In 1940, local leaders, aware of the Federal government's airport building program, formed a committee to represent the community.

Due to the impossibility of expanding Clark Field for a modern airport, Moultrie and Colquitt County then took an option on a tract of land northeast of the city.

When the committee members learned the Army planned on establishing additional training bases in the Southeast, they traveled to Maxwell AAF, Alabama to secure an Air Corps airfield on the site.

Construction got underway on 15 July 1941 involving building airplane hangars, three concrete runways, several taxiways and a large parking apron and a control tower.

Typically, 37 instructors with 83 enlisted men in support conducted instrument training with 33 AT-6s from the Moultrie Municipal auxiliary base.

Spence, as other Army Air Force installations in Georgia, had its contingent of Women Airforce Service Pilots or WASPs.

WASPs rode with instructors and supervisory pilots during instrument proficiency fights and kept an eye out for conflicting air traffic.

The base had deteriorated badly over its six idle years and a major renovation project was required to return it to acceptable standards.

For a brief period during 1956 United States Army pilot trainees were trained in Cessna L-19 aircraft at Spence AB.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower passed through Spence while en route to the plantation of the former United States Secretary of the Treasury, George Humphrey, in Thomasville.

The base received Cessna T-37 Tweet jet trainers starting in December 1959 as part of "Project All-Jet" in attempt to determine effectiveness of primary flight training in one type of aircraft.

At the same time, Secretary Sharp approved initiation of a consolidated pilot training program, ATC decided to replace all civilian flying instructors with military officers and to phase out all contract primary schools.

Moody AFB in Valdosta made an agreement with the City of Moultrie to use the airfield for an Air Force auxiliary field.

Between 2000 and 2005, Spence served as an auxiliary field for the pilot training program at Moody, being used for take off and landing operations by their Raytheon T-6 Texan II turbo-prop trainers.

Part of the cantonment area eventually became the Moultrie Regional Industrial Park and a county correctional institution.