Baer Army Air Base & Baer Field

The airport was built at a cost of $10 million as a United States Army Air Corps base just before World War II. A coalition of city business interests arranged to purchase a series of contiguous land parcels outside of Fort Wayne, demolish the existing structures, and present a unified parcel to the War Department in a short enough period to meet a competitive deadline for the Development of Landing Areas for National Defense (DLAND) initiative while preserving civilian access to the existing Paul Baer Municipal Airport (now Smith Field) on the north side of the city. War Department policy at the time required that bases and airfields be named for deceased military aviators, so other suggestions were rejected, and the department chose to name the new facility for Paul Frank Baer, a Fort Wayne native and World War I flying ace and early official for the Aeronautics Branch of the United States Department of Commerce (now the Federal Aviation Administration). The original airport had been named for Baer while he was still living, but he had since died in a seaplane accident in Shanghai while carrying mail and passengers for the China National Aviation Corporation. The War Department's name choice necessitated a change of name for the municipal airport to avoid confusion, and city leaders elected to rename it for Art Smith, a pioneering airmail pilot, also a native of Fort Wayne, who also died in the course of his airmail duties.

Operations began in April 1941 under the name Baer Army Air Base, when Maj. Wilson T. Douglas of the Quartermaster Corps arrived as the base quartermaster.

The weather station was activated in August of that year, and the 13th Service Squadron was transferred from Chanute Field. The band arrived in October, and in November the 103 Communications Squadron arrived and the base was activated as Baer Field. The ordnance company departed in December, eventually reaching Port Moresby in New Guinea in February of the following year. The 307th Pursuit Squadron, which was activated in January 1942, flying Bell P-39 Airacobra and Curtis P-40 Warhawk training aircraft. Once training was completed, the unit was sent to Atcham in England. On December 7, 1941, a month after Baer Field was activated, the Japanese Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service struck Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, causing the United States to formally declare war the following day.

Later in 1942, the Army Air Corps became the United States Army Air Forces. Over 100,000 military personnel served out of Baer Field and its more than one hundred structures during the war. A large number of ground and air squadrons trained at the facility before deployment to the European and Asiatic-Pacific Theaters of operations.

In December 1945, the facility was put on Temporary Inactive status, and in 1946 its name reverted to Baer Army Air Base. By January 1947, the base had shrunk to a small Air Communications Service detachment under Maj. Phillip Cartwright, consisting of the major and two other officers and no enlisted men, was concerned primarily with the storage and transfer of base records. The base was determined to be surplus to the needs of the War Department, except for areas reserved for reserve and Air National Guard activity. Thereafter, the base was used sporadically for the Army Air Forces Reserve and Air Force Reserve training until 1951, the base was again in use for the 163rd Fighter Interceptor Squadron, joined later that year by the 122nd Fighter Wing from Stout Army Air Field. Since the Korean War, the base has mostly hosted Indiana Air National Guard units but has occasionally hosted active-duty units like the 434th Air Refueling Wing (previously the 434th Tactical Airlift Wing) on a temporary basis.

The oldest original Baer Army Air Field hangar, Hangar No. 40, was in use from World War II until 2012. Hangar No. 40's final tenant was FedEx Express, who used it until the hangar was damaged in a weather-related incident. After the damage to Hangar No. 40, FedEx moved into a portion of the former Kitty Hawk hub. Hangar No. 40 was demolished between March and April 2013.

Fort Wayne Municipal Airport

After the base was transferred to temporary inactive status, the city of Fort Wayne bought the airport from the federal government's General Services Administration for one dollar, renaming it Fort Wayne Municipal Airport in 1946, though, colloquially, the entire complex was still referred to as Baer Field, a practice reinforced by the reactivation of the airport for military purposes in 1951, to the point a race track adjacent to the property, Baer Field Raceway Park, which operated from 1964 to 2019, was named after it. Two passenger airlines initially served Baer Field: TWA and Chicago & Southern Airlines; United Airlines appeared in 1947 with one DC-3 each way a day. C&S merged with Delta Air Lines in 1953 and Delta is the airport's longest-serving carrier, having served the airport in one form or another ever since. In 1953 the airport's current terminal opened, replacing a converted military structure.