Departure
93%
vs 95% ▼ 2
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Offutt Air Force Base lies south of Omaha, Nebraska, adjacent to Bellevue in Sarpy County, and serves as headquarters for United States Strategic Command and host to the 55th Wing. Its single long concrete runway and Class C airspace reflect decades of strategic bomber and reconnaissance operations dating back to the Cold War, including the construction of the Enola Gay and Bockscar during World War II.
Offutt Air Force Base is a major U.S. Air Force installation south of Omaha, Nebraska, operated by Air Combat Command with the 55th Wing as host unit. It is also the headquarters of United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) and the 557th Weather Wing. For a simulator pilot the field is notable for its single very long hard runway, its Cold War strategic bomber heritage, and its role in the production of the atomic-bomb-dropping B-29s Enola Gay and Bockscar during the Second World War.
Offutt AFB sits south of Omaha, adjacent to the city of Bellevue in Sarpy County, Nebraska, close to the Missouri River. The field is tagged as Class C airspace and remains an active military facility; the surrounding area includes Omaha's other aviation infrastructure, but Offutt itself is a self-contained military airfield.
The airfield has a single physical runway, 12/30, a hard surface measuring approximately 10,681 feet in the 12 direction and 10,599 feet in the 30 direction, and lit for night operations. There is no ILS listed for the field. Field elevation is 1,004 feet.
Air traffic services are provided by Offutt Tower on 123.7 MHz, with Ground on 121.7 MHz. ATIS broadcasts on 126.025 MHz, and Omaha Approach/Departure operates on 118 MHz. Additional military command and weather-service frequencies are published for base users, including a Command Post frequency on 37.94 MHz and PMSV Metro Post on 31.1 MHz.
Offutt's aviation history began in September 1918 as an Army Air Service balloon field associated with Fort Crook, itself established by the War Department in 1890 and named for Major General George Crook. In spring 1921, 260 acres at Fort Crook were cleared and seeded to form a grass airfield used as a refuelling stop for early airmail and transcontinental flights, with the first permanent hangars completed the same year. The airfield was officially named Offutt Field on 6 May 1924, honouring 1st Lt Jarvis Jenness Offutt, an Omaha native and the first Omahan killed in World War I, who died after his SE-5 fighter crashed during a training flight in France. In 1940, as war loomed, the Army Air Corps selected the site for a new bomber plant operated by the Glenn L. Martin Company, which built a two-mile concrete runway, six large hangars and a vast assembly building; production switched to the B-29 Superfortress in 1944, and 531 were built before the war's end, including the Enola Gay and Bockscar, which dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The newly formed United States Air Force took control of the base in September 1947, renaming it Offutt Air Force Base on 13 January 1948. Later that year, on 9 November 1948, Offutt became host to Headquarters Strategic Air Command, relocated from Andrews AFB, Maryland, chosen for its central North American location. During the late 1950s the base also hosted a Royal Air Force facility servicing Avro Vulcans on exercise with SAC, and through the Cold War the base supported alert tankers, intercontinental ballistic missile sites in Nebraska and Iowa, and worldwide reconnaissance operations.
Offutt Air Force Base remains an active military installation, home to the 55th Wing, United States Strategic Command, the 557th Weather Wing, the 95th Wing, and other tenant units, with a continuing worldwide reconnaissance, command and control mission. The base is not open to the public, and any flying operations there require appropriate military authorisation rather than routine civilian access.