Read: A History of Military Aviation in San Antonio (up to pg 49)

Please see Parts One and Two, if you haven't read them yet.

I concluded the portion on Kelly AFB, and began reading the section on Brooks. The section on Kelly ends on the year 2001, before 9/11. Kelly lasted as a base until July 13, 2001.

Some tidbits before moving onto Brooks. Kelly had a role to play in the US Space Program, beginning in 1964. Three Apollo capsule trainers were built. The space shuttle began making refueling stops there in 1979. Kelly's closure was due mostly to shrinking military budgets at the end of the Cold War, but its maintenance program (as of 2001) was itself being maintained by a program known as "privatization in place". Essentially, turn over responsibility of the facilities to private contractors.

Brooks was established later than Kelly, in 1917. Its growth and decline during and after World War I was similar to that of Kelly. Where Brooks stood out in the early 1920s was in the Army's air ship program. However, that program soon ended, after two airships exploded, one of them at Brooks, and one was ripped open by a rail, also at Brooks.