to protect the Los Angeles area from enemy attack. The first commanding officer was Colonel (later Major General) Lucas Victor Beau Jr., from February 1942. He set up his initial office at the San Bernardino Chamber of Commerce. On 1 March 1942, the airport was renamed San Bernardino Army Air Field and the San Bernardino Air Depot was established there. The first aircraft arrived at the new base on 2 June 1942. The base was under the administration of the Fourth Air Service Area Command. All runways were completed by December and night flying was initiated in March 1943. Requests to establish commercial air service by Western Air Lines in mid-late 1942 were refused. In September 1942, the personnel and training division at the base began a training program for aircraft mechanics and maintenance men, which, by mid-1944, was the largest school of its type in the Air Service command. The weekly newspaper for the air depot in this era was named the Areascope. During the war, Norton's primary function was the repair and maintenance of aircraft. In mid-1944, as the Army Air Force reduced its training programs, hundreds of basic and primary training aircraft were flown to the base from all over the west for maintenance and storage. In February 1944, the Army relocated the regulating station that had operated in the facilities of the Municipal Park in Colton since September 1943 to the Base General Depot in San Bernardino. This unique operation primarily regulated rail traffic between communications and war zones, including the evacuation of patients using hospital trains. The installation also trained personnel in the important work of transportation. A branch post office of the San Bernardino post office was established in mid-March 1944, replacing an APO address out of Los Angeles that previously served the Base General Depot. Civilians replaced the Army personnel that previously operated the post office at the base. A large batch of Douglas A-20 Havoc bombers were maintained at the air depot in August 1944 in strategic reserve, ready to be deployed within 72 hours to whatever fighting front required them. An open house for the public, celebrating the thirty-seventh anniversary of U.S. Army aviation, and the first since the base was established, was held on 1 August 1944. Noted the lead editorial in the San Bernardino Daily Sun that date, "At a cost of $50,000,000, approximately 1,800 acres of farmland has