The Army broke ground last week for a new maintenance facility at Wheeler Army Airfield that’s intended to begin replacing the 90-year-old facilities the service has relied on at the historic base. It’s the first of three and is expected to be finished in three years.
“For many years Army leaders knew the 25th Combat Aviation Brigade, the ‘Wings of Lightning,’ needed a new maintenance facility to keep pace with modernized aircraft equipment and operations,” said Lt. Col. Eric Marshall, commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Honolulu District, in remarks during a ceremony Thursday.
Several military units in Hawaii rely on aging and obsolete facilities. Military planners often have struggled to balance preserving historic sites on local bases and the demands of a modern force. A waning interest in the Pacific by top policymakers more concerned with conflict in the Middle East also shaped budgeting priorities.
But as tensions have escalated along critical Pacific trade routes and China emerges as a world power, the Pacific has regained the foreign policy establishment’s attention — and so has Hawaii.
“These hangars will house the next generation of aircraft and air aviators serving our nation here in the most consequential region, at one of the most consequential times in our nation’s history,” said Col. Dan Misigoy, commander of U.S. Army Garrison Hawaii, in remarks during the ceremony.
The airfield in Wahiawa turns 100 years old next month. It got its start in February 1922, when two simple canvas hangars were erected.
It was a very different time in the history of aviation: The Wright brothers took their first flight just 19 years earlier, and planes were in their infancy. But aviation evolved quickly and Wheeler played a pivotal role.
The airfield was used in the first trans-Pacific flight from California in 1927 and by Amelia Earhart during the first solo flight from the mainland to Hawaii in 1935. The hangar Earhart used still stands at the airfield.
But on Dec. 7, 1941, the airfield became part of a more pivotal chapter of Hawaii and military history.
When the Japanese Imperial Navy launched a surprise attack on Oahu, its planes struck Wheeler first in hopes of destroying as many U.S. Army Air Corps planes on the ground as possible to prevent them from flying to Pearl Harbor once the main attack began.
Japanese forces destroyed 83 planes, killed 33 American service members and wounded 75 more at Wheeler.
Amid the flaming wreckage, pilot 2nd Lt. Phil Rasmussen found a working Curtiss P-36 loaded with ammunition. During a lull in the bombing, he and three other pilots took off and engaged 11 Japanese aircraft, with Rasmussen shooting down a Mitsubishi A6M Zero.
Several buildings and parts of the airfield itself are still pocked with bullet holes from that day.
“For 90 years these hangars have truly supported the Army well. They’ve housed multiple generations of fixed- and rotary-wing Army aircraft and serve Army aviators,” Misigoy said. “Now we look to the future.”
The hangars were built for housing and maintaining fixed-wing airplanes rather than helicopters, which for decades have made up the vast majority of the Army’s aircraft. Misigoy told reporters after the ceremony that the aging facilities require troops to bring in trucks and extra equipment to maintain the helicopters.
The new facility will be built with that in mind.
Misigoy said the new facility also will have improved communications systems and accommodate both training and operations. The design process has been extensive, with Marshall estimating the design team collectively spent over 50,000 man-hours on planning. That included the use of virtual-reality systems to look at mock-ups.
“It’s about as advanced as you can get in terms of design. These are brand new features that were employed in the design of this project that have not been used for Army projects in the past, and it really represents the cutting edge of design technology,” Marshall said in his remarks. “It allows us to solve problems before construction begins. It was a learning process for us in the Army and the constructor.”
Hensel Phelps Construction Co. was awarded an $80 million contract from the Army to build the facility. Military spending accounts for as much as 7.7% of Hawaii’s gross domestic product, and the Hawaii Defense Economy project lists Hensel Phelps as the second-highest recipient of defense spending in the state, with $600.9 million in contract awards between 2017 and 2021.
“They recently completed Schofield’s behavioral health and dental clinic on time and under budget,” Marshall said. “That doesn’t happen often.”
The site of the new facility sits within view of the old hangars, which remain in use.
“We’ll probably use the hangars for something else, like there is a hangar right now that is a gym,” Misigoy said. “But I don’t foresee tearing them down, whether it’s for historical reasons or for other use we can get out of it.”
