Training on the Ground for an Air War in World War II

Imagine being a young military man, circa late World War II, sitting in one of these otherworldly training pods out in the ass end of nowhere. This is the Las Vegas Army Air Field, formerly the Las Vegas Airport, eventually to become Nellis Air Force Base (named for 1st Lt. William Harrell Nellis, a Searchlight native who died in the war).



You’re here learning a relatively new skill in the world: firing machine guns from the gunnery turrets of a B-29 — this is, it's said, the first program in the country that teaches soldiers how to shoot at fast-moving planes from another fast-moving plane. It’s probably quite hot — I don’t see any air-conditioners on those modules. There’s a war on, and you’re training to go help fight it. Altogether, it must feel both somewhat absurd and more than a little anxiety-making.



With the war over, that gunnery school closed in 1945 (another would be established on site in the coming years), about two years before the first occurrence of a “Veterans Day,” in Birmingham, Alabama. That took place on Nov. 11, then Armistice Day, marking the end of World War I. It officially became a national holiday in 1954.