Taliaferro Field 1 / Hicks Field (Site) (Fort Worth,Texas)

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Hicks Airfield trained more than 6,000 Canadian and American pilots, gunners and observers for service in World Wars I and II.

The site, known at various times as Taliaferro Field, Camp Hicks and Hicks Field, had been part of the old Hicks Ranch. The Canadians called it Taliaferro Field, after Walter R. Taliaferro, a U.S. Army aviator who had been killed in an accident. But the name changed to Hicks Field after the U.S. went to war. The name was given from Charles E. Hicks, the landowner from who the Field came from.

The concept for a flying field located here was proposed by the Canadians. The Royal Flying Corps (RFC) needed a warm climate for winter flight training. The Americans needed help in quickly establishing flight training schools. The RFC agreed to train ten aero squadrons, both pilots and ground personnel, in exchange for facilities in Texas to cover the winters of 1917-1918.

Cattle were moved out, and construction crews worked feverishly at the site, known as Taliaferro Field, and at two auxiliary fields in Benbrook and Everman. When the trainees first arrived in November 1917, the fields were only partially complete. But training was started anyway, despite unfinished facilities, lack of water or sewer and unassembled aircraft.

Training was taught by the Canadians. The two auxiliary fields were in charge of primary flight training, including aerial maneuvers such as tailspins, loops, falling leafs, Immelmann turns and barrel rolls. But during this time, Hicks took on a new role as the primary training base for the new art of aerial gunnery. Pilots came from all over the U.S. to learn this new art, including 300 ensigns from the U.S. Navy. Gunnery was taught in a 6 week course, on the ground in special gunnery ranges and in the air.

In April of 1918, the RFC returned to Canada. They had accumulated over 67,000 flying hours, trained 1,960 pilots, 69 ground officers and 4,150 men in various ground skills at Hicks Field. To the whine of their own bagpipe land, a sound foreign in the land of cowboys and cattle, they departured at the T&P Railroad Station in downtown Fort Worth.

In 1923, the Hicks Field became the site of the world's first helium plant, built by the U.S. government, and ran by the Navy (some claim that the true site was at the old FAA headquarters on Blue Mound Rd). Some of the Navy's great dirigibles, the Shenandoah, Macon, Akron and the Los Angeles - would arrive and top off their helium supplies there. Non- inflammable helium was the gas that kept these 700-foot-long monsters aloft and Hicks had the world's entire supply. But over a period of time, other countries began prospecting for helium, and in 1929, the plant was closed due to a shortage.

After laying dormant for many years, Hicks Field was again opened as a training base in July of 1940 in support of World War II. A major construction and renovation job was required for Hicks, and once completed, Texas Aviation Inc., and W.F. Long Flying School moved in. As a private flying school, it received a contract to train new cadets on the new field that was constructed. Thirty-eight new Fairchild PT-19's and PT-19A's were assigned to Hicks, and the Army Air Corps again had pilots training there. Hicks was one of the first primary flying schools in the Army Air Corps expansion program. By 1944 the war had ended and Hicks Field deactivated its training schools.

But the gates were not immediately closed; for a few years after WWII, planes flew at Hicks. The Defense Plant Corp. used it as a base for it's sale of surplus Army aircraft. In the mid 1950's, the Texas Helicopter Division of the Bell Aircraft Company used it to test their experimental XHSL-1 twin rotor helicopter. This division later became Bell Helicopter. They moved the manufacturing facility to the abandoned Globe Aircraft Company building and used Hicks Field as it's flight test facility. After Bell left, the field was mostly used a general aviation field by civilians.

The present day site of Hicks Field is an industrial park.
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