(EDITOR’S NOTE: Now that your eyes are bugging out of your head since you just saw the title, this item first ran on January 20, 2009 when we were known as Freiburger’s Junkyard and before Freiburger went back to Hot Rod Magazine. He wrote this piece back then and we’re rerunning it now as we were lamenting the fact that we’re not there to see it this year.)

No matter how often I attend races at the Bonneville Salt Flats, I will always take at least a few minutes to pass through the old Wendover Airfield in nearby Wendover, Utah. When the base was purchased by the government in 1940, there were just 14 people in Wendover and it was only accessible by train or dirt road, which was ideally remote for the intended use of the place. By 1942, Col. Paul Tibbets was assigned to lead the entire operation (the 509th Composite Group) at the base in the incredibly secretive training for the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan.

At the base, perhaps only Tibbets knew exactly what was going on. No one was to speak a word. The government placed spies in local bars, and in some as far as Salt Lake City, to see if servicemen were spilling any info after tipping back a few. Those who did were reassigned to the farthest-flung corners of the Earth, or jailed until war’s end.

The training at the base included the dropping of concrete bombs on the Salt Flats, and phony targets were molded from the salt itself.

This photo is of the barracks that still stand at what is now known as the Wendover Historic Airfield. Many structures remain, including what’s called the Enola Gay hangar that stands directly behind the point of view of this photo.

The mountains seen behind the barracks included a cave that, as legend has it, was loaded with a full bar and organ and that was used by the servicemen as a hangout. It’s now fenced off. The mountain is also riddled with graffiti from many of the crews who worked the base up to the eventual end of all military uses in 1986.

The scrawlings also include the names of many land-speed race clubs that have raced in the area since 1949, when Speed Week began. Around that time the barracks also served the racers; the buildings, which began to fall out of use as early as 1945, were used as camping quarters by the racers. Many a Hemi and flathead was rebuilt over night in these wooden shacks.

The air base was also used for SCTA tech inspection up until the early ‘90s, and its massive concrete slabs are still used for autocross events and, more recently, for bootleg flagman drags.

See the site for Wendover Historic Airfield here, and get lost in the incredible story.