Bruce Field

Bruce Field is a city-owned public-use general aviation airport located five nautical miles (6 mi, 9 km) southwest of the central business district of Ballinger, a city in Runnels County, Texas, United States.

History
Opened on October 4, 1941, it began training United States Army Air Corps flying cadets under contract to Harmon Flying School. The airfield had three 2,100' active hard-surfaced runways and five local axillary airfields for emergency and overflow landings.

It was assigned to the United States Army Air Forces Gulf Coast Training Center (later Central Flying Training Command), as a primary (level 1) pilot training airfield. Fred Harmon Flying School was the flying training instruction contractor. Flying training was performed with Fairchild PT-19s as the primary trainer. It also had several PT-17 Stearmans assigned.

It was inactivated on 16 October 1944, with the drawdown of the AAFTC's pilot training program. The facility was declared surplus and turned over to the Army Corps of Engineers on 30 September 1945. It was eventually discharged to the War Assets Administration (WAA) and became a civil airport.

In aerial photography, the remains of both wartime runways can clearly be seen in the agricultural field to the east of the airport's runway. Although both were removed, their outlines remain. The former military aircraft parking ramp, reduced in size, is also evident aerial photography as a much larger area. Two wartime hangars remain, and the concrete floors of six other hangars remain, the structures along with the control tower having been removed. No evidence remains of structures or streets of the station area, presumably located to the north and east of the aircraft parking ramp, although there may be the remains of some in a wooded area just to the north of the current Country Road 240 just to the north of the parking ramp.

Facilities and aircraft
Bruce Field covers an area of 640 acres (259 ha) at an elevation of 1,739 feet (530 m) above mean sea level. It has one runway designated 17/35 with an asphalt surface measuring 3,909 by 60 feet (1,191 x 18 m).

For the 12-month period ending March 4, 2009, the airport had 1,850 aircraft operations, an average of 154 per month: 97% general aviation and 3% air taxi. At that time there were 6 aircraft based at this airport: 83% single-engine, and 17% multi-engine.