Rosecrans Memorial Airport

to the Missouri River bluffs to its east. In 1939, the current Airport was developed by the city as a municipal facility with two 3,000- ft. runways. During World War II, the federal government took it over and established an Army Air Forces base, doubling its diagonal runways in length and adding another 5,500-ft. north/south runway, along with an aircraft parking apron and some temporary buildings, many of which were damaged beyond repair in the Great Flood of 1951. In 1948, much of the Airport was conveyed back to the city, except for 142 acres set aside for use by the Air National Guard. Over the years various pieces of the Airport’s infrastructure were built and/or rebuilt. Today it has two runways: 17/35 at 8,061 X 150 feet, and 13/31, 4,797 X 75 feet. At one time, the Airport hosted commercial traffic – former airlines included Mid-Continent, Braniff, Frontier, Ozark, and TWA– all of which had pulled out by the time the Kansas City International Airport opened in 1972, some 30 miles south of St. Joseph. Since then, Rosecrans has been used for crop spraying, non-scheduled charter service, pilot training, general aviation, and as the home of the 139th Airlift Wing (AW), an Air Mobility Command- gained unit of the Missouri Air National Guard. An additional tenant command at Rosecrans is the Advanced Airlift Tactics Training Center (AATTC), a combined activity of both the Air National Guard and the Air Force Reserve Command. Both the 139 AW and the AATTC are made up of a mix of approximately 400 full-time Active Guard and Reserve (AGR) and Air Reserve Technician (ART) personnel, augmented by over 1,000 traditional part-time Air National Guardsmen and Air Force Reservists. The presence of the Air Guard is been a boon to the local economy, generating over $200,000,000, annually. It also helps the Airport get enough funding to update some of its infrastructure. In order for it to keep its collection of C-130s flying, which require the Airport’s longer, 8,000-ft. runway, the Guard pays about 65 percent of all project costs. So, Rosecrans was able to resurface its 5,000-ft. crosswind runway, recently, and the main THE ROSECRANS MEMOR I AL A I RPORT