Marks Air Force Base is a former

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Air force, air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its ori ...

facility located two

nautical mile A nautical mile is a unit of length used in air, marine, and space navigation, and for the definition of territorial waters. Historically, it was defined as the meridian arc length corresponding to one minute ( of a degree) of latitude at t ...

s (4 km) west of the

central business district A central business district (CBD) is the Commerce, commercial and business center of a city. It contains commercial space and offices, and in larger cities will often be described as a financial district. Geographically, it often coincides wit ...

Nome Nome may refer to: Country subdivision * Nome (Egypt), an administrative division within ancient Egypt * Nome (Greece), the administrative division immediately below the ''peripheries of Greece'' (, pl. ) Places United States * Nome, Alaska ...

, a city in the

Nome Census Area Nome Census Area is a census area located in the U.S. state of Alaska, mostly overlapping with the Seward Peninsula. As of the 2020 census, the population was 10,046, up from 9,492 in 2010. It is part of the unorganized borough and therefore ...

of the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...

Alaska Alaska ( ) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the north ...

. It was named in honor of Major Jack S. Marks, a

United States Army Air Forces The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...

pilot based at

Ladd Army Airfield Ladd Army Airfield is the military airfield located at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks, Alaska. It was originally called Fairbanks Air Base, but was renamed Ladd Field on 1 December 1939, in honor of Major Arthur K. Ladd, a pilot in the U.S. ...

who died when his aircraft was shot down over the Aleutians in July 1942. Following its closure, it was redeveloped into

Nome Airport Nome Airport is a state-owned public-use airport located two nautical miles (4 km) west of the central business district of Nome, a city in the Nome Census Area of the U.S. state of Alaska. As per Federal Aviation Administration r ...

History

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, the civilian Nome Airport shared use of the runway with Marks Army Airfield for transfer of

Lend-Lease Lend-Lease, formally the Lend-Lease Act and introduced as An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States (),3,000 Hurricanes and >4,000 other aircraft) * 28 naval vessels: ** 1 Battleship. (HMS Royal Sovereign (05), HMS Royal Sovereign) * ...

aircraft to the Soviet Union and in 1942, for air defense of the western coast of Alaska. Marks AAF units included the

404th Bombardment Squadron 4 (four) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number following 3 and preceding 5. It is a square number, the smallest semiprime and composite number, and is considered unlucky in many East Asian cultures. Evolution of the Hi ...

(July 18–28, 1942) of the 28th Bombardment Group and the 56th Fighter Squadron (June 20 – October 20, 1942) of the

54th Fighter Group The 54th Fighter Group is an active unit of the United States Air Force stationed at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico and assigned to the 49th Wing of Air Education and Training Command. The group was reactivated in March 2014. The group wa ...

. On August 15, 1947, the

Arctic Indoctrination Survival School The Arctic (; . ) is the polar region of Earth that surrounds the North Pole, lying within the Arctic Circle. The Arctic region, from the IERS Reference Meridian travelling east, consists of parts of northern Norway (Nordland, Troms, Finnmar ...

(colloquially known as "Cool School") was formed at Marks Army Air Base.(Hist, AAC, 1946-1947, p. 94; Maxwell, Hist, AAC, 1948, p. 59.) http://www.alaskawingcaf.org/Alaska%20Heritage/August%2013-19.pdf "under the leadership of Capt Harold W. Strong. Plans called for it to be manned by 9 officers and 42 enlisted with the students limited to 60 a week. The training was directed to air crews with subjects taught on survival on sea ice and tundra." Renamed Marks Air Force Base in 1948, the military installation was used as a fighter-interceptor forward base until they were pulled back to

Galena Airport Galena, also called lead glance, is the natural mineral form of lead(II) sulfide (PbS). It is the most important ore of lead and an important source of silver. Galena is one of the most abundant and widely distributed sulfide minerals. It crysta ...

. Marks AFB closed in 1950 and an air base squadron was at

until December 1956.

Facilities and aircraft

Marks Air Force Base resided at

elevation The elevation of a geographic location (geography), ''location'' is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational equipotenti ...

of 38 feet (11 m) above

mean sea level A mean is a quantity representing the "center" of a collection of numbers and is intermediate to the extreme values of the set of numbers. There are several kinds of means (or "measures of central tendency") in mathematics, especially in statist ...

. It has two

runway In aviation, a runway is an elongated, rectangular surface designed for the landing and takeoff of an aircraft. Runways may be a human-made surface (often asphalt concrete, asphalt, concrete, or a mixture of both) or a natural surface (sod, ...

s with

asphalt Asphalt most often refers to: * Bitumen, also known as "liquid asphalt cement" or simply "asphalt", a viscous form of petroleum mainly used as a binder in asphalt concrete * Asphalt concrete, a mixture of bitumen with coarse and fine aggregates, u ...

surfaces: Runway 10/28 is 6,000 by 150 feet (1,829 x 46 m) and Runway 3/21 is 6,175 by 150 feet (1,882 x 46 m).

References

Other sources

* * Maurer, Maurer (1983). Air Force Combat Units Of World War II. Maxwell AFB, Alabama: Office of Air Force History. . * Maurer, Maurer (1969), Combat Squadrons of the Air Force, World War II, Air Force Historical Studies Office, Maxwell AFB, Alabama. .

External links

Topographic map
from

USGS The United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an government agency, agency of the United States Department of the Interior, U.S. Department of the Interior whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geograp ...

The National Map ''The National Map'' is a Collaboration, collaborative effort of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and other federal, state, and local agencies to improve and deliver topographic information for the United States. The purpose of the eff ...

'' {{USAAF 11th Air Force World War II Installations of the United States Air Force in Alaska Nome, Alaska Military installations closed in 1950

History

Facilities and aircraft

See also

References

Other sources

External links