In January 1941 the Independence Chamber of Commerce, resolved to sell the citizens of the Kansas community the idea of a municipal airport.

On 26 June 1941, after six months of effective "selling", the city commission decided to ask the voters to approve a $100,000 bond issue for financing work on the airport.

A short time later the city commission entered into contract with Paulette and White, consulting engineers from Topeka, to survey potential sites for the field.

Early in 1942 the government indicated it was interested in acquiring the site for a United States Army Air Forces airfield.

About six weeks later, on 23 May 1942, the Army officially notified Independence City Government that it would purchase approximately 1,433 acres.

The contract for planning and supervising the construction of the airfield was awarded to Black and Veatch, architectural engineers from Kansas City, Missouri.

Each runway had a ten-inch gravel base placed in layers on a six-inch compacted earth subbase, and surfaced with one and one-half-inch asphalt cement; the service strip (80 feet wide) was a six-inch concrete slab, thickened to nine inches at the expansion and construction joints.

The auxiliaries were located at: Work progressed satisfactorily throughout the winter despite interruptions caused by heavy rains and sub-zero temperatures.

Flight training consisted of several subjects that included, takeoffs and landings, aerobatics, cross-country navigation, and night flying.

On 11 April 1945, however, the Army announced that the airfield would be used to store aircraft not needed in the war effort as a Class II storage depot.

Jurisdiction was transferred to Air Technical Service Command, and during the next two months civilian employment on the field jumped from 44 to 505 and military personnel increased from 2 to 272.

With the war ended in October 1945, however, all of the B-24 and B-17 aircraft were re-classified as class IV (surplus) and moved to Kingman AAF, Arizona for recycling.

In the fall of 1947 Air Technical Service Command consolidated its storage depots and all of the stored aircraft were moved from Independence to RFC Walnut Ridge, Arkansas for sale or recycling.

The War Assets Administration eventually turned the air base over to local government officials.

The Independence Airport Industrial Park consists of companies which have built new structures on it, but generally it is unused and vacant.

This article incorporates public domain material from the Air Force Historical Research Agency