Ephrata airport's war service subject of MAC lecture

MOSES LAKE — The Ephrata airport’s contribution to World War II will be the subject of a lecture at 3 p.m. Wednesday at the Moses Lake Museum & Art Center. “The Ephrata Army Airport” will kick off the museum’s Winter Salon series.

Mick Qualls is the speaker. Admission is free.

Many of the airport buildings built for the war effort are still standing, Qualls said. Those buildings are an illustration of the way a community can feel the impact of events half the world away.

The airport was established in 1939, a time when Americans wanted nothing to do with the troubles in Europe. But U.S. government officials saw bad times coming, and they were right.

It took a couple of years, but in the end the Army Air Force had need of that airport. Ephrata was a good spot for a training field, Qualls said, the ground flat and easily developed into runways. A good railroad connection made it relatively easy to ship large amounts of supplies in, and large groups of people in and out.

Qualls estimated about 7,000 prospective pilots and bomber crews got some of their training at the Ephrata airstrip, which eventually became one of the biggest training bases in the U.S. “Brand new, young guys that had never flown an airplane,” he said.

“These guys came in by the hundreds.” At first Ephrata was a bomber training base, he said, then switched to training fighter pilots. The military operation was disbanded at the end of World War II in 1945.

Curious desert scavengers can still find traces of the bomber training, Qualls said, in the sand bombs that were used when training crews and bombardiers. There are also traces of the fighter pilots, in the divots left in the ground by crashed planes. Aviation had evolved from wood, fabric and wire to internally braced aluminum, he said, out at the cutting edge of technology. “That’s what these guys were doing, learning how to fly these unstable aircraft.”

Qualls said he thinks Washington state's contribution to the war effort is underestimated. Washington was home to shipyards and aviation factories, aluminum smelters along the Columbia, Navy bases, multiple air bases and training facilities, not to mention the top-secret work that went on at Hanford. “There’s no state in the Union that had as much to do with World War II as Washington.”