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Pope Air Force Base Origins Volume 2

  • Published
  • By Daniel Knickrehm
  • 43rd Airlift Wing, Base Historian
POPE AIR FORCE BASE, N.C. --  A few months ago I wrote an article about the difficulty involved in determining the actual date of origin for the current Pope designated as an Air Force Base. Shortly after writing that article, I went to Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., and got a better answer when Pope Field became Pope Air Force Base.

There were a total of 10 orders which sorted out names of the new Air Force bases. The first major change results from splitting the base designation into two entries of new designation and base mailing address. General Order 2, dated Jan. 13, 1948, shows the new designation as "Pope Air Force Base, Ft. Bragg, North Carolina." Subsequent orders show the designation as "Pope Air Force Base" and the mailing address as,
"Pope Air Force Base, Fort Bragg, North Carolina."

It's prudent to defer to the experts who commented, "Soon after the property passed from the jurisdiction of the Army to that of the Air Force, the Army air bases, Army airfields, and fields were redesignated as Air Force bases by a series of Department of the Air Force general orders, 1948-1949, that amended and rescinded the preceding orders, so that an effective date(s) for the redesignations is difficult to determine, although for the most part the effective date, Jan. 13, 1948, of the first such order seems as valid as any other date."