Texas Almanac, 1943-1944 Page: 210
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210 TEXAS ALMANAC.-1943-1944.
the Third Army. (A corps is next in size
to a field army, which is composed of
two or more corps.) The VIII Corps is
one of the new organizations of the
Army, having been activated October 14,
1940, at Fort Sam Houston under the
command of Lieut. Gen. Walter Krueger,
later assigned to the South Pacific com-
mand under Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
Originally constituted as an organized
reserve unit and allotted to the 8th Corps
Area (now the Eighth Service Com-
mand), on July 29, 1921, it was on Sep-
tember 15, 1927, withdrawn from the
organized reserves and allotted to the
same corps area as an inactive unit of
the regular Army. The headquarters
were transferred to Brownwood on
March 20, 1941. Its primary mission is
training troops for overseas combat.
The X Corps, another Third Army
unit, is headquartered at Sherman, Texas.
It was activated on May 15, 1942, and
operates in the same manner as the VIII
Corps as to rpission, supervision and con-
trol. It came into being under the 1942
Army expansion program.
The Southern Defense Command, un-
der the Third Army, was activated to
handle all matters concerning defense of
the Gulf Coast area, including Texas, in
the event of enemy attack. Announce-
ment of its activation was made July 7,
1941, with the provision that the Com-
manding General of the Third Army
would also act as Commander of the
Southern Defense Command. Thus, he
acts in a dual capacity of defending an
area from enemy aggression and of train-
ing troops for offensive action in other
theaters of war.
The Southern Defense Command is
comprised of the states of Texas, New
Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana,
Alabama Mississippi, Tennessee and that
part of Florida lying west of the Apa-
lachicola River.
Certain troops are assigned to the
Southern Defense Command for perma-
nent control. These include harbor de-
fense units and coast artillery units. In
an emergency, troops from the Third
Army and other units of the armed forces
can be called upon immediately to go
into action in any area of attack.
Under command of the Army Ground
Forces, the Tank Destroyer Command is
headquartered at Camp Hood, Killeen.
United States Navy in Texas.
Only a few miles from Corpus Christi
is the United States Naval Air Station-
the world's largest.
On June 28, 1940, the place was noth-
ing more than sandy mesquite wastes of
Flour Bluff. Forty-foot sand dunes,scrub oak and brush melted away in an
engineering masterpiece that actually
cut two full years from original con-
struction estimates of three years.
Geared to turn out ten pilots a day,
the $55,000,000 station dwarfs anything
of its kind in America. Neither Army
nor other Navy air training stations can
touch it in magnitude. Today the air
around Corpus Christi and for miles in-
land is filled with hundreds of training
planes.
Commissioned on March 12, 1941, by
Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, it
received its first group of flying cadets
on April 1, 1941. It was in operation on
Dec. 7, 1941, the day of the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor.
Military secrecy veils the real strength
of the installation, but it can be said that
the Corpus Christi station is considerably
larger than the Navy's famed Pensacola
(Fla.) training station.
Naval air cadets at Corpus Christi take
primary, intermediate and advanced
courses. Over the same coastal line and
the same ground area where 132 years
ago the Spaniards founded the first naval
unit in Texas, these cadets now fly.
Originators and masters of the dread
dive bomber that has become such a
potent weapon in World War II, the
nited States Navy produces dive bomb-
er pilots by the hundreds at Corpus
Christi, the only station in the nation to
give the full naval flying courses.
Air Station at Dallas.
Inland Dallas became one of the vital
points in the United States Navy's avia-
tion training program Jan. 1, 1943 with
the formal announcement that the Naval
Reserve Aviation Base had been redesig-
nated a naval air station. New construc-
tion was authorized and the installation
near Grand Prairie and Mountain Creek
Lake became one of the largest in the
nation offering primary training for
naval fliers.
Selection of the site by the Navy gave
inland Texas its first major naval in-
stallation in history and the sight of
bluejackets in Dallas, 300 miles from
salt water, became common.
On Eagle Mountain Lake, near Fort
Worth, the United States Marine Corps
Glider Base was established late in 1942
and neared completion March 1, 1943.
Using Army type ghliders while waiting
for production of the amphibious naval
gliders, students began training for an
entirely new phase of warfare.
It is the largest of three planned
Marine glider bases, having auxiliary
fields planned at near-by Bridgeport and
Rhome. Eagle Mountain Lake was
dredged to provide a minimum seven-
foot depth for takeoffs.FIRST IONAL BANK
EBIN DALLAS
MEMBER F. D. I. C. -
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Texas Almanac, 1943-1944, book, 1943; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117165/m1/212/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.