1945 - 1958

Special Weapons for a Cold War

The future of Kirtland was unclear at the end of World War II; but the activities in the small community of Los Alamos, New Mexico, about 100 miles north of Albuquerque proved to be the future of the base and the roots of AFRL’s Phillips Research Site. As the nearest military air base, Kirtland Field had been used to support atomic research activities. Kirtland Air Force Base, as it became known in 1948 a year after the U.S. Air Force became an independent service from the Army, took on the mission to provide flight services for the Manhattan Engineering District. Kirtland aircraft and support personnel participated in nearly every post-war nuclear weapons testing program. The pioneering agencies which occupied the Albuquerque bases of Kirtland on the west side of the facility and Sandia to the east following World War II constituted perhaps the greatest concentration of nuclear knowledge and training capability in the United States at that time.