By the way...


DEMING – Toward the southern horizon, just behind the Deming Airport runways and on what is now known as Raymond Reed Blvd., stand three World War II-era hangars. The hangars, a red and white water tower and several scattered 1940s-era buildings remain as landmarks where the Deming Army Air Field once filled the acreage from the current Deming Soccer Fields all the way to the Southwestern New Mexico State Fairgrounds.

The Deming Army Air Field was a bombardier training unit for cadets from around the country. The air field’s main objective was to prepare the cadets to fly twin engine bombers such as B-25s. The twin-engine, twin-tailed plane they trained on was the A-11 built by Beech.

Each class was comprised of 150 to 200 cadets, and after 18 weeks of intensive training, each cadet graduated with Second Lieutenant Bars and received the Spread Eagle to adorn their caps.

Jack Holmes, a Deming resident, now 88, shared a few treasured memories of the time he worked at the air field when he was still a high school student. He worked the summers between 1943-45 as a general laborer or as they say, “gopher."

Although it burned down in 1948, he said a much larger hangar existed just west of the three surviving today. The foundation lies where the hangar once stood. Jack described the size by mentioning that it could hold four B-25s.

Included in the cadet bombardier’s training was an exercise to skip bombs along the desert floor like stones skip over a pond.

Holmes recalled a training exercise where 100-pound bombs were used. They held five or ten pounds of black powder to ninety or so of sand. In one of the bombing exercises, one pilot followed too close behind another pilot at the bombing range. As the following pilot took his turn and took his bombing dive, the previous pilot’s bomb’s detonation blew out the bottom of his plane and blew a hole clear threw one of his wings. Fortunately, the pilot was not injured and managed to fly the wrecked aircraft back to the base.

Repairs were finished and the plane was tested to insure that its landing gear and flaps could open and close, according to Holmes. After passing a vigorous examination, the plane returned to service. To everyone’s shock, the same plane came back to the hangar within a day or two with the same damage.

Once the allies secured a victory in Europe (V-E Day), May 8, 1945, a reassignment of P-38s from Europe to the Pacific theater took place. The Deming Army Air Field stripped the camouflage paint from the aircraft as a means to shield them from detection as they flew toward their targets over the waters of the Pacific.

One evening, about 25 planes took off heading west for a night bombing exercise. As all the planes flew off into the distance, Holmes said he saw a sky full of red navigation lights. "What a sight, he said.

How many of us will ever see something as thrilling? Holmes' memories remind us of the generation that witnessed the Day of Infamy, December 7, 1941.  Stories from men in their late 90s who participated during the war years still circulate, but soon all those first-hand memories will be silent.

The hangars rising out of the desert landscape are a symbol of a group of gallant men who flew into the face of war from the Deming Army Airfield.

"By The Way..." columns are written by members of the Deming Writers Group (DWG).

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