[1] The airport is located on the United States Army post, but the city of Leavenworth, Kansas, has an agreement providing for civilian use at all times without prior notice or permission.

While many facilities at Fort Leavenworth are named for the Command and General Staff College founder William Tecumseh Sherman the airfield is actually named for an early Army Aviation pioneer, Major William Carrington Sherman (1888–1927), who died in 1927 at Ft. Leavenworth while there as an instructor.

Leavenworth Aviation Services (LAC) is the sole fixed-base operator (FBO) at Sherman Army Airfield.

Sherman AAF covers an area of 234 acres (95 ha) at an elevation of 772 feet (235 m) above mean sea level.

[7] For the 12-month period ending 31 December 2017 the airport had 20,400 aircraft operations, an average of 55 per day: 94% general aviation and 6% military.

The base was located on low ground in a bend of the Missouri River one mile northeast of Fort Leavenworth near the Disciplinary Barracks.

However, because in wet weather or when the river was high the ground was often too sodden to be satisfactory for use by heavy aircraft, cement aprons were laid down late in 1944 at the ends of the main runways.

During much of World War II Sherman had the peculiar distinction of being directly under Headquarters, Army Air Forces.

Otherwise the mission of the base continued to be to provide facilities for proficiency flying by faculty and students at the Command and General Staff School, for administrative flights, and for transients.

However, an influx of pilots sent to study at Fort Leavenworth after gaining extensive combat experience on tours of duty overseas made it desirable to provide more and better planes for their use.

A batch of 15, including some P-40 Warhawks, arrived in June 1944, and by the end of the war over 60 aircraft, at least ten of which were P-51 Mustangss, were based at Sherman.

Over the years Sherman saw many array of visitors, usually drawn there to transact business or attend ceremonies at Fort Leavenworth.

However, this low manning was possible only because even after the separation of the Air Force from the Army, Fort Leavenworth continued to provide Sherman with almost all necessary quartermaster, ordnance, engineering and finance facilities.

In 1951 the base acquired an additional mission, responsibility for providing minimum flying training for officers at 11 stations, mostly ROTC detachments, in Kansas and neighboring states.