Bayview ‘sub-base’ provided vital support

BAYVIEW — When America went to war in the early 1940s, air bases were built in a rush all over Texas, including the Rio Grande Valley.

The largest concentration of military aviation in this area was Harlingen Aerial Gunnery School, later re-named Harlingen Army Air Field.

But an 8,000-foot airstrip now called Cameron County-Port Isabel Airport provided vital support to the Harlingen base, veterans say.

The field at Bayview, off of FM 510 east of San Benito, was considered a “sub-base” of Harlingen, providing support and auxiliary functions to the main base.

Bombers and other military aircraft would be flown from Harlingen to the Bayview field, where bombs and ammunition would be loaded, veterans say. Gunnery and bombing practice would be conducted in what is now the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge and Luguna Madre, which was closed to fishing for the duration of the war.

Spent bullets are still easily found in the refuge.

Army Air Force aerial gunnery students were first trained on arcade-style BB machine gun ranges, then with shotguns on skeet ranges and later aloft in AT-6 trainers with machine guns, firing at targets towed by twin-engine aircraft, according to World War II veterans who trained there.

Gunners also were trained to fire at moving targets on the ground in what is now the wildlife refuge, said Wallace Athey of San Benito, a WW II Army Air Force pilot who was later an Air Force officer.

Targets were towed on railroad tracks and student gunners on moving trucks fired from a loop road that still runs through the refuge, Athey said.

Ed Cooper of Santa Rosa, a World War II 8th Air Force veteran, trained at Harlingen and the “sub-base.”

Soldiers were issued only one canteen of water a day at the remote base, he said.

“They hauled all the water that they used in tank trucks and trailers,” he said. “Every morning they’d issue you some water and you’d have to fight ‘em to get some more the rest of the day if you ran out.

“Everybody had to learn to use it pretty sparingly.”

There were four or five one-story tar-paper barracks at the sub-base, Cooper said. Some of the barracks also had latrines and showers, he said.

“Really, we were going to school 24 hours a day,” he said. “We’d fly eight hours, go to class eight hours and be off eight hours.

“But it would get crossed up. You were liable to fly in the middle of the night or come in from a long day and go to class the rest of the night.”

Athey said he would fly four missions a day in a B-24 Liberator bomber, landing at the Bayview sub-base, picking up eight student gunners at a time.

“We had four flights every morning,” Athey said. “I’d pick up an instructor and eight students. One group at 8 a.m., one at 9 a.m., one at 10 a.m. and one at 11 a.m.”

The B-24 would fly over the Gulf of Mexico and students would shoot at targets towed by twin-engine military aircraft flown by Women’s Airforce Service Pilots.

During part of the war, student gunners were seated backward in AT-6 trainer aircraft and would fire at the targets towed by women pilots, Athey said.

“All aircraft would come back to the main base (Harlingen) at night,” he said.

Art Lovrien, a Winter Texan living in Pharr, recalled his early training days in Harlingen.

“They had B-24 (Liberator) bombers on the base at that time,” Lovrien said.

Lovrien said trainees kept a busy schedule. He lived in a barracks in Harlingen.

There was little time for recreation, he said.

“We didn’t get around much,” he said. “Once in a while we could get on a bus and go down to Matamoros (Mexico).

“That was the first time I’d been to Mexico. … That was quite an adventure. I don’t think the whole course was more than 12 weeks long.”

Cooper said that from Harlingen and the sub-base, he went on to more training and then overseas duty.

“Then I went to Salt Lake City and was assigned to a B-17 (Flying Fortress bomber) crew. Then we went overseas in July of ‘44 in the old Aquatania, a troop ship that was a sister ship of the Lusitania,” he said.

“We landed in Scotland. Then we were assigned to an air base near Norwich, England, in the 8th Air Force.”

In addition to the main base at Harlingen, sub-bases at Bayview and Mission, the Brownsville municipal airport was also used as a military airstrip during part of the war, Athey said.

There was also a military blimp base at San Benito on the site of the now-closed municipal airport, Athey said.

“That was only operating a couple of years,” he said.

High numbers of aerial gunners, as well as pilots, navigators and radio operators (who doubled as gunners) were lost during the war, especially in 8th Air Force action over Europe.

But their presence in the Valley later paid benefits to the region, according to “The Wings of Change: The Army Air Force Experience in Texas During World War II,” by Thomas E. Alexander.

“Unlike most other Texas airfields, however, the economic downturn caused by the shuttering of the (Harlingen) base was offset by a flood of discharged Army veterans who had been stationed at Harlingen during the war and had liked what they had seen during their tour of duty,” Alexander wrote.

“Almost perfect year-round weather” and friendly local people lured veterans back to the weather, Alexander wrote.

During the Cold War, Harlingen’s base re-opened as Harlingen Air Force Base to train navigators and it stayed in operation until 1962, providing employment for local people and income for city businesses.

After the second, and final, base closing, the Harlingen base was converted to civilian uses such as Valley International Airport, Texas State Technical Institute (now College), Marine Military Academy, the Confederate Air Force and industrial purposes.

At Bayview, the portion of the sub-base where the barracks were located later became the national training center for the Border Patrol, which moved in the 1980s to the former Glynco Naval Air Station in Georgia.

The facility then became the Immigration and Naturalization Service (now Immigration and Customs Enforcement) Port Isabel Processing Center, a detention camp for undocumented immigrants.