Business View Magazine | November 2019

153 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2019 READING REGIONAL A I RPORT had a prisoner of war camp on the Airport. Many of those prisoners ended up staying after the war in the Berks County area, but during the war, itself, the prisoners were taken from the Airport encampment to the local orchards and used as labor to pick apples and peaches and then were returned to the Airport, every night.” Activity at Reading was phased down in the summer of 1945, and with the war ending, it was inactivated as an active military airfield on February 26, 1946 and designated as an Air Force Reserve base. On that date, the field was turned over to Air Defense Command, Eleventh Air Force as a reserve airfield, and the 2237th Air Force Reserve Training Center was activated to coordinate reserve training. During the late 1940s, a series of reserve bombardment groups were assigned to the Airport. Due to budgetary cutbacks, the Reserve Training Center at Reading was inactivated on May 1, 1950. The Air Force closed its facilities and returned the Airport to civil control.