Orange County Fairgrounds

This Friday, my younger sister and I will be going to the OC county Fair. This year marks the 65th anniversary of the Fair being held IN Orange County. Previously known as the Santa Ana Army Air Base, the area was about 1330 acres in size, but, ironically, contained no hangars, runways, or airplanes. It's an interesting sidelight of Orange County history:

"In February 1941, the Army initiated three Air Corps Replacement Training Centers. These were induction centers for new recruits entering the Army Air Corps with no military experience. Each center was to provide for the classification and preflight instruction for pilots, navigators and bombardiers. The locations were to be at existing air corps facilities. This was the case except for the West Coast Air Corps Training Center at Moffett Field, near Sunnyvale, California. The United States Navy wanted to use the field exclusively for its lighter than air "blimp" base so the Army Air Corps had to look elsewhere for a new facility. A search of sites in southern California was conducted. The City Council of Santa Ana wanted the new center located near it so they arranged to lease a 409-acre site for $6,400 per year from M. H. Whittier Co. Ltd. with an option to buy at $500 per acre. The government could sublet from the city for $1 per year. The Army selected the Santa Ana site on June 16, 1941. The City leased the land on August 21, 1941"

"By the end of 1944 most pilot training schools were being closed by the Army Air Forces.

On November 1, 1944 the SAAAB was turned over to the Army Air Forces Personnel Distribution Command with General Arthur E. Easterbrook in command. At the time it had 800 buildings on the Base. Most of the remaining cadets were sent to San Antonio, Texas. From its inception until this transfer the SAAAB Classification Center had received 149, 425 men. Of that total, 82,252 were classified as pilots, 21, 842 as bombardiers and 14,230 as navigators. Classification eliminated 28,388 to ground crew and 188 to radio operator school. At its close 2,525 remained unclassified.

May 7, 1945 V-E day was the close of the fighting in Europe. Suddenly SAAAB's role changed 180 degrees and it worked around the clock to become a separation center. By November 1945 81,000 combat veterans had been returned to private life. In late 1945 Japanese aliens from the alien internment camps being returned to Japan by the Immigrations and Naturalization Service (INS) were housed here while awaiting transportation to Japan

Finally on March 13, 1946 the Army deactivated the SAAAB. On May 4, 1946 the title to the SAAAB passed from the Army to the War Assets Administration."

In the ensuing years some of the buildings on the base were sold and moved piecemeal, others became part of colleges. In 1953 the City of Costa Mesa was incorporated. In June 1955, the former SAAAB property was annexed to the City.

For a period of time in the mid-1950s a portion of the Base served as a Nike guided missile training base. The three-battery missile compound had been made operational in January 1956. Two years later, in June 1958, the Air National Guard received a five-acre parcel of land and the remaining 260 acres, including the five-acre air base water facility, was declared surplus and turned over to the GSA.

On June 29, 1979, a plaque was dedicated to "all pilots, bombardiers and navigators who trained here that contributed to an early victory in World War II". This plaque was placed on the Air National Guard base, which is the last active duty post on the original location of the SAAAB.

In literature, the Santa Ana Army Air Base is notable as being one of the two settings - but the only non-fictional one (the other, the fictional island of "Pianosa" in Italy) - for the novel "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller."

PS One of the things I love most about the fair is seeing the trained oxen and their cart and workers. Takes me right back to the days of the careta.