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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.

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.

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

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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