Patrick Air Force Base

What is now Patrick Space Force Base began in 1940 as Banana River Naval Air Station on Florida’s east coast, south of Cape Canaveral. During World War II the Navy trained patrol and seaplane crews there. After the war the station closed briefly, then reopened as the Air Force took on the new job of launching and tracking missiles from the Cape.

In 1950 the installation was renamed Patrick Air Force Base for Major General Mason M. Patrick, chief of the Army Air Service in the 1920s. From Patrick and the adjacent Cape Canaveral launch complex, the Air Force built the Eastern Test Range—later the Eastern Range—a corridor of tracking stations, ships, and aircraft that watched ballistic missiles and space launches from Florida out over the Atlantic.

When NASA’s Apollo program needed continuous coverage of translunar injection over the ocean, the Air Force stationed the new Apollo Range Instrumentation Aircraft at Patrick. From 1968 the EC-135N ARIA fleet flew from Patrick under Eastern Test Range control. The Aircraft Operations Control Center (AOCC) at Patrick kept continuous contact with deployed ARIA worldwide and linked astronaut voice and telemetry into the NASA and DoD networks.

ARIA left Patrick for Wright-Patterson AFB after Apollo, but the base stayed at the center of Eastern Range launch support. On 9 December 2020, Patrick Air Force Base and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station were redesignated Patrick Space Force Base and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station as the United States Space Force took formal ownership of those missions. The name on the gate changed; the geography of range support from Florida’s Space Coast did not.

Milestones

1. 1940Banana River NAS — The Navy opens Banana River Naval Air Station on the Banana River lagoon.
2. 1950Patrick AFB — The installation is renamed Patrick Air Force Base for Maj. Gen. Mason M. Patrick.
3. 1968ARIA at Patrick — Apollo Range Instrumentation Aircraft begin operations from Patrick under Eastern Test Range control.
4. 1975–76ARIA transfer — After Apollo, ARIA relocates to Wright-Patterson AFB as Advanced Range Instrumentation Aircraft.
5. 2020-12-09Patrick SFB — Patrick AFB and Cape Canaveral AFS are redesignated as Space Force installations.

Summary original to flyARIA.com. Photograph: U.S. Air Force. Works of the U.S. Government are generally in the public domain in the United States; credit does not imply endorsement.

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