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Westover Air Reserve Base is an Air Force Reserve Command (AFRC) installation located in the Massachusetts communities of Chicopee and Ludlow, near the city of Springfield, Massachusetts. Westover hosts the largest Air Reserve Base in the world in terms of area. Until 2011, it was a backup landing site for the NASA Space Shuttle and in the past few years has expanded to include a growing civilian access airport sharing Westover's military-maintained runways.〔(Westover AFB, Mass – 99th Bomb Wing – B-52 – NEED INFO )〕 The installation was named for Major General Oscar Westover who was commanding officer of the Army Air Corps in the 1930s. Westover was killed on 21 September 1938 in the crash of his high-speed Northrop A-17AS at Lockheed Aircraft's air field in Burbank, California (now known as Bob Hope Airport).〔Bowers, Peter M., "Captain of the Clouds", ''Airpower'', Granada Hills, California, July 1972, Volume 2, Number 4, page 33.〕 The host unit is the 439th Airlift Wing (439 AW) of the Twenty-Second Air Force (22 AF), Air Force Reserve Command. Outside of the AFRC command structure, the 439 AW and Westover are operationally gained by the Air Mobility Command (AMC). Due to its location as one of the few remaining active military air bases in the northeast United States, Westover ARB is transitted by many different U.S. military aircraft of all the services. == Overview == Physically, Westover ARB is the eleventh largest Air Force Reserve base in the United States and will expand significantly over the next decade to further encompass Active and Reserve Component activities of the Navy, Marine Corps, Army, and mainline Air Force functions from installations closed by the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process. Current military operations at Westover Air Reserve Base are centered around its exceptionally long runways. The Air Force Reserve Command (AFRC) uses Westover for its largest cargo aircraft, maintaining a fleet of sixteen C-5 Galaxy aircraft operated by the 439th Airlift Wing (439 AW), an Air Force Reserve unit that is operationally gained by the Air Mobility Command (AMC). In 2003, the Air Force Reserve Command briefly changed the name of Westover Air Reserve Base to Westover Joint Air Reserve Base. It has since been renamed to its previous designation of "Westover Air Reserve Base" as a military installation and is referred to as Westover Air Reserve Base/Metropolitan in DoD and FAA Flight Information Publications (FLIP).〔(Westover Air Reserve Base, Mass – Home )〕 The Westover complex serves the "Joint Use" mission of military and civilian cooperation. The core aviation facilities at Westover are owned by the Department of Defense while nearly a are under private ownership. The two parties coordinate operations in order to promote national defense and economic development. The and long runways provide the flexibility for significant separation between military and civilian operations. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Westover Air Reserve Base」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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