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For the civil use of this facility after 1946, see Freeman Municipal Airport

Freeman Army Airfield is an inactive United States Army Air Forces base located 2.6 miles (4.2 km) south-southwest of Seymour, Indiana.

Established in 1942, the base became the first military helicopter pilot training airfield. In 1944, black bomber pilots were trained at Freeman. It was the scene of a racial incident that outraged many Americans which led to the military re-evaluating its racial policies. After the war, captured German, Italian and Japanese aircraft were brought to the base for evaluation and testing. It was closed in 1946.

History

Freeman Army Airfield was named in honor of Captain Richard S. Freeman, a native of Indiana and a 1930 graduate of West Point. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Mackay Trophy, and was also one of the pioneers of the Army Air Mail Service. Freeman was killed on 6 February 1941 in the crash of a B-17 Flying Fortress (B-17B 38-216) near Lovelock, Nevada while en route to Wright Field, Ohio. The aircraft was equipped with the top secret Norden bombsight and sabotage was suspected as the cause of the crash, but was never proven.

World War II

Initial surveys of the area were made in April 1942 and the present site of Freeman Municipal Airport was selected for construction. The selected site was announced on 3 April 1942. Army Air Forces officials met with local landowners to obtain rights to a single tract of 2,500 acres for the main airfield and support base, along with five additional tracts for auxiliary landing fields near Walesboro 39°08′34″N 05°55′25″W, Grammer, St. Thomas 39°02′40″N 85°36′23″W, Kentucky, Zenas and Valonia 38°46′37″N 86°06′52″W, Indiana. Of the five auxiliaries, Walesboro and St. Anne were to have concrete runways. Only three of these can be located today.

The first construction for the new airfield began in late June 1942 with construction proceeding throughout the summer. It included more than one hundred buildings, all intended to be temporary. Station buildings and streets were also constructed, the buildings consisting primarily of wood, tar paper, and non-masonry siding. The use of concrete and steel was limited because of the critical need elsewhere. Most buildings were hot and dusty in the summer and very cold in the winter. Water, sewer and electrical services were also constructed. The airfield consisted of runways in a "star" layout consisting of four 5,500 x 150' runways laid out in a north/south, northeast/southwest, east/west and a northwest/southeast direction. An extra-large parking ramp was constructed to accommodate large numbers of training aircraft, several hangars, a control tower and other auxiliary support aircraft buildings.

War Department General Order Number 10, dated 3 March 1943, announced that the airfield was to be named Freeman Army Airfield in honor of the Indiana native killed in a 1941 B-17 crash. Captain Freeman helped establish Ladd Field which is today's Fort Wainwright just outside Fairbanks, Alaska. He was Ladd Field's first commander.

Army Air Forces Training Command

The airfield was placed under the jurisdiction of the 33d Twin Engine Flying Training Group, Army Air Forces Training Command. The 447th Base Headquarters and Air Base Squadron was activated on 2 October 1942, and the airfield was activated on 1 December 1942, with the first troops began arriving on 8 December 1942.

The field's twin-engine training era was commanded by Colonel Elmer T. Rundquist, a former University of Illinois football player who had served as the base's project officer before taking command.

The mission of Freeman AAF was a twin-engine advanced aircraft training school. Most of the initial staffing cadre of the faculty was drawn from Craig Army Airfield, near Selma, Alabama. Five training squadrons, the 466th, 467th, 1078th, 1079th 1080th Twin-Engine Pilot were established at Freeman Field, and a total of 250 Beechcraft AT-10 Wichita trainers had arrived by the end of February 1943. The first flying cadets, who had just graduated from AAFTC advanced single-engine schools arrived on 2 March were formed as class 43-D. Night training commenced on 5 April. The first class was graduated on 29 April and the graduated went on to fly multi-engine aircraft such as the B-24 Liberator, B-17 Flying Fortress, B-29 Superfortress, and various other medium bombers and transport aircraft. Twin-engine training continued with a total of 19 classes of students being graduated from Freeman Field. The last graduates were in May 1944 (Class 44-K); 4,245 total cadets.

Twin-engine training ended in May 1944 and AAFTC initiated helicopter training at Freeman Field in June 1944. Freeman was the first helicopter base in the AAF, The first instructor pilots arrived on 30 June and preparations for the helicopter training were made in great secrecy, as in 1944 very few people had seen a helicopter and the technology was new and revolutionary. The group assigned to coordinate their arrival was known as "Section B-O". A total of six Sikorsky R-4A helicopters were assigned for training, flown directly to Freeman from the Sikorsky plant at Bridgeport, Connecticut. This was the longest long-distance flight of helicopters at the time.

The first helicopter class began training in July, graduating on 13 August. The training program continued throughout the balance of 1944, the last class (44-K) graduating on 1 February 1945. In January 1945, AAFTC moved the training to Chanute Field, Illinois, so it could consolidate the flying training operation with helicopter mechanic training.

With the end of helicopter training, Freeman Field's training mission was closed down and the facility was to be transferred as excess to Air Technical Service Command effective 1 March 1945.

First Air Force

On 1 February 1945 plans were changed by HQ Army Air Forces and Freeman Field was not to be inactivated. Jurisdiction of the facility was transferred to First Air Force as an Operational Training airfield. Throughout World War II, continued pressure from African-American civilian leaders led the Army to allow blacks to train as members of bomber crews, a step that opened many more skilled combat roles to them. In response to this pressure, the mission of the base was changed to training black airmen for B-25 Mitchell medium bomber crews.

On 15 January 1944, the 477th Bombardment (later Composite) Group was activated to train African-American aviators on B-25s at Selfridge Field near Detroit, Michigan. On 5 May possibly out of fear of a repeat of the summer 1943 race riot in nearby Detroit, the 477th was abruptly relocated to Godman Field at Fort Knox, Kentucky.

Facilities and runways at Godman AAF were not suitable for B-25 training and to accommodate the full compliment of the four squadrons of the 477th, thus two of the squadrons, the 618th and 619th Bombardment Squadron were moved to Atterbury Army Airfield, Indiana, in August 1944 for training. In March 1945 the 477th reached its full combat strength and the two squadrons in training at Atterbury were moved to Freeman Field to consolidate with the 616th and 617th Bombardment Squadrons that had previously been moved to Freeman from Godman. The entire group was assembled for final group training at Freeman and it was scheduled to deploy overseas in into combat on 1 July.

The 477th ground echelon began moving by train to Freeman Field on 1 March 1945. The unit consisted of about 1,300 black airmen. The B-25 squadrons arrived at the field during the first week of March. Freeman had two officer clubs: Officer Club 1 for trainees, and Officer Club 2 for instructors. Despite Army regulations against segregation, the two officer clubs were, in practice, segregated between white officers in command and the black aviators in training, which caused much racial tension in the unit. A so-called "mutiny" at Freeman took place on 5 April 1945 when three black aviator…