight wing aircraft powered by six turboprop engines to the final prototype YB-52 with eight turbojet engines and swept wings.
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