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102-721: Offutt Air Force Base / ˈ ɒ f ʌ t / ( IATA : OFF , ICAO : KOFF , FAA LID : OFF ) is a U.S. Air Force base south of Omaha , adjacent to Bellevue in Sarpy County, Nebraska . It is the headquarters of the U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), the 557th Weather Wing , and the 55th Wing (55 WG) of the Air Combat Command (ACC), the latter serving as the host unit. Aviation use at Offutt began in September 1918 during World War I as an Army Air Service balloon field. Originally named Fort Crook , it

204-527: A Unified Combatant Command of the Department of Defense . The 55th Strategic Wing then became the 55th Wing , under the newly created Air Combat Command . In 1998, the Strategic Air and Space Museum moved 30 miles (48 km) southwest to Ashland , just off Interstate 80 , midway between Omaha and Lincoln . In 2005, Offutt began several major renovations. The on-base Wherry housing area

306-507: A business entrepreneur, W. H. Coltharp, used inexpensive parcel-post rates to ship more than eighty thousand masonry bricks some four hundred seven miles via horse-drawn wagon and train for the construction of a bank building in Vernal, Utah . The advent of parcel post also led to the growth of mail order businesses that substantially increased rural access to modern goods over what was typically stocked in local general stores . One of

408-563: A certain date, and contracted with Aubrey to carry it to the nearest post office (then Independence, Missouri), making his compensation conditional on the time consumed. He was supplied with a good horse, and an order on the outgoing trains for exchange. Though the whole route was infested with hostile Indians, and not a house on it, Aubrey started alone with his rifle. He was fortunate in meeting several outward-bound trains, and thereby made frequent changes of horses, some four or five, and reached Independence in six days, having hardly rested or slept

510-519: A crucial role in national expansion. It facilitated expansion of the western American frontier by creating an inexpensive, fast, convenient communication system. Letters from early settlers provided information and boosterism to encourage increased migration to the West, helped scattered families stay in touch and provide assistance, assisted entrepreneurs in finding business opportunities, and made possible regular commercial relationships between merchants in

612-532: A duel with vice-president Aaron Burr . Two years earlier it was Burr who had shot and killed Alexander Hamilton . Many years later in 1852, Easton's son, Brevet Major-General Langdon Cheves Easton, was commissioned by William T. Sherman, at Fort Union to deliver a letter to Independence, Missouri. Sherman wrote: "In the Spring of 1852, General Sherman mentioned that the quartermaster, Major L.C. Easton, at Fort Union, New Mexico, had occasion to send some message east by

714-483: A letter back home to England. Other attempts focused on a dedicated postal service between two of the larger colonies, such as Massachusetts and Virginia, but the available services remained limited in scope and disjointed for many years. For example, informal independently run postal routes operated in Boston as early as 1639, with a Boston to New York City service starting in 1672. A central postal organization came to

816-551: A murder-suicide. The shooter, Zachary Firlik, was an active off-duty airman who killed his wife and then himself. Their five year-old daughter was downstairs at the time, and fled the house after hearing gunshots. Offutt Air Force Base is the host station for the 55th Wing (55 WG), the largest wing of the United States Air Force's Air Combat Command . Additionally, the base is home to many significant associate units, including US Strategic Command Headquarters,

918-640: A necessary infrastructure. The Post Office in the 19th century was a major source of federal patronage. Local postmasterships were rewards for local politicians—often the editors of party newspapers. About three quarters of all federal civilian employees worked for the Post Office. In 1816 it employed 3,341 men, and in 1841, 14,290. The volume of mail expanded much faster than the population, as it carried annually 100 letters and 200 newspapers per 1,000 white population in 1790, and 2,900 letters and 2,700 newspapers per thousand in 1840. The Post Office Department

1020-567: A new airport is built, replacing the old one, leaving the city's new "major" airport (or the only remaining airport) code to no longer correspond with the city's name. The original airport in Nashville, Tennessee, was built in 1936 as part of the Works Progress Administration and called Berry Field with the designation, BNA. A new facility known as Nashville International Airport was built in 1987 but still uses BNA. This

1122-772: A parent unit based at another location. IATA airport code The assignment of these codes is governed by IATA Resolution 763, and it is administered by the IATA's headquarters in Montreal , Canada. The codes are published semi-annually in the IATA Airline Coding Directory. IATA provides codes for airport handling entities, and for certain railway stations. Alphabetical lists of airports sorted by IATA code are available. A list of railway station codes , shared in agreements between airlines and rail lines such as Amtrak , SNCF , and Deutsche Bahn ,

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1224-700: A post office in each town in Virginia . Massachusetts and the other colonies soon passed postal laws, and a very imperfect post office system was established. Neale's patent expired in 1710, when Parliament extended the English postal system to the colonies. The chief office was established in New York City, where letters were conveyed by regular packets across the Atlantic. Before the Revolution, there

1326-515: A reward for their patronage. These appointees rarely had prior experience in postal service and mail delivery. This system of political patronage was replaced in 1883, after passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act . In 1823, ten years after the Post Office had first begun to use steamboats to carry mail between post towns where no roads existed, waterways were declared post roads. Once it became clear that

1428-649: A right to personal privacy. Rufus Easton was appointed by Thomas Jefferson first postmaster of St. Louis under the recommendation of Postmaster General Gideon Granger . Rufus Easton was the first postmaster and built the first post office west of the Mississippi. At the same time Easton was appointed by Thomas Jefferson, judge of Louisiana Territory , the largest territory in North America. Bruce Adamson wrote that: "Next to Benjamin Franklin, Rufus Easton

1530-688: A training area called the Mead Training Site. The site is managed by the Camp Ashland Training Site Command. The training area has been used by the National Guard, United States Air Force, local law enforcement, and other entities as a training site for many years. 3/209th RTI out of Camp Ashland began using Mead Training Site in 2008 as the primary training facility for their 88M military occupational specialty reclassification school and continues to use

1632-509: Is GSN and its IATA code is SPN, and some coincide with IATA codes of non-U.S. airports. Canada's unusual codes—which bear little to no similarity with any conventional abbreviation to the city's name—such as YUL in Montréal , and YYZ in Toronto , originated from the two-letter codes used to identify weather reporting stations in the 1930s. The letters preceding the two-letter code follow

1734-617: Is available. However, many railway administrations have their own list of codes for their stations, such as the list of Amtrak station codes . Airport codes arose out of the convenience that the practice brought pilots for location identification in the 1930s. Initially, pilots in the United States used the two-letter code from the National Weather Service (NWS) for identifying cities. This system became unmanageable for cities and towns without an NWS identifier, and

1836-468: Is different from the name in English, yet the airport code represents only the English name. Examples include: Due to scarcity of codes, some airports are given codes with letters not found in their names: The use of 'X' as a filler letter is a practice to create three-letter identifiers when more straightforward options were unavailable: Some airports in the United States retained their NWS ( National Weather Service ) codes and simply appended an X at

1938-513: Is in conjunction to rules aimed to avoid confusion that seem to apply in the United States, which state that "the first and second letters or second and third letters of an identifier may not be duplicated with less than 200 nautical miles separation." Thus, Washington, D.C. area's three airports all have radically different codes: IAD for Washington–Dulles , DCA for Washington–Reagan (District of Columbia Airport), and BWI for Baltimore (Baltimore–Washington International, formerly BAL). Since HOU

2040-543: Is not followed outside the United States: In addition, since three letter codes starting with Q are widely used in radio communication, cities whose name begins with "Q" also had to find alternate codes, as in the case of: IATA codes should not be confused with the FAA identifiers of U.S. airports. Most FAA identifiers agree with the corresponding IATA codes, but some do not, such as Saipan , whose FAA identifier

2142-416: Is used for William P. Hobby Airport , the new Houston–Intercontinental became IAH. The code BKK was originally assigned to Bangkok–Don Mueang and was later transferred to Suvarnabhumi Airport , while the former adopted DMK. The code ISK was originally assigned to Gandhinagar Airport (Nashik's old airport) and later on transferred to Ozar Airport (Nashik's current airport). Shanghai–Hongqiao retained

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2244-562: The Air Defense Command Second Air Force on 6 June. In 1947, the airfield opened for operational use, with the 381st Bombardment Group being assigned to the field with one squadron of B-29 Superfortresses, although the facility remained primarily a separation center. The newly established United States Air Force took control of the facility in September 1947, and on 13 January 1948, it was renamed Offutt Air Force Base. Later that same year, on 26 September,

2346-571: The Canadian transcontinental railroads were built, each station was assigned its own two-letter Morse code : When the Canadian government established airports, it used the existing railway codes for them as well. If the airport had a weather station, authorities added a "Y" to the front of the code, meaning "Yes" to indicate it had a weather station or some other letter to indicate it did not. When international codes were created in cooperation with

2448-478: The Confederate States of America were provided by the Confederate States of America Post-office Department , headed by Postmaster General John Henninger Reagan . It faced insurmountable obstacles, especially the requirement that it not run a deficit. The Postal Reorganization Act was signed by President Richard Nixon on August 12, 1970. It replaced the cabinet-level Post Office Department with

2550-838: The Great Plains . Troops from Fort Crook fought during the Spanish–American War when the 22nd Regiment under Charles A. Wikoff was dispatched to Cuba. The regiment suffered heavy casualties in the Battle of El Caney . Only 165 of the 513 regiment members survived with most succumbing to tropical diseases after the battle. The oldest surviving portion of Fort Crook is the parade grounds and surrounding red brick buildings that were constructed between 1894 and 1896. These structures are still in active use today as squadron headquarters, living quarters for high-ranking generals (Generals Row), and Nebraska's oldest operational jail. In 1918,

2652-559: The Post Office or U.S. Mail ) was the predecessor of the United States Postal Service , established in 1792. From 1872 to 1971, it was officially in the form of a Cabinet department. It was headed by the postmaster general . The Postal Service Act , signed by U.S. president George Washington on February 20, 1792, established the department. Postmaster General John McLean , in office from 1823 to 1829,

2754-493: The Railway Mail Service was inaugurated in 1869. Rail cars designed to sort and distribute mail while rolling were soon introduced. RMS employees sorted mail "on-the-fly" during the journey, and became some of the most skilled workers in the postal service. An RMS sorter had to be able to separate the mail quickly into compartments based on its final destination, before the first destination arrived, and work at

2856-621: The Second Continental Congress . Benjamin Franklin headed it briefly. Before the Revolution, individuals like Benjamin Franklin and William Goddard were the colonial postmasters who managed the mails then and were the general architects of a postal system that started out as an alternative to the Crown Post. The official post office was created in 1792 as the Post Office Department (USPOD). It

2958-977: The United States Air Force . Offutt AFB is the headquarters of United States Strategic Command ( USSTRATCOM ) which is one of the ten Unified Combatant Commands of the United States Department of Defense (DoD). USSTRATCOM was established in 1992 as a successor to Strategic Air Command (SAC). It is charged with space operations (such as military satellites), information operations (such as information warfare ), missile defense, global command and control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR), global strike and strategic deterrence (the United States nuclear arsenal), and combating weapons of mass destruction. Flying and notable non-flying units based at Offutt Air Force Base. Units marked GSU are Geographically Separate Units, which although based at Offutt, are subordinate to

3060-663: The 10-cent stamp for deliveries to locations greater than 300 miles, or twice the weight deliverable for the 5-cent stamp. In 1847, the U.S. Mail Steamship Company acquired the contract which allowed it to carry the U.S. mails from New York, with stops in New Orleans and Havana , to the Isthmus of Panama for delivery in California. The same year, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company had acquired

3162-485: The 1910s to the 1960s, many college students and others used parcel post to mail home dirty laundry, as doing so was less expensive than washing the clothes themselves. After four-year-old Charlotte May Pierstorff was mailed from her parents to her grandparents in Idaho in 1914, mailing of people was prohibited. In 1917, the Post Office imposed a maximum daily mailable limit of two hundred pounds per customer per day after

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3264-563: The 1980s brought additional operational improvements to Offutt, including the Bennie Davis Aircraft Maintenance Hangar, and a new command center for Headquarters SAC. Offutt again faced changes in 1992 when the easing of world tensions allowed the United States to reorganize the Air Force. The Strategic Air Command was inactivated on 1 June, succeeded by the U.S. Strategic Command ( USSTRATCOM ),

3366-562: The 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling, the Comstock Act became a renewed matter of contention. The Biden administration stated that the Comstock Act does not prohibit mailing abortifacients intended for lawful use, and the law is the subject of an ongoing federal court case. In 1937 to 1941 The Post Office handled the shipment of gold from the New York City Assay office and Philadelphia Mint to

3468-480: The 3902nd Air Base Group (later Wing) became the host unit at Offutt under A. J. Beck . On 9 November 1948, Offutt became the host base for Headquarters Strategic Air Command , which was moved from Andrews AFB , Maryland. Secretary of the Air Force Stuart Symington chose to locate the Air Force's long-range atomic strike force at Offutt primarily because the base was centrally located on

3570-537: The 4131st Army Air Force Base Unit, Air Materiel Command. In the initial months after the end of World War II, Offutt was used by the 2474th Separation Processing squadron to demobilize service members out of the armed forces after their return from overseas duty. In June 1946, the Army Air Force re-designated Fort Crook and the Martin-Nebraska facilities as Offutt Field. It became the headquarters for

3672-589: The 557th Weather Wing, the Omaha operating location of the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, and many others. The 55th Wing is composed of five groups at Offutt AFB and at various locations worldwide: The 595th Command and Control Group (C2G) was activated in a ceremony held on 6 October 2016. The mission of the 595th C2G is to consolidate the Air Force's portion of the nuclear triad, including Air Force nuclear command and control communications, under

3774-536: The 61st Balloon Company of the Army Air Corps was assigned to Fort Crook at the close of World War I , which performed combat reconnaissance training. In the spring of 1921, the plowing, leveling, and seeding of 260 acres of land at Fort Crook created an airfield suitable for frequent takeoffs and landings and as a refueling stop for mail and transcontinental flights. The first permanent aircraft hangars were completed in 1921. Other known organizations assigned to

3876-592: The 6th Battalion, 43rd Artillery . During the Cold War, a general and various support personnel from the base were airborne 24 hours a day on an EC-135 from 3 February 1961 to 24 July 1990 in Operation Looking Glass , creating an airborne command post in case of war. The 3902d Air Base Wing was inactivated on 1 March 1986, and the 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing assumed host-unit responsibilities for Offutt. Increased defense spending during

3978-599: The North American continent, placing it well beyond the existing range of long-range, nuclear-armed bombers to (then) stay safely out of range of hostile missiles or bomber aircraft. Offutt's population and facilities grew dramatically to keep pace with the increased operational demands during the Cold War . Several new dormitories and more than 2,000 family housing units – built in the late 1950s and 1960s under incremental Wherry and Capehart projects – quickly replaced

4080-420: The Post Office Department to redeposit most of the money in the system in local banks, where it earned 2.5 percent interest. The system paid 2% interest per year on deposits. The half-percent difference in interest was intended to pay for the operation of the system. Certificates were issued to depositors as proof of their deposit. Depositors in the system were initially limited to hold a balance of $ 500, but this

4182-480: The Postal Savings System in designated post offices, effective January 1, 1911. The legislation aimed to get money out of hiding, attract the savings of immigrants accustomed to the postal savings system in their native countries, provide safe depositories for people who had lost confidence in banks, and furnish more convenient depositories for working people. The law establishing the system directed

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4284-519: The U.S. For example, several airports in Alaska have scheduled commercial service, such as Stebbins and Nanwalek , which use FAA codes instead of ICAO codes. Thus, neither system completely includes all airports with scheduled service. Some airports are identified in colloquial speech by their IATA code. Examples include LAX and JFK . United States Post Office Department The United States Post Office Department ( USPOD ; also known as

4386-455: The U.S. in 1896, and the inauguration of a domestic parcel post service by Postmaster General Frank H. Hitchcock in 1913, greatly increased the volume of mail shipped nationwide, and motivated the development of more efficient postal transportation systems. Many rural customers took advantage of inexpensive Parcel Post rates to order goods and products from businesses located hundreds of miles away in distant cities for delivery by mail. From

4488-693: The US Strategic Command Underground Command Center ( 41°06′50″N 095°55′04″W  /  41.11389°N 95.91778°W  / 41.11389; -95.91778 ) and was taken into an underground bunker designed to withstand a nuclear blast. There, he held a teleconference call with Vice President Cheney, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice , Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld , Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage , CIA Director George Tenet , Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta , and others. The meeting lasted about an hour. Rice recalled that during

4590-777: The USAF agreed to pay Sarris his full salary until he retired in 2014 and paid $ 21,000 of his attorney's fees. After retiring, Sarris published a book titled, Cowardice in Leadership – A Lesson in Harassment, Intimidation, and Reprisals . Ten years after Sarris blew the whistle, the Omaha World Herald published a three-part series titled "In-flight emergency", which confirmed his earlier claims. The 549th Strategic Missile Squadron operated three SM-65D Atlas ICBM sites (1 October 1960 – 15 December 1964). Each site

4692-509: The USPS began transporting First-Class mail by air on a routine basis. The Post Office was the first federal government departments to regulate obscene materials on a national basis. When the U.S. Congress passed the Comstock laws of 1873, it became illegal to send through the U.S. mail any material considered obscene or indecent, or which promoted abortion issues or birth control . Following

4794-510: The United States in the case of nuclear war during the Cold War . The population was 8,901 at the 2000 census . Offutt AFB is named in honor of First Lieutenant Jarvis Jenness Offutt (26 October 1894 – 13 August 1918). The first native of Omaha to become a casualty in World War I , Lieutenant Offutt died of injuries sustained when his SE-5 fighter crashed during a training flight near Valheureux, France . The airfield portion of Fort Crook

4896-481: The United States, because "Y" was seldom used in the United States, Canada simply used the weather station codes for its airports, changing the "Y" to a "Z" if it conflicted with an airport code already in use. The result is that most major Canadian airport codes start with "Y" followed by two letters in the city's name (for example, YOW for O tta w a , YWG for W innipe g , YYC for C algar y , or YVR for V ancouve r ), whereas other Canadian airports append

4998-440: The airport itself instead of the city it serves, while another code is reserved which refers to the city itself which can be used to search for flights to any of its airports. For instance: Or using a code for the city in one of the major airports and then assigning another code to another airport: When different cities with the same name each have an airport, they need to be assigned different codes. Examples include: Sometimes,

5100-418: The airport's former name, such as Orlando International Airport 's MCO (for Mc C o y Air Force Base), or Chicago's O'Hare International Airport , which is coded ORD for its original name: Or char d Field. In rare cases, the code comes from the airport's unofficial name, such as Kahului Airport 's OGG (for local aviation pioneer Jimmy H ogg ). In large metropolitan areas, airport codes are often named after

5202-571: The auspices of Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC). Previously, portions of the Air Force's command and control of nuclear operations had been divided among AFGSC, Air Combat Command , and the Twentieth Air Force . The 595th Command and Control Group is composed of four squadrons: The 557th Weather Wing , formerly the Air Force Weather Agency, is headquartered at Offutt AFB. It is the lead weather center of

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5304-1000: The basing of alert tankers in the late 1950s and 1960s, support for intercontinental ballistic missile sites in Nebraska and Iowa in the 1960s, and worldwide reconnaissance from the mid-1960s to the present. To provide air defense of the base, the United States Army established the Offutt AFB Defense Area , and Nike-Hercules surface-to-air missile sites were constructed during 1959. Sites were located near Cedar Creek, Nebraska (OF-60) 40°59′00″N 096°05′28″W  /  40.98333°N 96.09111°W  / 40.98333; -96.09111 , and Council Bluffs, Iowa (OF-10) 41°13′47″N 095°41′58″W  /  41.22972°N 95.69944°W  / 41.22972; -95.69944 . They were operational between November 1960 and March 1966. The missiles were operated by

5406-502: The code SHA, while the newer Shanghai–Pudong adopted PVG. The opposite was true for Berlin : the airport Berlin–Tegel used the code TXL, while its smaller counterpart Berlin–Schönefeld used SXF; the Berlin Brandenburg Airport has the airport code BER, which is also part of its branding. The airports of Hamburg (HAM) and Hannover (HAJ) are less than 100 nautical miles (190 km) apart and therefore share

5508-588: The colonies in 1691, when Thomas Neale received a 21-year grant from the British Crown for a North American Postal Service. On February 17, 1691, a grant of letters patent from the joint sovereigns, William III and Mary II , empowered him: to erect, settle, and establish within the chief parts of their majesties' colonies and plantations in America, an office or offices for receiving and dispatching letters and pacquets, and to receive, send, and deliver

5610-526: The end of World War II . Among these were the Enola Gay and Bockscar , the B-29s that dropped the first atomic weapons to be used in a military action (against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki , Japan). Production ended on 18 September 1945, when the last B-29 rolled out of the assembly building. With the manufacturing plant's closure, custody of the airfield and ground facilities were assumed by

5712-934: The end. Examples include: A lot of minor airfields without scheduled passenger traffic have ICAO codes but not IATA codes, since the four letter codes allow more number of codes, and IATA codes are mainly used for passenger services such as tickets, and ICAO codes by pilots. In the US, such airfields use FAA codes instead of ICAO. There are airports with scheduled service for which there are ICAO codes but not IATA codes, such as Nkhotakota Airport/Tangole Airport in Malawi or Chōfu Airport in Tokyo, Japan. There are also several minor airports in Russia (e.g., Omsukchan Airport ) which lack IATA codes and instead use internal Russian codes for booking. Flights to these airports cannot be booked through

5814-521: The field were the 74th Balloon Company in November 1918; 60th Balloon Company in December 1918. On 6 May 1924, the airfield was officially named "Offutt Field". The field accommodated interim reserve flying training and regular Post Office Department airmail flights during the 1920s and 1930s; a small detachment of enlisted men (detached service) from Marshall Field and Fort Riley, Kansas, constituted

5916-557: The first three letters of the city in which it is located, for instance: The code may also be a combination of the letters in its name, such as: Sometimes the airport code reflects pronunciation, rather than spelling, namely: For many reasons, some airport codes do not fit the normal scheme described above. Some airports, for example, cross several municipalities or regions, and therefore, use codes derived from some of their letters, resulting in: Other airports—particularly those serving cities with multiple airports—have codes derived from

6018-478: The following format: Most large airports in Canada have codes that begin with the letter "Y", although not all "Y" codes are Canadian (for example, YUM for Yuma, Arizona , and YNT for Yantai , China), and not all Canadian airports start with the letter "Y" (for example, ZBF for Bathurst, New Brunswick ). Many Canadian airports have a code that starts with W, X or Z, but none of these are major airports. When

6120-597: The form of " YYZ ", a song by the rock band Rush , which utilizes the Morse code signal as a musical motif. Some airports have started using their IATA codes as brand names , such as Calgary International Airport (YYC) and Vancouver International Airport (YVR). Numerous New Zealand airports use codes that contain the letter Z, to distinguish them from similar airport names in other countries. Examples include HLZ for Hamilton , ZQN for Queenstown , and WSZ for Westport . Predominantly, airport codes are named after

6222-467: The government over claims that he was subjected to retaliation for talking to the media in 2008 about poor maintenance of RC-135 aircraft at the base. After Sarris' allegations appeared in the Kansas City Star , base officials revoked his security clearance and reassigned him to menial duties. Later investigations by the government substantiated many of Sarris' claims. As part of the settlement,

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6324-549: The inactivation of the Atlas-D on 1 October 1964, and was inactivated 14 December 1964. Confusingly, the squadron was originally the 566th but on 1 July 1961 SAC swapped designators with the 549th at F.E. Warren AFB. The 549th SMS was under the 385th Strategic Aerospace Wing. Site "A" was abandoned for many years, until the late 1970s when the Nebraska National Guard took over ownership of the site to establish

6426-634: The independent United States Postal Service on July 1, 1971. The regulatory role of the postal services was then transferred to the Postal Regulatory Commission . In the early years of the North American colonies , many attempts were made to initiate a postal service. These early attempts were of small scale and usually involved a colony, Massachusetts Bay Colony for example, setting up a location in Boston where one could post

6528-430: The international air booking systems or have international luggage transferred there, and thus, they are booked instead through the airline or a domestic booking system. Several heliports in Greenland have 3-letter codes used internally which might be IATA codes for airports in faraway countries. There are several airports with scheduled service that have not been assigned ICAO codes that do have IATA codes, especially in

6630-457: The largest organizations of the early 20th century, the Post Office Department is reported to have had nearly 350,000 employees in 1924. In 1912, carrier service was announced for establishment in towns of second and third class with $ 100,000 appropriated by Congress. From January 1, 1911, until July 1, 1967, the United States Post Office Department operated the United States Postal Savings System . An Act of Congress of June 25, 1910, established

6732-420: The lead, securing post office legislation that allowed them to reach their subscribers at very low cost, and to exchange news from newspapers between the thirteen states. Overthrowing the London-oriented imperial postal service in 1774–1775, printers enlisted merchants and the new political leadership, and created a new postal system. The United States Post Office (USPO) was created on July 26, 1775, by decree of

6834-520: The mail while the war was still in progress, but following the war operated mostly World War I surplus military de Havilland DH-4 aircraft. During 1918, the Post Office hired an additional 36 pilots. In its first year of operation, the Post Office completed 1,208 airmail flights with 90 forced landings. Of those, 53 were due to weather and 37 to engine failure. By 1920, the Air Mail service had delivered 49 million letters. Domestic air mail became obsolete in 1975, and international air mail in 1995, when

6936-409: The meeting, Tenet told Bush, "Sir, I believe it's al-Qaeda . We're doing the assessment but it looks like, it feels like, it smells like al-Qaeda." The White House staff was preparing for Bush to address the nation from the Offutt bunker, but Bush decided instead to return to Washington. Air Force One left Offutt around 4:30pm. In May 2011, base civilian employee George Sarris successfully settled with

7038-612: The name of the airport itself, for instance: This is also true with some cities with a single airport (even if there is more than one airport in the metropolitan area of said city), such as BDL for Hartford, Connecticut 's B ra dl ey International Airport or Baltimore's BWI, for B altimore/ W ashington I nternational Airport ; however, the latter also serves Washington, D.C. , alongside Dulles International Airport (IAD, for I nternational A irport D ulles) and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA, for D istrict of C olumbia A irport). The code also sometimes comes from

7140-420: The nation. While the strike ended without any concessions from the Federal government, it did ultimately allow for postal worker unions and the government to negotiate a contract which gave the unions most of what they wanted, as well as the signing of the Postal Reorganization Act by President Richard Nixon on August 12, 1970. The act replaced the cabinet-level Post Office Department with a new federal agency,

7242-433: The newly constructed bullion depository at Fort Knox . On March 18, 1970, postal workers in New York City—upset over low wages and poor working conditions, and emboldened by the Civil Rights Movement— organized a strike against the United States government. The strike initially involved postal workers in only New York City, but it eventually gained support of over 210,000 United States Post Office Department workers across

7344-436: The old quarters of Fort Crook. Headquarters SAC moved from the Martin-Nebraska complex to Building 500 in 1957, and new base facilities in the 1960s and 1970s included a hospital, main exchange, commissary, and library. During the late 1950s, Offutt housed a Royal Air Force facility for servicing Avro Vulcans , which visited the air base frequently while on exercise with SAC. Operational use of Offutt Air Force Base included

7446-416: The one they are located in: Other airport codes are of obscure origin, and each has its own peculiarities: In Asia, codes that do not correspond with their city's names include Niigata 's KIJ , Nanchang 's KHN and Pyongyang 's FNJ . EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg , which serves three countries, has three airport codes: BSL, MLH, EAP. Some cities have a name in their respective language which

7548-774: The only military presence on the field between 1935 and 1940. In 1940 as American involvement in World War II loomed, the Army Air Corps chose Offutt Field as the site for a new bomber plant that was to be operated by the Glenn L. Martin Company . The plant's construction included a two-mile (3.2 km)-long concrete runway, six large hangars, and a 1,700,000-square-foot (160,000 m) aircraft-assembly building. Production switched to B-29 Superfortress very heavy bombers in 1944, and 531 Superfortresses were produced before

7650-536: The postal system in the United States needed to expand across the entire country, the use of the railroad to transport the mail was instituted in 1832, on one line in Pennsylvania. All railroads in the United States were designated as post routes, after passage of the Act of July 7, 1838. Mail service by railroad increased rapidly thereafter. An Act of Congress provided for the issuance of stamps on March 3, 1847, and

7752-399: The postmaster general immediately let a contract to the New York City engraving firm of Rawdon, Wright, Hatch, and Edson. The first stamp issue of the U.S. was offered for sale on July 1, 1847, in New York City, with Boston receiving stamps the following day and other cities thereafter. The 5-cent stamp paid for a letter weighing less than 1 oz (28 g) and traveling less than 300 miles,

7854-414: The rate of 600 pieces of mail an hour. They were tested regularly for speed and accuracy. Parcel Post service began with the introduction of International Parcel Post between the U.S. and foreign countries in 1887. That same year, the U.S. Post Office and the postmaster general of Canada established parcel-post service between the two nations. A bilateral parcel-post treaty between the independent (at

7956-847: The response to the September 11 attacks from a bunker at the base. Bush, who was in Florida at the Emma Booker Elementary School in Sarasota at the time of the attacks, first flew from Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana and then to Offutt en route back to Washington, DC. Bush arrived at 2:50pm, conducted a video conference in an underground command bunker and left for Washington, DC at 4:30pm. Air Force One left Barksdale AFB for Offutt AFB around 1:30pm. The Air Force One entourage

8058-692: The right to transport mail under contract from the United States Government from the Isthmus of Panama to California. In 1855, William Henry Aspinwall completed the Panama Railway , providing rail service across the Isthmus and cutting to three weeks the transport time for the mails, passengers and goods to California. This remained an important route until the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869. Railroad companies greatly expanded mail transport service after 1862, and

8160-506: The same first and middle letters, indicating that this rule might be followed only in Germany. Many cities retain historical names in their airport codes, even after having undergone an official name/spelling/transliteration change: Some airport codes are based on previous names associated with a present airport, often with a military heritage. These include: Some airports are named for an administrative division or nearby city, rather than

8262-590: The same under such rates and sums of money as the planters shall agree to give, and to hold and enjoy the same for the term of twenty-one years. The patent included the exclusive right to establish and collect a formal postal tax on official documents of all kinds. The tax was repealed a year later. Neale appointed Andrew Hamilton , Governor of New Jersey, as his deputy postmaster. The first postal service in America commenced in February 1692. Rates of postage were fixed and authorized, and measures were taken to establish

8364-463: The site several weekends a year. Site "B" is in use for agricultural storage. Site "C" has been demolished, with only the access roads remaining. Serial killer John Joubert murdered two boys while stationed at the base in 1983. In September 2019, a shooting took place in Offutt's private housing community, in which Sgt. Zachary Firlik and his wife Kari Firlik were killed. The case was identified as

8466-462: The site year round. A MOUT site ( Military Operations in Urban Terrain ) was constructed at the site in 2009. Two Nebraska National Guard armories were built directly alongside the training area in 2012. Many other National Guard units use the site for drill weekends and annual trainings. Airmen out of Offutt Air Force Base practice Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) Training at

8568-491: The spring of 2019 as a result of the Missouri River flooding ; at one point, almost half of the base's runway was underwater. Flight operations and some support staff were temporarily relocated to nearby Lincoln Air National Guard Base while repairs (as well as some pre-planned construction projects) were undertaken. On 11 September 2001, President George W. Bush conducted one of the first major strategy sessions for

8670-500: The station code of Malton, Mississauga , where it is located). YUL is used for Montréal–Trudeau (UL was the ID code for the beacon in the city of Kirkland , now the location of Montréal–Trudeau). While these codes make it difficult for the public to associate them with a particular Canadian city, some codes have become popular in usage despite their cryptic nature, particularly at the largest airports. Toronto's code has entered pop culture in

8772-706: The system held almost $ 3.4 billion in deposits, with more than four million depositors using 8,141 postal units. On August 12, 1918, the Post Office Department took over airmail service from the United States Army Air Service (USAAS). Assistant Postmaster General Otto Praeger , appointed Benjamin B. Lipsner to head the civilian-operated Air Mail Service . One of Lipsner's first acts was to hire four pilots, each with at least 1,000 hours' flying experience, paying them an average of $ 4,000 per year ($ 81,027 today). The Post Office Department used new Standard JR-1B biplanes specially modified to carry

8874-556: The time) Kingdom of Hawaii and the USA was signed on December 19, 1888 and put into effect early in 1889. Parcel-post service between the U.S. and other countries grew with the signing of successive postal conventions and treaties. While the Post Office agreed to deliver parcels sent into the country under the UPU treaty, it did not institute a domestic parcel-post service for another twenty-five years. The advent of Rural Free Delivery (RFD) in

8976-515: The two-letter code of the radio beacons that were the closest to the actual airport, such as YQX in Gander or YXS in Prince George . Four of the ten provincial capital airports in Canada have ended up with codes beginning with YY, including: Canada's largest airport is YYZ for Toronto Pearson (as YTZ was already allocated to Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport , the airport was given

9078-529: The use of two letters allowed only a few hundred combinations; a three-letter system of airport codes was implemented. This system allowed for 17,576 permutations, assuming all letters can be used in conjunction with each other. Since the U.S. Navy reserved "N" codes, and to prevent confusion with Federal Communications Commission broadcast call signs , which begin with "W" or "K", the airports of certain U.S. cities whose name begins with one of these letters had to adopt "irregular" airport codes: This practice

9180-509: The west and wholesalers and factories back east. The postal service likewise assisted the army in expanding control over the vast western territories. The widespread circulation of important newspapers by mail, such as the New York Weekly Tribune, facilitated coordination among politicians in different states. The postal service helped integrate established areas with the frontier, creating a spirit of nationalism and providing

9282-444: The whole way." To cover long distances, the Post Office used a hub-and-spoke system, with Washington as the hub and chief sorting center. By 1869, with 27,000 local post offices to deal with, it had changed to sorting mail en route in specialized railroad mail cars, called railway post offices , or RPOs. The system of postal money orders began in 1864. Free mail delivery began in the larger cities in 1863. The postal system played

9384-466: Was based on the Constitutional authority empowering Congress "To establish post offices and post roads ". The 1792 law provided for a greatly expanded postal network, and served editors by charging newspapers an extremely low rate. The law guaranteed the sanctity of personal correspondence, and provided the entire country with low-cost access to information on public affairs, while establishing

9486-509: Was composed of three missile silos (9 total). Beginning in 1958, the Army Corps of Engineers began planning for the sites, and construction began in 1959. The construction project was completed on 28 July 1960. In April and May 1961, the three complexes became the last Atlas D missiles to go on alert. The missiles were manned by the 549th Strategic Missile Squadron which was activated on 1 October 1960. The squadron began to phase down with

9588-457: Was demolished for replacement with new housing. A new fire house, AAFES mini-mall, and U.S. Post Office were completed in 2006. Additionally, the Air Force Weather Agency broke ground on a new facility which was completed in 2008. The new headquarters for STRATCOM, the Command and Control Facility (C2F), is expected to be operational in September 2018. The base sustained significant damage in

9690-495: Was designated Offutt Field on 6 May 1924. Offutt's history began with the commissioning by the War Department in 1890 of Fort Crook. Located some 10 miles south of Omaha and two miles west of the Missouri River , the fort was constructed between 1894 and 1896. The fort's namesake was Major General George Crook , a Civil War veteran and Indian fighter. It was first used as a dispatch point for Indian conflicts on

9792-405: Was enlarged during the tenure of President Andrew Jackson . As the Post Office expanded, difficulties were experienced due to a lack of employees and transportation. The Post Office's employees at that time were still subject to the so-called "spoils" system, where faithful political supporters of the executive branch were appointed to positions in the post office and other government corporations as

9894-614: Was one of the most colorful people in United States Postal History." It was Easton who educated Abraham Lincoln's attorney general, Edward Bates. In 1815 Edward Bates moved into the Easton home and lived there for years at Third and Elm. Today this is the site of the Jefferson Memorial Park. In 1806 Postmaster General Gideon Granger wrote a three-page letter to Easton, begging him not to partake in

9996-552: Was only a trickle of business or governmental correspondence between the colonies. Most of the mail went back and forth to counting houses and government offices in London. The revolution made Philadelphia, the seat of the Continental Congress, the information hub of the new nation. News, new laws, political intelligence, and military orders circulated with a new urgency, and a postal system was necessary. Journalists took

10098-639: Was pared down to a few essential staffers such as Ari Fleischer , Andrew Card , Karl Rove , Dan Bartlett , Brian Montgomery, and Gordon Johndroe , plus about five reporters. During the flight, Bush remained in "continuous contact" with both the White House Situation Room and Vice President Dick Cheney in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center . Air Force One landed at Offutt shortly before 3:00pm. At 3:06pm, Bush passed through security to

10200-425: Was raised to $ 1,000 in 1916 and to $ 2,500 in 1918. The initial minimum deposit was $ 1. In order to save smaller amounts for deposit, customers could purchase a 10-cent postal savings card and 10-cent postal savings stamps to fill it. The card could be used to open or add to an account when its value, together with any attached stamps, amounted to one or more dollars, or it could be redeemed for cash. At its peak in 1947,

10302-499: Was renamed in honor of World War I pilot and Omaha native 1st Lt. Jarvis Offutt in 1924. Offutt AFB's legacy includes the construction of the Enola Gay and Bockscar , the planes that dropped Little Boy and Fat Man over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II . Offutt served over 40 years as the headquarters for the former Strategic Air Command (SAC) and home for its associated ground and aerial command centers for

10404-641: Was the first to call it the Post Office Department rather than just the "Post Office." The organization received a boost in prestige when President Andrew Jackson invited his postmaster general, William T. Barry , to sit as a member of the Cabinet in 1829. The Post Office Act of 1872 (17  Stat.   283 ) elevated the Post Office Department to Cabinet status. During the American Civil War (1861–1865), postal services in

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