page_title: Pyote Air Force Base
section_title: Aircraft storage depot
hierarchical_section_title: Pyote Air Force Base / Postwar use / Aircraft storage depot
caption_attribution_description: English: B-29 stored at Pyote AAF, Texas about 1946 Source: United States Army Air Forces via Thole, Lou (1999), Forgotten Fields of America&#160;: World War II Bases and Training, Then and Now - Vol. 2. Publisher: Pictorial Histories Pub, ISBN: 1575100517
context_page_description: Pyote Air Force Base was a World War II United States Army Air Forces training airbase. It was on 2,745 acres a mile from the town of Pyote, Texas on Interstate 20, twenty miles west of Monahans and just south of U.S. Highway 80, 230 miles east of El Paso.
  It was nicknamed "Rattlesnake Bomber Base" for the numerous rattlesnake dens that were uncovered during its construction.
  At the height of its use in 1944, the base had over 6,000 officers and enlisted men either permanently assigned or temporarily attached. In addition, there were hundreds of civilians that came from all over the United States to work on the base.
  After World War II, thousands of reserve aircraft were stored there, one of which was the B-29 "Enola Gay".
  Today, most of the base is gone. Other than the concrete runways, taxiways and ramp, virtually nothing remains that would tell the casual observer that this was once a major training center responsible for turning out highly trained flying crews. In later years. the West Texas State School was situated on the site; it was closed in 2010. Located on I-20 at exit 66.
context_section_description: Control of Pyote was transferred from the Fourth Air Force to the Air Technical Service Command / San Antonio Air Technical Service Command on November 15, 1945, at the end of the war. The base became an aircraft storage depot.  During the postwar years, the temporary tar-paper and wooden buildings were largely sold off, the personnel using more substantial concrete structures for their duties along with the hangars and support buildings by the flightline ramp.
  At its peak in 1948, Pyote Air Force Base was maintained by the 4141st Army Air Forces (later Air Force) Base Unit, and housed 2,042 stored planes, mostly B-29s and B-17s, but including B-25s, A-26s, C-47s, P-63s, P-51s, AT-7s, L-5s and L-4s.
  Aircraft storage and the cocooning of some of these planes was the last major activity at Pyote Airfield, which was the responsibility of the 2753d Aircraft Storage Squadron. Storage included not only preserving planes for future use but also transferring some of the stored planes to other Air Force units for their use.
  Corrosion control crews removed, cleaned and treated the turrets in all of the B-29s.  The aircraft were "cocooned"  to seal out the elements from the interior, and the aircraft were kept in flyable reserve storage.
  Best known of all the aircraft stored at Pyote was the B-29 Enola Gay, from which the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Arriving at Pyote on 12 January 1952, the ownership of the aircraft was transferred to the Smithsonian Institution. The Enola Gay was taken out of storage and flown to Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland on December 2, 1953, for preservation at the National Air and Space Museum. It was the last time the Enola Gay flew.   Two other notable aircraft put in storage at Pyote was the B-17D "Swoose" (arrived 18 January 1952 - Departed December 1953) which was the only B-17 to survive the bombing of Clark Air Base on 8 December 1941 and manage to escape from the Philippines, and the XB-42 Mixmaster, a one-of-a-kind aircraft.
  Beginning in 1950, the demands for B-29s to be used in the Korean War meant that nearly 100 of the aircraft stored at Pyote were refurbished and sent to active-duty units on Okinawa for use in combat, while some stored B-29s were authorized to be used for cannibalization to furnish spare parts to operational aircraft.  Many of the B-29's stored at Pyote would be flown by the men of the 19th Bomb Group. This is the same group that was the first to serve at Pyote in 1943.  However, the air battles between the B-29s and Soviet MiG-15s, in the skies of North Korea made it clear that the age of the jet had arrived which made most of the propeller-driven combat aircraft stored at Pyote obsolete.
  After the 1953 Armistice in Korea, the Air Force ordered most of the remaining planes at Pyote to be scrapped, and activity on the base was sharply curtailed.  Its mission became  the reclamation and salvage of the stored aircraft.  The B-29s stored at the base were very important as the reclamation process consisted of removing all serviceable and reparable items to support the operational B-29s still in service.   A smelter was installed on the base and as the aircraft were disassembled and parts removed, the remnants were recycled with the metal sold for scrap.
  The last Base Commander, Lt. Col. Max A. Piper, was notified that the base was scheduled for deactivation on 31 December 1953, and the base went on standby status, leaving only a twenty-seven man caretaker crew to maintain the facility.  The last plane left Pyote AFB sometime in 1955 along with the standby crew.   At that time most of the permanent buildings and hangars remained, although abandoned.
caption: B-29 Superfortresses stored at Pyote AAF during the late 1940s.  Boeing B-29A-35-BN Superfortress AAF Ser. No. 44-61527 in foreground.
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