About this tour
In the fall of 1926, Paramount Pictures descended on San Antonio's Army airfields with a script about two WWI flying aces and a request no ordinary city could grant: the loan of an entire air base, its pilots, and its planes. San Antonio said yes, because it already was America's military-aviation capital — Army pilots had been training in these skies since 1910. The film, Wings, went on to win the very first Academy Award for Best Picture, and every dogfight in it was flown for real over Kelly and Brooks fields. This driving tour visits the airfields, hangars, and flight lines that made that history possible, sixteen years before Hollywood ever came looking for them.