Craig Air Force Base near Selma, Alabama, was a U.S. Air Force Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT) that closed in 1977. Today the facility is a civilian airport known as Craig Field Airport and Industrial Complex (ICAO: KSEM; FAA: SEM).HistoryWorld War IIOriginally built by the U.S. Army Air Force in 1940 to accommodate the growing number of flight trainees before World War II, Craig Field was one of the first training fields to offer single-engine training. Its first graduating class of 1941, the 39 cadets of Class 41D, completed the training course seven months before the United States' entry into World War II.The naming of the base was important to the nearby city of Selma, and several names were considered. The name finally chosen was to honor 1st Lt Bruce Kilpatrick Craig, who was killed when his B-24 crashed in June 1941. He was born in Selma and was initially commissioned as an officer in the Infantry Reserve prior to transferring to the Army Air Force and attending flight training.Army Air Force pilot training in 1941 was still considered as being peacetime and included a seventy-hour flying course. With the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 training was accelerated to speed the flow of pilots into combat. In total Craig Field graduated more than 9,000 pilots before the end of the war. Craig Field also saw a number of British Royal Air Force cadets through their training. By 1943, 1,392 RAF cadets had earned their wings at Craig Field. Following the war, the mission of Craig Field changed from time to time, but it remained primarily a training base. When the U.S. Air Force was established as a separate service in 1947, Craig Field was renamed Craig Air Force Base.
