Qualla: McEntire Joint National Guard Base

McEntire Joint National Guard Base: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On May 25, 1961, Brigadier General Barnie B. McEntire Jr. was departing Olmsted Air Force Base in Pennsylvania — where he had attended a conference about the F-104's dangerous engine failure record — when the engine failed on takeoff over the Susquehanna valley. The Lockheed F-104 was a notoriously difficult aircraft - sleek, fast, unforgiving, nicknamed the "missile with a man in it." Below him was Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a city of about 80,000 people. He had time and altitude to eject and let the airplane fall where it would. He did not eject. He stayed with the controls, glided the dying jet east, and put it into the Susquehanna River. He died in the crash. The Susquehanna swallowed the airplane. Five months later, on October 16, 1961, the South Carolina Air National Guard renamed its base in his honor.

McEntire Joint National Guard Base: From Congaree to McEntire

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The airfield itself is older than the Guard mission. The U.S. Army began construction in 1942 on flat farmland north of the Congaree River, as an outlying field for Columbia Army Air Base. Three 4,500-foot runways were finished on January 31, 1943. The base went by several names ...

McEntire Joint National Guard Base: Swamp Foxes

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The South Carolina Air National Guard had been formed in December 1946. It took over the base, and through the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s flew a procession of fighters that read like a Cold War aviation timeline: P-51 Mustangs, F-80 Shooting Stars, F-86 Sabres, F-102 Delta Daggers, ...

McEntire Joint National Guard Base: The Tenants

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Today about 1,250 people work at the base. Roughly 900 are traditional Guard members who train one weekend a month and two weeks a year, holding civilian jobs in between. About 300 are full-time federal employees, the technicians who keep the airplanes ready. About 50 are state e...

McEntire Joint National Guard Base: Five Minutes from Congaree

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

McEntire is about 12 miles east-southeast of downtown Columbia and about 5 miles from Congaree National Park. Pilots flying patterns over the field can see the dark canopy of the bottomland forest to the southwest. The base does not host commercial traffic - it is military only -...