San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Could this be an early flight control tower?
When I was at the Boeing Center (entertainment venue) at Port San Antonio, I drove around to see all the changes and new construction. (Attached is a) picture of a structure that appears to date back to a former life of Kelly (AFB). Apparently it has been grandfathered, if only because it’s still standing. Could this have been the flight control tower?
Port San Antonio, southwest of downtown San Antonio, was established with the closure of Kelly AFB, most of which was redeveloped into an aerospace industrial complex. The base closure announcement was made in 1995. After Kelly officially closed in 2001, its runway and some adjacent land were transferred as Kelly Field Annex to nearby Joint Base San AntonioLackland.
The South San Antonio Training Camp — sited by pioneer military aviator Benjamin Foulois — became the first military air base in Texas when it opened in 1917. It changed its name later that year to Camp Kelly and later Kelly Field in honor of 2nd Lt. George E.M. Kelly, who died in 1911 in a plane crash at Fort Sam Houston.
As the United States entered World War I, the new flying field became a training center for pilots. In the earliest days of military flight, when Foulois and Kelly were test-flying single airplanes at a time, control towers weren’t needed. But once ground-to-cockpit radio communications became possible, they were a must to guide multiple pilots.
The structure in your photo is historic, but hard to pin down in time.
The wooden structure in the photograph you sent “is the old
control tower — yes, two stories high, back in the day,” said Paco Felici, Port San Antonio’s chief communications officer.
But Tracy English, Air Force 37th Training Wing historian, isn’t as certain. “The first control tower that I identified at Kelly was in the 1920s,” English said. As for the one in your photo, his research shows that if the structure isn’t a control tower, “it might have been part of an HVAC system.”
The hard part is finding a picture of the original Kelly tower or matching the surviving structure to photos of later towers.
A story in the San Antonio Express, May 30, 1938, about a “plan to replace old, wartime ‘temporary’ buildings … all the old, wooden structures with new permanent buildings,” includes a
photo of a control tower next to the “operations building,” but even this one is more elaborate than the one that’s still at Port San Antonio.
Also in the Express, Feb. 28, 1940, a story about “radio control officers” using short-wave radio “to give instructions to solo students practicing landings” mentions a total of five control towers at Kelly and nearby Brooks fields mounted on “various hangar roofs,” unlike the free-standing structure that remains.
English provided a photo taken circa 1960 of one like it — on the ground, with tall supports rather than sitting atop a roof — next to a building labeled “Quality Assurance.” This is probably the one mentioned in the San Antonio Light, May 5, 1940, as “a wooden structure adjacent to the
operations office and just high enough to give the (traffic control) personnel a view above the one-story buildings. The new one was supposed to be ‘perched atop (a) new steel hangar about 100 feet above the ground … to give the control officer a good view of territory.’ ”
The taller one must have been built because the Light, May 15, 1969, says Kelly is going to replace the tower on top of the Flight Operations Hangar with a new, hexagonal-shaped control tower in July.
So what saved the modest wooden structure all these years, and has it been used for anything?
Felici said “several obsolete buildings around it have been taken down to make room for future development.” As for the tower itself, he said, “plans are to relocate it to another part of campus as redevelopment continues to include increased walkable green spaces.”
DAIRY DETAILS:
The photo banners on the Escobedo Creamery building at 2211 W. Salinas St. (covered here Jan. 27), says owner Joseph Carreon, were inspired by but not installed by the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, the cultural arts organization that sponsored similar banners with black-andwhite photos of early 20th century people with ties to the West Side community.
Carreon is a former board member of the Prosper West community economic development organization, which cooperated on the Esperanza project. He has owned the neighborhood landmark for more than a decade.
“Since I was a kid, the Escobedo Creamery building always intrigued me,” he said, “and 25 years ago when I moved in next door, I began trying to purchase the property.”
With a partner, he acquired the property in 2011 and has been “laying the groundwork for an awesome redevelopment … to include retail and residential components.”
The photo banners Carreon installed over the windows and doors of the creamery building “are all of my family, all of whom have strong connections to the 2200 block of West Salinas and the West Side,” including one on the front door of his mother, Consuelo Herrera Carreon, taken in the 1950s; others depict his father, Zaragosa Carreon Jr., during World War II and grandfather Zaragosa Carreon Sr. Another undated photo shows two men at the Alamo — “unknown relatives, but a fun picture.”