With the threat of the Empire of Japan following the
Manchurian Incident of 1931, General
Yang Hucheng first built the airfield in Ankang in 1933 for preparations in the support of anticipated air force operations against Imperial Japanese military ambitions; this was the airbase where
Chinese Air Force war hero Colonel
Gao Zhihang transited en route after receiving a new inventory of
Polikarpov I-16 fighter planes in November 1937, but was killed in a Japanese bombing attack in his next refueling stop at
Zhoujiakou airfield. The airfield was deemed unsafe for use however, and was rebuilt as Wulipu in 1938, and listed as the
59th Air Station of the Nationalist Air Force of China. After the
attack on Pearl Harbor, the airport was in use by the
United States Army Air Forces Fourteenth Air Force as part of the China Defensive Campaign. The Americans called the airbase
Ankang Airfield, and flew photo-reconnaissance aircraft from the airport over Japanese-held territory on intelligence gathering combat missions between April and August 1945. In addition,
P-61 Black Widow night interceptor aircraft provided protection against night Japanese bomber and fighter attacks from April until the end of the war in September. The Americans closed their facilities at the airport in early October 1945. Civil flights first started in the 1964 but ceased in 1986. The airport was expanded to its current size in 1993 and served civil flights again from 1995 until July 2001, when the opening of the Xi'an-Ankang Railway forced the airport to close again. Flights resumed for the third time in April 2006 before suspended again in 2016. ==See also==