MAJORS FIELD. Majors Field was a flight-training command center for the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. The site, in a wooded area six miles southeast of Greenville, Hunt County, was one of 149 areas inspected and approved by Civil Aeronautics Administration engineers in late 1941 as a training center for army pilots. They chose Greenville partly because the local Rotary Club had prepared the year before to finance a municipal airport, and partly because of the political influence of Sam (Samuel Taliaferro) Rayburn, a graduate of nearby East Texas State University. The field opened on June 26, 1942, and was named in memory of Lt. Truett Majors, the first Hunt County native to die in the war. Majors Field, located on a 2,000-acre site, was the home of up to 5,000 pilots, support personnel, and civilian employees, under the command of Col. Herbert M. Newstrom. In addition to training United States Army pilots, the field was the training site for the Mexican 201st Air Squadron, the only Mexican force that saw action overseas. The training center was closed soon after the defeat of Germany; by July 1945 it was all but deserted. Once the army had left, the property reverted to the city of Greenville, which soon thereafter leased the site to Temco (later E-Systems; see LTV CORPORATION); this company used the facility to rebuild aircraft. Majors Field is the center of industrial activity for Greenville and central Hunt County.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Greenville Morning Herald, May 9, 1950. W. Walworth Harrison, History of Greenville and Hunt County, Texas (Waco: Texian, 1976).
