IX Engineer Command

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This booklet records a few of the achievements of the IX Engineer Command. It highlights the vital part which units of the command played in mobile warfare.

The record made by the command during this great campaign speaks for itself. This record tells how aviation engineers, forming the spearhead for the air task force, blazed a trail of airfields across the continent and enabled the fighter-bombers and medium bombers of the Ninth Air Force to operate from bases always within effective range of their targets, thus contributing much to an air offensive which materially lightened the task of the invading Ground Forces. At the same time, it tells how the engineers geared their mobility to rapid construction of airfields which enabled aircraft to supplement ground transportation in supply and evacuation activities supporting fast-moving armies in the greatest military advances in history. The resultant air lift spelled the difference between continued attack and halts for resupply.

From the time that the first battalion came ashore with the invading assault troops on D-Day and up to the time of V-E Day, the IX Engineer Command airfield construction program kept pace with the armies’ advance. During this campaign, the aviation engineers accepted all challenges, both from military and engineering points of view, and added lustre to the symbolic castles they wear with their Air Force patches.

Their work against all odds and obstacles of inclement weather and enemy action has earned the praise of the Air Force and Army units they have served. The essential engineering achievements which they have accomplished in less than one year aided in the disentegration of the armed forces of the enemy. As individuals, their outstanding efforts have written into this book the greatest aviation engineering accomplishment in the annals of warfare.

The fields which these men are building now in Germany can well serve as lasting monuments to the courage and perseverence of a team of highly efficient aviation engineers whose presence on the sites of their current work is, in large measure, the direct result of their own efforts.