In the center of the main office building at Craig Field Airport and Industrial Authority (CFAIA), the hub of activity for the expanse of land that once served as a training base for the U.S. Air Force, sits a small museum doused in sunlight that trickles in between the cracks of the blinds covering a series of nearby windows.

Hidden there among mounds of books and photos, old newspapers and pilot’s patches, is a small, laminated sheet of paper that tells the story of Bruce K. Craig, the namesake of the former Air Force base turned industrial complex and airfield.

Craig was a Selma native who in June 1941 died in San Diego during a test flight of the B-24 Liberator, an aircraft model destined to be put to use by Great Britain during World War II. Craig was posthumously made a lieutenant and his name became synonymous with pilot training in the southeast.

Craig Air Force Base came to be as a result of the City of Selma encouraging the U.S. Army, which at the time was the military branch that oversaw the Army Air Corps, the precursor to the modern-day U.S. Air Force, to construct a landing field in the area.

Several surveys later, the army agreed with city leaders – the area possessed certain natural qualities that made it ideal for a flight training program and by July 1940 the Selma City Council purchased 1,986 acres of farm land for roughly $140,000, which was then leased to the U.S. government for $1 per year for the purpose of establishing an airfield.

CFAIA Executive Director Jim Corrigan, himself a graduate of the flight training program at Craig, laughed when he looked at the figures from that original purchase – both the relative inexpensiveness of the property and the bargain-busting price at which the city leased the land to the government – after thumbing through an old class book that carried a photo of him and his wife with his signature just below.

“It was a smart move,” Corrigan said with a smile. “I mean, how much money did Craig bring into this economy?”

Selma Army Air Field, as it was called before Craig’s name was tied to the property, was activated only a month later with the arrival of 120 men from the 67th Group Detachment from Maxwell Field, today know as Maxwell Air Force Base, in Montgomery.

The men pitched a dozen tents along Camden Highway, today simply known as Hwy. 41, which Corrigan said was little more than a swamp in the early 1940s, and Col. Vincent B. Dixon arrived the same day and assumed charge as base commander.

By December, barely four months after the base officially opened, military strength had risen to 500 with a civilian construction force of equal size, a fact that Corrigan points to as evidence that the base had an immediate and significant impact on the local economy and workforce.

Corrigan noted that soldiers and civilian workers were renting lodging space at local hotels and residences and that the “immense undertaking” of constructing an airfield on swampy land likely put a lot of people to work.

“When you open an air base like that, you probably have every construction company available working on it,” Corrigan said.

After that initial group arrived, the growth at Craig was swift. Within five months of activation, the 90th and 92nd Flying School Squadrons were transferred from Barksdale Field in Louisiana to Selma and by May 1941, the base received its first aircraft, Shortly thereafter, more than 90 more arrived.

That same month, the first graduation of pilots was held. The cadets received commissions and wings at the Wilby Theater in downtown Selma, and two months later the base was given its new name.

Craig Air Force Base continued to grow and by the start of World War II had roughly 2,500 personnel and 150 aircraft stationed at the base, which would go on to become a hub of flight training for pilots in World War II, as well as the Korean and Vietnam wars.

There is no shortage of documentation from this period hidden in the piles of archives stashed in Craig’s small, wooden-walled museum, including an article from The Selma Times-Journal in April 1944 describing a scene in which a local soldier was dressed as a Nazi and paraded around the base, followed by an “oom-pah” band, to raise awareness of food conservation by taunting the soldiers with claims that they were helping the enemy by throwing out good food.

Another headline, which covered the top of The Selma Times-Journal on Sept. 2, 1945, heralds the “Unconditional Surrender” of the Japanese fighters at the end of World War II and celebrates the first “VJ Day.”

More than 11,400 pilots from the U.S. and allied nations were trained at the base and once the war was over, pilot training missions ground to a halt as the base assumed its new role as a Special Staff Officer School.

However, the base’s stoppage of pilot training was short lived as hostilities in Korea began to ramp up in the early 1950s. The need for pilots and qualified instructors increased rapidly and by September 1950, the Air Training Command took control of Craig.

More than 4,000 instructors were trained during the Korean War and some 700 pilots earned their wings at the base. By 1952, Craig was moving into the jet age, bolstered by the assignment of the Lockheed T-33, as well as T-37s and T-38s, to the base for use in pilot training programs.

As the base moved into the 60s, Corrigan said it began to approach its “heyday,” a time full of activity and growth, a time that ultimately came to a close when the base shuttered its operations in the late 1970s.