Editing Pope Field (section)

===Origins===
In 1918, Congress established Camp Bragg, an Army field artillery site named for the Confederate General [[Braxton Bragg]]. An aviation landing field was added a year later. The War Department officially established "Pope Field" in 1919, and it ranks as one of the oldest installations in the Air Force.

Pope AFB is named after First Lieutenant Harley Halbert Pope who was killed on 7 January 1919, when the [[Curtiss JN-4|Curtiss JN-4 Jenny]] he was flying crashed into the [[Cape Fear River]]. After five years, Camp Bragg became a permanent Army post renamed [[Fort Bragg]], and known as Fort Liberty from 2023 to early-2025.

Original operations included photographing terrain for mapping, carrying the mail, and spotting for artillery and forest fires. Observation planes and observation balloons occupied Pope Field for the first eight years. In December 1927, Pope Field played a role in the development of tactics that would prove critically important in shortening [[World War II]].

The 1930s saw the first major expansion of the facilities at Pope. In 1935, Pope Field hosted 535 aircraft in one day as the [[United States Army Air Corps]] practiced large scale operations along the East Coast. In 1940, paved runways replaced dirt open fields. Much of the parking ramp space remained unpaved until after World War II.

The tempo of activities at Pope quickened with the outbreak of World War II. During the 1940s, the base swelled as a troop carrier training site, and with the institution of paratrooper training at Fort Bragg, Pope began putting the "Air" in "Airborne". Throughout the war, air and ground crews trained here with Army airborne units in preparation for airborne and aerial resupply missions.

Pope Field became Pope Air Force Base in 1947 and changed back to Pope Field in 2011.

[[Hangars 4 and 5, Pope Air Force Base|Hangars 4 and 5]] and the [[Pope Air Force Base Historic District]] were listed on the [[National Register of Historic Places]] in 1991.<ref name="nris">{{NRISref|version=2010a}}</ref>