Beane Air Force Base was a United States Air Force base located near Vieux Fort,

Saint Lucia Saint Lucia ( acf, Sent Lisi, french: Sainte-Lucie) is an island country of the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean. The island was previously called Iouanalao and later Hewanorra, names given by the native Arawaks and Caribs, two Amerindian ...

, in the Caribbean Sea. It is now the site of Hewanorra International Airport. The base was probably named for James Beane, a US Army Air Force World War I flying ace.

History

Beane Field was used as a military airfield by the United States Army Air Forces Sixth Air Force during World War II. Construction was completed on 15 Nov. 1942, with a mission to defend the Panama Canal. The

5th Bombardment Squadron ''005'' (pronounced "''double-o five''") is a 1981 arcade video game by Sega. They advertised it as the first of their RasterScan Convert-a-Game series, designed so that it could be changed into another game in minutes "at a substantial savings" ...

( 9th Bombardment Group) and

59th Bombardment Squadron The 59th Bombardment Squadron is an inactive United States Air Force unit. It was first activated in Panama in 1941 during the expansion of the United States Army Air Corps before World War II. Following the Attack on Pearl Harbor the squ ...

(

25th Bombardment Group Fifth is the ordinal form of the number five. Fifth or The Fifth may refer to: * Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, as in the expression "pleading the Fifth" * Fifth column, a political term * Fifth disease, a contagious rash that ...

) operated B-18 Bolo bombers from the airfield from 28 Sept. 1941 - 24 Mar. 1944 flying antisubmarine patrols. With the end of World War II, Beane Field was reduced to a skeleton staff. Its primary mission was with the

Military Air Transport Service The Military Air Transport Service (MATS) is an inactive Department of Defense Unified Command. Activated on 1 June 1948, MATS was a consolidation of the United States Navy's Naval Air Transport Service (NATS) and the United States Air Force's ...

, acting as a weather reporting station and as a military airfield for transport aircraft. The airfield's control tower was closed on 14 January 1946 for a brief period, but was reopened on 23 July 1946. The airfield's primarily unit was the MATS 6th Weather Squadron (Regional), with overall command of the base being that of the

24th Composite Wing Fourth or the fourth may refer to: * the ordinal form of the number 4 * ''Fourth'' (album), by Soft Machine, 1971 * Fourth (angle), an ancient astronomical subdivision * Fourth (music), a musical interval * ''The Fourth'' (1972 film), a Sovie ...

, headquartered at Ramey AFB (now Coast Guard Air Station Borinquen), Puerto Rico. The facility was renamed Beane Air Force Base in 1948. It was closed on 28 May 1949, as a result of budgetary cutbacks, with right of re-entry retained by the United States. Agreements for the base's disposition were subsequently reached with the United Kingdom and, later, the Saint Lucia government upon that state's independence. The former USAF base was then refurbished and converted into Hewanorra International Airport. There remains a disused northeast–southwest runway, north of the main east–west runway, that was part of the military airfield. It is in poor condition. In 1966, St. Jude's Hospital was founded in the abandoned medical facility of the base by a nun from Kansas,

Mary Irma Hilger Sister Mary Irma Hilger (July 12, 1917 – February 22, 2003) was an American religious sister, who trained as a nurse and founded the St. Jude Hospital and nurse's training school on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. She has been called the "Flor ...

of the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother. The hospital served the 70,000 residents of the southern end of the island until destroyed by fire in 2009.

References

{{USAAF 6th Air Force World War II Destroyers for Bases Agreement airfields Installations of the United States Air Force Vieux Fort, Saint Lucia Military airbases established in 1948 Military installations closed in 1949