100 Years Of Service: Alabama’s Maxwell AFB Educates Air Force, Boosts State Economy

By Minnie Lamberth, Alabama Living

“Engine and Aircraft Repair Depot #3” hardly has the prestigious ring you’d expect of a 100-year-old military installation that educates the most esteemed members of the U.S. Air Force and pumps about a billion dollars into the Alabama economy every year.

Yet that was the first official designation given in 1918 to the future Maxwell Air Force Base.

Notably, eight years earlier, Orville and Wilbur Wright had come to Montgomery to establish the first civilian flying school on an abandoned cotton plantation outside the city limits. Though the Wright brothers’ school lasted only a few months – because of the distance to obtain their repair parts as well as unseasonably high winds that year – the heritage of flight had found a firm landing. And this same site was chosen a few years later for a new military mission.

To read the full article, please visit the Alabama NewsCenter website.

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