Editing Pyote Air Force Base (section)

===Aircraft storage depot===
[[File:Pyote AFB Sub-Depot 1945.jpg|thumb|left|Personnel of the 351st Sub Depot in front of a B-29 at Pyote Army Air Field]]
Control of Pyote was transferred from the [[Fourth Air Force]] to the [[Air Technical Service Command]] / San Antonio Air Technical Service Command on 15 November 1945, at the end of the war. The base became an aircraft storage depot.  During the postwar years, the temporary tar-paper and wooden buildings were largely sold off, with the personnel using more substantial concrete structures for their duties along with the hangars and support buildings by the flightline ramp.

At its peak in 1948, Pyote Air Force Base' was maintained by the 4141st Army Air Forces (later Air Force) Base Unit, and housed 2,042 stored planes, mostly B-29s and B-17s, but including B-25s, A-26s, C-47s, P-63s, P-51s, AT-7s, L-5s, and L-4s.

Aircraft storage and the [[cocooning (aircraft)|cocooning]] of some of these planes was the last major activity at Pyote Air Field, which was the responsibility of the 2753d Aircraft Storage Squadron. Storage included not only preserving planes for future use, but also transferring some of the stored planes to other Air Force units for their use.
[[File:Pyoteab-2.jpg|thumb|B-29 Superfortresses stored at Pyote AAF during the late 1940s:  Boeing B-29A-35-BN Superfortress AAF Ser. No. 44-61527 is in the foreground.]]
Corrosion control crews removed, cleaned, and treated the turrets in all of the B-29s.  The aircraft were "cocooned"  to seal out the elements from the interior, and the aircraft were kept in flyable reserve storage.<ref>[http://airforcehistoryindex.org/data/000/489/772.xml USAFHRA Document 00489772]</ref><ref>[http://airforcehistoryindex.org/data/000/489/776.xml USAFHRA Document 00489776]</ref><ref>[http://airforcehistoryindex.org/data/000/489/775.xml USAFHRA Document 00489775]</ref>

Best known of all the aircraft stored at Pyote was the B-29 ''Enola Gay'', from which the first atomic bomb was dropped on [[Hiroshima]]. Arriving at Pyote on 12 January 1952, the ownership of the aircraft was transferred to the [[Smithsonian Institution]]. The ''Enola Gay'' was taken out of storage and flown to [[Andrews Air Force Base]], [[Maryland]], on 2 December 1953, for preservation at the [[National Air and Space Museum]]. It was the last time she flew.   Two other notable aircraft put in storage at Pyote were the [[The Swoose|B-17D "Swoose"]] (arrived 18 January 1952 - Departed December 1953), which was the only B-17 to survive the bombing of Clark Air Base on 8 December 1941 and manage to escape from the Philippines, and the [[XB-42 Mixmaster]], a one-of-a-kind aircraft.<ref>[http://airforcehistoryindex.org/data/000/489/773.xml USAFHRA Document 00489773]</ref><ref name="mult1">[http://airforcehistoryindex.org/data/000/489/778.xml USAFHRA Document 00489778]</ref>
[[File:Pyote AFB B-29 refurbishment 1950.jpg|thumb|left|Pyote AFB B-29 Superfortress refurbishment 1950: Note B-29s on the ramp awaiting restoration or flyout.]]
Beginning in 1950, the demands for B-29s to be used in the Korean War meant that nearly 100 of the aircraft stored at Pyote were refurbished and sent to active-duty units on Okinawa for use in combat, while some stored B-29s were authorized to be used for cannibalization to furnish spare parts to operational aircraft.  Many of the B-29s stored at Pyote were flown by the men of the 19th Bomb Group. This is the same group that was the first to serve at Pyote in 1943.  Air battles between the B-29s and [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] [[MiG-15]]s, in the skies of North Korea made it clear that the age of the jet had arrived, which made most of the propeller-driven combat aircraft stored at Pyote obsolete.

After the 1953 Armistice in Korea, the Air Force ordered most of the remaining planes at Pyote to be scrapped, and activity on the base was sharply curtailed.  Its mission became  the reclamation and salvage of the stored aircraft.  The B-29s stored at the base were very important, as the reclamation process consisted of removing all serviceable and reparable items to support the operational B-29s still in service.   A smelter was installed on the base and as the aircraft were disassembled and parts removed, the remnants were recycled with the metal sold for scrap.<ref name="mult1"/>

The last base commander, Lt. Col. Max A. Piper, was notified that the base was scheduled for deactivation on 31 December 1953, and the base went on standby status, leaving only a 27-man caretaker crew to maintain the facility.  The last plane left Pyote AFB sometime in 1955, along with the standby crew.   At that time, most of the permanent buildings and hangars remained, although abandoned.