In 1931 Pan American picked Bangor as a refueling stop on its planned Atlantic route. In 1942 the Army Air Forces took the field over to launch combat aircraft east on the Great Circle. In 1991 a group of Maine veterans started showing up at the gate to make sure no troop returning from war was ever met with silence again. They are still there.
A Pirep featured story · KBGR Bangor International, Bangor, ME
Bangor International began in 1927 as Godfrey Field, named after a local attorney named Edward Rawson Godfrey who owned the land. It became a national curiosity on August 19, 1923, when 15 Martin Bombers and 11 DeHavilland Scout Planes landed there on a practice mission — essentially the entire U.S. Army Air Corps at the time. By 1931 regular passenger service was running to Portland and Boston via Boston-Maine Airways, under contract to Pan American Airways, which had picked Bangor as the planned U.S. terminus of an intercontinental route to Europe. Amelia Earhart flew some of the earliest Boston-Maine flights as a celebrity pilot. Floodlights for night operations were installed in 1937 — early for any U.S. airport.
In 1941 the U.S. Army Air Corps took the field over as Bangor Army Air Field, renamed Dow Army Airfield in 1942 for a Maine officer killed in a 1940 crash. Its wartime mission was the Great Circle Route: B-17 and B-24 crews ferrying combat aircraft east to England staged through Bangor as their last refueling stop before Gander and the North Atlantic. After the war, the new U.S. Air Force kept it as Dow Air Force Base, attached it to Strategic Air Command, and in 1958 built the longest runway east of the Mississippi — 11,440 feet — specifically to operate B-52 Stratofortresses with nuclear payloads. That runway is still in place. Every commercial jet that lands at KBGR lands on it.
SAC closed Dow in 1968. The City of Bangor bought the base in 1969 and reopened it as Bangor International. Its location on the Great Circle made it irresistible to transatlantic operators: 3,000 to 5,000 commercial flights a year through the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, mostly charter jetliners refueling between Europe and the U.S. West Coast or the Caribbean. Pilots crossing the Atlantic still routinely file fuel estimates that depend on Bangor as a divert option — if the headwinds eat your reserves before you reach New York, KBGR is the first land you see. Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Colin Powell, Clint Eastwood, and Harrison Ford have all made unscheduled stops here. Between 2004 and 2012 alone, the airport handled 647 unscheduled landings.
The other thing Bangor became is a port of entry for American troops returning from war. More than a million servicemembers — Gulf War, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan — have rotated through Bangor on military charter. In 1991 a group of local veterans and citizens looked around at how badly the country had handled Vietnam-era homecomings and decided no soldier coming back through Bangor would ever land to an empty terminal. They organized as the Maine Troop Greeters. They have met every troop charter, day or night, ever since. President Clinton spontaneously joined the line in 2006 when his own plane stopped here for fuel. The Maine Air National Guard's 101st Air Refueling Wing still operates KC-135s out of the field today.