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4 unusual facts about Forbes Field Air National Guard Base


Forbes Field Air National Guard Base

As a result of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s May 1964 directive accelerating the decommissioning of Atlas and Titan I missile bases, and the retirement of the B-47 the 40th Bomb Wing was inactivated 1 September 1964 and the 548th Strategic Missile Squadron was inactivated on 25 March 1965.

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The Army and Air Force Exchange Service retained one building in the old supply depot west of US 75 and the state received the former USAF hospital complex.

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One minor disturbance occurred at one of the sites when student pickets from McPherson College arrived to protest the deployment of ICBMs.

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It was renamed in honor of Major Daniel Forbes, an Air Force test pilot from Carbondale, Kansas who was killed in a crash of a Northrop YB-49 Flying Wing, which took the lives of all five crew members.



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