Edwards AFB

A water stop named Muroc grew around Rogers Dry Lake in 1910, but the site truly entered aviation history when Lt. Col. Henry H. Arnold chose the lakebed in 1933 for a vast bombing and gunnery range. The hard alkali playa served as a natural runway, and the surrounding Mojave Desert offered year-round flying weather and isolation from prying eyes. ¹²

  World War II Expansion

Activated as Muroc Army Air Field in July 1942, the base trained bomber and fighter crews while simultaneously hosting top-secret flight-test programs. Bell's XP-59A Airacomet—the first U.S. jet—flew here on 1 October 1942, proving the lakebed's value for experimental work. ³ Construction of 700-/800-series temporary cantonment blocks, four hangars, and a fenced North Base created a miniature city supporting more than 6,000 personnel by 1945. ⁴

  Jet Age and Sound Barrier

Lockheed's XP-80 Shooting Star, Northrop's flying-wing prototypes, and the rocket-powered Bell X-1 followed in quick succession. On 14 October 1947 Capt. Charles E. Yeager exceeded Mach 1 over Rogers Dry Lake, ushering in routine supersonic flight and establishing the installation—renamed Edwards Air Force Base in 1949 after test pilot Capt. Glen Edwards—as America's primary flight-test center. ²

  Cold War Flight Test Center

The 1950 activation of the Air Force Test Pilot School and the 1951 creation of the Air Force Flight Test Center formalized the mission. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s Edwards hosted the Century-Series fighters, the X-15 hypersonic program, the XB-70 Valkyrie, YF-12/SR-71 Blackbirds, and countless missile, rocket-sled, and electronic-warfare projects. Data-link telemetry, precision optical tracking, and the 400-mile High Range were pioneered to manage thousands of parameters per flight. ²⁵

  Space Shuttle Era

NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center (then Dryden) shares the flight-line and operated lifting-body research that validated Shuttle re-entry. Shuttle orbiter Columbia's STS-1 landing on 14 April 1981 cemented Edwards as the operational backup landing site; seventeen Shuttle missions concluded on Rogers Dry Lake between 1981 — 2009. ⁶⁷

  Stealth and Modern Programs

Have Blue, F-117A Nighthawk, B-2 Spirit, YF-22 Raptor, and today's B-21 Raider all matured over the Mojave. Integration facilities now ingest millions of telemetry bytes per second while combined test forces evaluate everything from hypersonic vehicles to autonomous swarming drones.

  Key Personnel and Units

  Program Timeline

  Persistent Conspiracy Lore

Edwards sits at the center of modern UFO mythology. Allegations range from midnight transfers of crashed-disk debris to subterranean hangars beneath South Base. Freedom-of-Information releases show only conventional projects, yet the base's secrecy and frequent nocturnal flight tests continue to fuel speculation.⁸⁹¹⁰

  References

1. edwards.af.mil ↩

2. en.wikipedia.org ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. globalsecurity.org ↩

4. tile.loc.gov ↩

5. militarymuseum.org ↩

6. nasa.gov ↩

7. nasa.gov ↩

8. historynet.com ↩

9. latimes.com ↩

10. en.wikipedia.org ↩