The Office of the Inspector General was located at Norton, as was the Directorate of Aerospace Safety and the Air Force Audit Agency Headquarters.

[1] While attacking a marshaling yard on his 16th combat mission, Captain Norton's Douglas A-20 Havoc was struck by antiaircraft fire on 27 May 1944 near Amiens, France.

[8] In February 1944, the Army relocated the regulating station that had operated in the facilities of the Municipal Park in Colton since September 1943 to the Base General Depot in San Bernardino.

This unique operation primarily regulated rail traffic between communications and war zones, including the evacuation of patients using hospital trains.

[10] A large batch of Douglas A-20 Havoc bombers were maintained at the air depot in August 1944 in strategic reserve, ready to be deployed within 72 hours to whatever fighting front required them.

[11] An open house for the public, celebrating the thirty-seventh anniversary of U.S. Army aviation, and the first since the base was established, was held on 1 August 1944.

Noted the lead editorial in the San Bernardino Daily Sun that date, "At a cost of $50,000,000, approximately 1,800 acres of farmland has been converted in a period of 28 months into a bustling military establishment.

The San Bernardino Air Service command is geared to rebuild 1,000 aircraft engines monthly, to provide mountains of vital supplies for Army Air force installations at home and abroad, to overhaul gun turrets, wings and tail assemblies, repair propellers and improve landing gears.

[15] An open house celebrating the Army Air Force's thirty-eighth birthday was held on 1 August 1945, with a brand new B-29 flown from the Seattle factory and a P-80 both publicly exhibited for the first time in the region.

The separation center opened for business on 17 September 1945, part of an immediate program to speed up the release of a backlog of 135,000 AAF men and women, one of 32 temporary discharge bases established.

The DTC was a massive training facility set up in the Mojave Desert; largely in Southern California and Western Arizona.

On 15 May, Lt. Paul Smith, in charge of housing for San Bernardino Army Airfield, disclosed that 125 enlisted men and officers were seeking accommodations for themselves and their families.

He urged property owners to contact the field's personnel affairs office, by telephone or mail, when vacancies occur.

[24] The squadron was equipped with P-51D Mustangs and assigned to the 146th Fighter Group, at Van Nuys Airport by the National Guard Bureau.

[26] Bids were opened on 15 September 1953 for nearly a million dollars of work at Norton, including a 2,450-foot extension of the southwest - northeast runway bringing it to 10,000 feet, long enough for anything in the inventory.

The extension required the closing of the east end of Mill Street at Tippecanoe Avenue, and the relocation of the Pacific Electric track, both of which right-of-ways the runway would cross.

"Directives to acquire land for the runway lengthening were signed in June by the secretary of the Air Force and sent to the Los Angeles office of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

[28] On 22 March 1956, the San Bernardino Daily Sun reported that "In compliance with stated Air Force policy directing the depots to concentrate their immediate efforts in support of weapons systems with high priority and tactical value, Headquarters AMC recently advised San Bernardino that depot shops here had been selected to service and maintain F100 fighter aircraft.

Present plans call for locating a double production line for F100s where the B45 aircraft is currently being handled inside the big hangar on the east.

[31] Five civilian contractors attached to the Directorate of Ballistic Missiles at Norton Air Force Base were killed on 21 April 1958 in the crash of United Airlines Flight 736.

"[33] As solid-fuel Minuteman missiles entered service, the more problematic liquid-fueled Atlas and Titan systems were removed from alert status.

[37][38] Their electronics suites were developed for and identical to those of the MC-130 Combat Talon, with the addition of AN/APQ-115 Forward looking infrared,[39] and 1198th OE&TS test missions were flown out of Takhli Royal Thai Air Force Base, Thailand, under project "Heavy Chain", with the aircraft painted all-black.

In 1955, the 27th AD established a Manual Air-Defense Control Center (ADCC) (P-84) at Norton to monitor and track aircraft in Southern California.

After Norton closed in April 1994, the facility was essentially abandoned, and remained so until 2018 when the building was demolished to make room for future development.

Norton was placed on the Department of Defense's base closure list in 1989 (the same year that the DoD signed the Federal Facilities Agreement with the EPA).

The closure was cited as due to environmental wastes, inadequate facilities, and air traffic congestion (due to air traffic from Ontario International Airport, twenty miles (32 km) west, and Los Angeles International Airport, 60 miles (97 km) west).

Control of the airport and surrounding facilities was turned over to a consortium consisting of several nearby cities to manage and oversee its operation.

FedEx Express also began operating daily cargo flights out of San Bernardino International Airport in October 2018 under terms of a new 10-year agreement.

Recently, private development on the former base has helped turn the unused land into jobs and revenue for the city of San Bernardino as several companies have opened distribution centers on the property.