Bangor Air National Guard Base, Maine

The Air National Guard facilities at Bangor’s municipal airport are a vestige of the airport’s years as Dow Air Force Base, a busy Strategic Air Command base, until its closure in 1968. It was one of more than 50 SAC bases in the USA, and, along with Loring Air Force Base, one of two in Maine. The airport opened as a civilian field in 1927. In the years just before World War II, it was taken over by the military as a transfer base for aircraft being “loaned” to Britain in the days before the US entered the war. It became an important bomber and maintenance base during the war, and later served as an interceptor base and a Bomarc Missile base. SAC moved in in 1952, and by 1960 there were 15 B-52 bombers based here, on 15 minute alert, along with refueling aircraft. With the development of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, airborne nuclear bombing capacity at this scale was no longer necessary, and SAC turned over the base to the city in 1968, and it became Bangor International Airport. The exception was the facilities at the north end of the airfield that now comprise the Bangor Air National Guard Base, which has several transport and refueling aircraft. The Army, Navy, and Air Force all operate reserve centers at the airfield as well. The base also served as the operation center for a Long Range Over the Horizon Radar program, which operated two massive antenna fields, at Columbia Falls and Moscow, from 1985 to 1997.