Today let’s turn our Aces High attention to the Black Hills state of South Dakota and see what they were up to during World War 2. As you know if you have been following along, while the War was being fought in Europe and the Pacific there was a vast war effort happening in the States. Within two years of Pearl Harbor the United States had a larger Defense budget than the rest of the word combined and production had quadrupled. It is safe to say that once the Sleeping Giant was awakened that it did not waste any time getting involved in a full war effort.
Many states had airfields built immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was recognized very quickly that fields were needed to train pilots and flight crews and rather than ship the trainees from every state in the country to a centralized location it was decided to build airfields in most states to quicken the training process.
Here is a list of the airfields constructed in South Dakota during the war.
- Mitchell AAF/MAP; it is now the Mitchell Municipal Airport
- Pierre AAF; now the Pierre Regional Airport
- Rapid city AAB; changed to Rapid City Air Field in 1947; Weaver Air Force Base in 1948; rapid city Air Force Base from 1948-1953; finally Ellsworth Air Force Base presently.
- Sioux Falls AAF; now the Joe Foss Field Air National Guard Station
- Watertown AAF; now the Watertown Regional Airport
- Aberdeen AAF; now the Aberdeen Regional Airport
What is most interesting is that almost every single one of these airfields across the nation were converted in peace time to civil airfields so that the investment made in 1941 still pays dividends today. What may have been a considerable investment initially has now become the gift that keeps on giving.
If you travel by any of these airfields you are quite likely to see some of the original buildings still standing, a living testament if you will to those very important first years of the war when the status of the world hung in the balance.
Do you want a combat flight simulator to be realistic? Do you want the best in graphics and do you want simulations that make you feel like you are in the cockpit of a fighter plane? Aces High is all that and more and part of the reason is because we, the makers of this exciting flight sim game, are avid World War 2 buffs. We have devoted thousands of hours getting our game just right and that is because we are dedicated to all things related to World War II.
