Gainesville Municipal Airport

Gainesville Municipal Airport is a public-use airport located three miles (5 km) west of the central business district of Gainesville, a city in Cooke County, Texas, United States. It is owned and operated by the City of Gainesville.

History
The airport was opened in August 1941 as Gainesville Army Airfield and was used by the United States Army Air Forces Third Air Force as a training base to provide photographic intelligence for air and ground forces.

Known units which trained at Gainesville were the 8th and 426th Reconnaissance Groups. They flew a wide variety of aircraft, including the P-38 Lightning (F-5), P-51 Mustang (F-6), B-24 Liberator (F-7) and P-40 Warhawk.

The 8th Reconnaissance group was deployed to India in 1944 to support 10th and 14th Air Forces in the China-Burma-India (CBI) Theater.

Reassigned from Third Air Force in April 1944 to AAF Central Flying Training Command. Hosted AAF Pilot School (Advanced, Single Engine). At the end of the war the airfield was determined to be excess by the military and turned over to the local government for civil use.

Facilities and aircraft
Gainesville Municipal Airport covers an area of 1,336 acre which contains two asphalt paved runways: 17/35 measuring 6,000 x 100 ft (1,829 x 30 m) and 12/30 measuring 4,296 x 80 ft (1,309 x 24 m).

For the 12-month period ending August 30, 2005, the airport had 20,200 aircraft operations, an average of 55 per day: 99.5% general aviation and 0.5% military. At that time there were 70 aircraft based at this airport: 66% single-engine, 21% multi-engine, 9% jet, 3% helicopter and 1% ultralight.