Brookley Air Force Base

Brookley Air Force Base is a former United States Air Force base located in Mobile, Alabama. After it closed in 1969, it became what is now known as the Mobile Aeroplex at Brookley.

Brookley Air Force Base had its aeronautical beginnings with Mobile's first municipal airport, the original Bates Field. However, the site itself had been occupied from the time of Mobile's founding, starting with the home of Mobile's founding father, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, in the early 18th century.

In 1938 the Army Air Corps took over the then 1,000-acre (405 ha) Bates Field site and established the Brookley Army Air Field. The military was attracted to the site because of the area's generally good flying weather and the bay-front location, but Alabama Congressman Frank Boykin's influence in Washington was important in convincing the Army to locate the new military field in Mobile instead of Tampa, Florida. However, later that year, Tampa was also chosen for a military flying installation of its own, which would be named MacDill Field, home of present-day MacDill Air Force Base.

Brookley Air Force Base was named after Capt. Wendell H. Brookley (1896-1934), a former World War 1 US Army pilot. Brookley was killed on February 28, 1934 while testing a new prop on a Douglas BT2-B biplane. While in flight out of Bolling Field (now known as Bolling Air Force Base) the prop mysteriously broke apart causing the engine to break away from the fuselage and the aircraft to go out of control. His copilot successfully bailed out but by the time Brookley attempted to leave the doomed aircraft he was too low of altitude and his parachute did noy fully deploy.

During World War II, Brookley Army Air Field became the major Army Air Forces supply base for the Air Materiel Command in the southeastern United States and the Caribbean.

Many air depot personnel, logisticians, mechanics, and other support personnel were trained at Brookley during the war. Both Air Materiel and Technical Services Command organized mobile Depot Groups at Brookley, then once trained were deployed around the world as Air Depot Groups, Depot Repair Squadrons, Quartermaster Squadrons, Ordnance Maintenance, Military Police, and many other units whose mission was to support the front-line combat units with depot-level maintenance for aircraft and logistical support to maintain their operations. Air Transport Command operated large numbers of cargo and passenger aircraft from the base as part of its Domestic Wing.

During the war, Brookley became Mobile's largest employer, with about 17,000 skilled civilians capable of performing delicate work with fragile instruments and machinery. In 1944, the Army decided to take advantage of Brookley's large, skilled workforce for its top-secret "Ivory Soap" project to hasten victory in the Pacific. The project required 24 large vessels to be re-modeled into Aircraft Repair and Maintenance Units that had to be able to provide repair and maintenance services to B-29 bombers, P-51 Mustang, Sikorsky R-4, and amphibious vehicles.

The Air Force delivered 24 vessels to Mobile, Alabama, in spring 1944 to start conversion as a part of the top-secret Operation Ivory Soap. Six Liberty ships were converted into shops to repair aircraft. They were designated Aircraft Repair Units, Floating and were equipped to repair planes as big as the B-29 Stratofortresses. Eighteen smaller ships were outfitted as Aircraft Maintenance Units. They were made to repair fighter aircraft. About 5,000 men underwent a complex training process that prepared them to rebuild the vessels and operate them once on the water. By the end of the year, the vessels departed Mobile for the Philippines and the Marianas.