A rare glimpse inside the Eagle Mountain Lake site where a long-gone base helped win WWII

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Just beyond the gates of the sprawling Kenneth Copeland Ministries complex on Eagle Mountain Lake, a lonely strip of airplane runway slices through empty fields and a scattering of gas pads.

Small planes occasionally come or go — mostly connected to Copeland, who bought the rural expanse on the east side of the lake decades ago. Closer to the water, at the end of a cracked concrete ramp, a weathered Quonset hut sits near the woodline.

There are few clues that survive here to what this site used to be, and its profound importance not only to Fort Worth history, but to the outcome of the world’s deadliest war ever.

This was the site of a U.S. Marine Corps Air Station hastily built at the onset of World War II, where the military trained pilots on gliders that were new warfare technology at the time. Some of the nation’s most decorated veterans would hone their skills here — first with gliders, then with dive-bomb aircraft.

“Big plans for (the installation) were based on success of Germany’s glider conquest of Britain’s base on Crete,” said Richard Selcer, a Fort Worth historian and Star-Telegram contributor. “It was the first Marine Corps aviation training base in Texas. The base had a post library, a hospital, barracks, hangers, all the elements of a typical military base, but it was still considered quite small for a training base.”

Nowadays, most of those buildings are long gone.

The Star Telegram got an exclusive tour of the site of the old Eagle Mountain Lake base.

Eagle Mountain Lake circa 1942

It was big news in Fort Worth when the military announced its plans for Eagle Mountain Lake.

Six months after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor thrust the U.S. into World War II, the site about 18 miles northwest of downtown Fort Worth was chosen for a $5 million glider base. The Star-Telegram splashed the headline across the front page that this would be the first inland glider base of its kind.

About 2,500 acres of rough, undeveloped land just east of the lake, near the small farming community of Newark, would be transformed into a military training station as quickly as possible for amphibious and surface landings. Construction would begin immediately to build a base that could house 500 officers, 1,500 trainees and 1,000 enlisted troops.

Lt. Col. Vernon M. Guymon, a highly decorated World War I veteran and naval aviator in the Marines, would serve as commanding officer and oversee the move of the corps’ Glider Group 71 from coastal Parris Island, South Carolina, to North Texas.

Lt. Cmdr. K.P. Coykendall, an engineer with the Navy’s Bureau of Yards and Docks, was in charge of construction.

Within less than two months, preliminary grading and construction of barracks were already underway.

Gliders were a new type of warfare for the U.S. military, a stealth aircraft meant for surprise attacks . The inspiration came from “ Operation Mercury, ” an amphibious surprise attack by Germany to capture Crete in 1941.

“Americans will glide silently into occupied areas to capture them,” the Star Telegram reported on June 23, 1942. “They can approach silently to surprise the enemy, and the men, as part of their training at the Fort Worth base, will learn to operate them in large masses for attack.”

The Marines first learned how to operate large Waco gliders that could carry about a dozen people or a Jeep. Before they came to Eagle Mountain, pilots went to flight school in Chicago at the Lewis School of Aeronautics . Eagle Mountain was equipped with a runway and three ramps for amphibious planes.

The skill was difficult to obtain. The pilots began training by winch towing, and then by plane.

Pilots started learning by winch tows. A wire from the glider would be attached to a large motor drum at the other end of a runway. Reeling in the wire would give the glider enough speed to lift off; at 500 feet, the wire was detached and air currents took over.

Plane towing was more difficult, and how glider pilots most often launched in battle. An engined plane would tow the glider and circle around until they reached a proper altitude, up to 20,000 feet. At that height, a glider could travel 75 miles.

The pilots learned to glide while towed in formations of two to three. They could travel like this for 200 or 300 miles with the ability to refuel the engined aircraft during flight.

But for all the early promise as a military innovation, gliders wouldn’t be around long. The Marines canceled the program in May 1943, and the Navy took over the base as an air station to test new remote-controlled aircraft.

In spring 1944, the Marines returned and announced they would use Eagle Mountain Lake as “finishing school” for dive bomber pilots on their way to overseas combat. Dive bombing would play a crucial role in giving the Allies the advantage toward the end of World War II.

By this point in the war, many of the young Marine pilots stationed at Eagle Mountain or its adjunct base at nearby Rhome were already war heroes from combat in the South Pacific or elsewhere.

A Star-Telegram reporter visited the base in June 1944.

“There all young fellows … and almost every last one of them is a veteran of many combat missions,” the reporter wrote.

Take, for example, the “young, sandy-haired” Maj. Fred J. Frazer, a squadron commander whose dog O’Toole served as their unofficial mascot. Frazer was on the USS Quincy in the South Pacific when the Japanese sunk the ship during the Battle of Savo Island in 1942 .

“Frazier was burned badly, floating around in the water on empty ammunition tanks for hours, finally got together three rafts which were lashed together and the 30 men aboard the ship were saved,” the Star Telegram reported.

Frazer also attended pilot school at Grand Prairie Naval Air Base in Dallas.

Two of Frazer’s staff captains at Eagle Mountain had seen combat, too.

Capt. P.G. Zouck from Baltimore got in 14 raids at Guadalcanal and earned a presidential unit citation “for extraordinary heroism in action.” Capt. G.T. Morse of Long Beach, California, had seen 18 raids and the first dive-bombings in Kahili in Papua New Guinea and the Balalae in the Solomon Islands. His squadron had shot down 80 Japanese bombers.

And Maj. Robert J. Bear, commander of a squadron at Rhome, held a Navy Cross, Air Medal and a presidential unit citation.

By July 1944, it looked as if the Marines might expand the Eagle Mountain Lake base, which was “taxed to capacity” by three dive-bomber squadrons. Brig. Gen. Louis E. Woods inspected the base and told the Star-Telegram “I hope the station is here to stay.”

But it was not meant to be.

Germany would surrender in less than a year, followed by Japan in September 1945. After the war, the Marines no longer needed the base.

The Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce studied possible postwar uses for the property. Reed Pigman, who had established in 1939 the American Flyers civilian pilot training facility in Fort Worth, proposed letting him operate it as a flying school and “cross-country resort.”

The Texas National Guard would end up taking over the former base in 1947 for training.

The hospital was also reused to treat polio and cerebral palsy patients from Fort Worth.

Copeland, a successful televangelist with a growing global ministry, purchased about 1,500 acres of the land and in 1986 moved his headquarters to the site. Since then, the runway has been used only for small planes. The ministry has kept the former Navy hospital building to use as a doctor’s office for church members.

Now the ministry is raising money to make improvements of the runway. And the ministry hopes to one day erect a monument of some sort to honor all the pilots who passed through the old base.