Somewhere beneath the tons of brand-new concrete being poured at the Great Bend Municipal Airport are chunks of another era, an era when the facility served as a training base for B-29 pilots headed to do battle in World War II.
Crews from subcontractor Concrete Services of Great Bend were at the airport Wednesday morning for the first, big concrete pour of the on-going apron reconstruction project, said airport Manager Martin Miller. This marks the first major renovation of the apron, or the parking area used by passengers and for servicing aircraft, since the WW II days.
The work started at about 8 a.m. and by noon, 280 cubic yards of wet concrete were in place.
Miller said there will ultimately be 33,000 cubic yards of concrete resting on a bed made up of 2,000 tons of fly-ash (on the bottom) and 33,000 cubic yards of crushed, old concrete. The crushed material was the original surface dating back to the war.
“That concrete is 70 years old this year,” Miller said. Now, it will become a part of the future as well.
The total cost of the work is nearly $3.2 million, with the general contractor being APAC of Hays. Of that, the city will pay only 5 percent (about $152,000) with the rest coming from state and federal grants.
The apron, the only major airport project this year, is part of an larger effort to update the airport, Miller said. The other projects include:
 2014 – Design and construct building for aircraft rescue and fire-fighting vehicle
 Total estimate – $375,000
City share – $37,500
2014 – purchase fire truck for airport
Total estimate – $215,000
City share – $ 21,500 0
2014 – Design phase of main runway rehabilitation
Total estimate – $145,534
City share – $ 14, 953
Great Bend Municipal Airport was constructed in the early 1940s as a World War II Army Air Corps base to accommodate the B-29 Superfortress bomber.
The airfield included three intersecting 8,000-foot long paved runways, taxiways, aircraft park aprons, aircraft storage hangars, and several support facilities to include administrative buildings, barracks, and automobile access roads.
Early in 1944, the 58th Bomb Wing took off from the airport runways.
After the war, the airport was transferred to the City of Great Bend, and the city began to modify the facility to better serve civilian aviation. Located at the entrance to the Great Bend Municipal Airport, the B-29 Memorial Plaza is dedicated to everyone involved in building, flying and providing support for the Boeing B-29 Superfortress.