been converted in a period of 28 months into a bustling military establishment. The San Bernardino Air Service command is geared to rebuild 1,000 aircraft engines monthly, to provide mountains of vital supplies for Army Air force installations at home and abroad, to overhaul gun turrets, wings and tail assemblies, repair propellers and improve landing gears. To quote its own slogan, the Air Service command 'keeps 'em flying' for victory." On 2 August 1944, the Railroad Commission authorized the Associated Telephone Company, Ltd., to sell to the War Department for $36,138 its district telephone plant at the San Bernardino Army Air Field. The War Department already owned part of the facilities, and asked for the sale to eliminate mixed ownership. By 1945, the base was processing hundreds of new aircraft monthly, readying them for shipment overseas. Types handled included P-51s, F-5 reconnaissance modifications of P-38s, P-47s, and P-61s. San Bernardino Air Service Technical Command also refurbished C-47s, which had seen heavy service, with the 100th C-47 refurbished at the beginning of August 1945, an overhaul process taking 16 days at a rate of one every day and a half. An open house celebrating the Army Air Force's thirty-eighth birthday was held on 1 August 1945, with a brand new B-29 flown from the Seattle factory and a P-80 both publicly exhibited for the first time in the region. A YP-59A, 42-108771, was flown for the crowd of ~50,000. At the end of the war, the base became a processing and separation center for the millions of servicemen being discharged. The separation center opened for business on 17 September 1945, part of an immediate program to speed up the release of a backlog of 135,000 AAF men and women, one of 32 temporary discharge bases established. San Bernardino was responsible for handling requests from qualified personnel within a 300-mile radius. Desert Training Center During World War II, San Bernardino Army Airfield provided administrative and logistical support for the United States Army Desert Training Center (DTC). The DTC was a massive training facility set up in the Mojave Desert; largely in Southern California and Western Arizona. Its mission was to train United States Army and Army Air Corps units and personnel to live and fight in the desert, to test and develop suitable equipment, and to develop tactical doctrines, techniques and training methods. Known sub-bases and auxiliaries set up to support DTC