Aviation use at Offutt began in September 1918 during World War I as an Army Air Service balloon field.

[2] Originally named Fort Crook, it was renamed in honor of World War I pilot and Omaha native 1st Lt. Jarvis Offutt in 1924.

Offutt AFB's legacy includes the construction of the Enola Gay and Bockscar, the planes that dropped Little Boy and Fat Man over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.

The first native of Omaha to become a casualty in World War I, Lieutenant Offutt died of injuries sustained when his SE-5 fighter crashed during a training flight near Valheureux, France.

[5] The oldest surviving portion of Fort Crook is the parade grounds and surrounding red brick buildings that were constructed between 1894 and 1896.

In 1918, the 61st Balloon Company of the Army Air Corps was assigned to Fort Crook at the close of World War I, which performed combat reconnaissance training.

In 1940 as American involvement in World War II loomed, the Army Air Corps chose Offutt Field as the site for a new bomber plant that was to be operated by the Glenn L. Martin Company.

Among these were the Enola Gay and Bockscar, the B-29s that dropped the first atomic weapons to be used in a military action (against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan).

In the initial months after the end of World War II, Offutt was used by the 2474th Separation Processing squadron to demobilize service members out of the armed forces after their return from overseas duty.

In June 1946, the Army Air Force re-designated Fort Crook and the Martin-Nebraska facilities as Offutt Field.

In 1947, the airfield opened for operational use, with the 381st Bombardment Group being assigned to the field with one squadron of B-29 Superfortresses, although the facility remained primarily a separation center.

[6] On 9 November 1948, Offutt became the host base for Headquarters Strategic Air Command, which was moved from Andrews AFB, Maryland.

Several new dormitories and more than 2,000 family housing units – built in the late 1950s and 1960s under incremental Wherry and Capehart projects – quickly replaced the old quarters of Fort Crook.

Headquarters SAC moved from the Martin-Nebraska complex to Building 500 in 1957, and new base facilities in the 1960s and 1970s included a hospital, main exchange, commissary, and library.

Increased defense spending during the 1980s brought additional operational improvements to Offutt, including the Bennie Davis Aircraft Maintenance Hangar, and a new command center for Headquarters SAC.

Offutt again faced changes in 1992 when the easing of world tensions allowed the United States to reorganize the Air Force.

In 1998, the Strategic Air and Space Museum moved 30 miles (48 km) southwest to Ashland, just off Interstate 80, midway between Omaha and Lincoln.

Flight operations and some support staff were temporarily relocated to nearby Lincoln Air National Guard Base while repairs (as well as some pre-planned construction projects) were undertaken.

Bush, who was in Florida at the Emma Booker Elementary School in Sarasota[12] at the time of the attacks, first flew from Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana and then to Offutt en route back to Washington, DC.

[14] During the flight, Bush remained in "continuous contact" with both the White House Situation Room and Vice President Dick Cheney in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center.

After Sarris' allegations appeared in the Kansas City Star, base officials revoked his security clearance and reassigned him to menial duties.

As part of the settlement, the USAF agreed to pay Sarris his full salary until he retired in 2014 and paid $21,000 of his attorney's fees.

[18] Ten years after Sarris blew the whistle, the Omaha World Herald published a three-part series titled "In-flight emergency", which confirmed his earlier claims.

Airmen out of Offutt Air Force Base practice Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) Training at the site several weekends a year.

Additionally, the base is home to many significant associate units, including US Strategic Command Headquarters, the 557th Weather Wing, the Omaha operating location of the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, and many others.

It is charged with space operations (such as military satellites), information operations (such as information warfare), missile defense, global command and control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR), global strike and strategic deterrence (the United States nuclear arsenal), and combating weapons of mass destruction.

[citation needed] Because of its central position in the US, radio traffic to and from Offutt is often heard by shortwave listeners on 11175 kHz, USB.

Offutt appeared in the Star Trek episode "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" (identified as 'the Omaha installation'), when a fighter pilot stationed there detects the approaching USS Enterprise and is transported aboard.

Only one Boeing E-4 NEACP escapes in time, and the officials of the Eighth Air Force and STRATCOM are eliminated in the process.

In the 1983 post apocalyptic feature film for television, "The Day After", Offutt is represented as a SAC Aircraft departs the field as the cameras then change focus to the countryside as the credits roll.