On August 8, 1942, a 23-year-old Colorado lieutenant crashed a P-38 on takeoff at his hometown airfield. Three enlisted men pulled him from the fire but couldn't save him. His ashes were scattered over Pikes Peak from another P-38. Four months later they renamed the base after him.
A Pirep featured story · KCOS Colorado Springs Airport, Colorado Springs, CO
Colorado Springs Municipal Airport opened in 1926 as a small civic field on the prairie east of Pikes Peak. Continental Air Lines built the city's first passenger terminal there in 1941 for about $20,000. Then the war came.
In April 1942 the Army Air Forces leased the airfield as an "air support base" for Camp Carson, a new Army training cantonment south of the city. The base became home to photo-reconnaissance squadrons flying F-4s and F-5s — camera-equipped versions of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, with the gun ports replaced by lenses. The pilots crews would fly these unarmed twin-boomed Lightnings deep over enemy territory and bring back the pictures the generals needed to plan the invasions of North Africa, Sicily, and Normandy.
On August 8, 1942, 23-year-old First Lieutenant Edward J. Peterson, Jr. — a Colorado native who had more hours in the P-38 than anyone in his squadron and had become its test pilot by default — climbed into an F-4 to test-fly it after an engine change. The aircraft lifted off. Just as Peterson retracted the landing gear, the new engine smoked and quit. The left wingtip dipped, hit the runway, threw sparks, and ignited a fuel tank. Three enlisted men — Tech. Sgt. Albertis Hilbert, Sgt. Walter Boulier, and Sgt. Thomas Deutsch — ran into the flames and pulled Peterson out. He was too badly burned to survive. He died that afternoon. He was the first Coloradan killed in a flying accident at the airfield.
Peterson was cremated, and his ashes were carried up in another P-38 and scattered over the summit of Pikes Peak, the mountain his hometown looks up at. On December 13, 1942, the Army Air Forces renamed the base Peterson Field in his honor.
The base inactivated after the war and reactivated in the 1950s to support the Cold War's newest mission: continental air defense. In 1975 it became Peterson Air Force Base. The North American Aerospace Defense Command — NORAD, the binational U.S.–Canadian command that watches every inch of North American airspace, 24 hours a day — moved its operations to Peterson in 2006 after the Cheyenne Mountain Complex went on standby. U.S. Northern Command headquarters is there. U.S. Space Command is there. In 2021 it was redesignated Peterson Space Force Base.
The civilian side of the airfield — Colorado Springs Municipal, KCOS — shares the runway with all of that. Every commercial flight in and out of Colorado Springs, and every general aviation pilot on the field, lands on Lt. Edward Peterson's base. The 1941 Continental Air Lines passenger terminal where it all started is now the Peterson Air & Space Museum, on the National Register of Historic Places.