Patton's 3rd trained here, there are signs all over the place. This area (the actual center of Tennessee, between Murfreesboro and Lebanon) was completely rural during the war, and only training went on in this exact area. There are still some little pieces lying around in the Cedars of Lebanon state park. I'm sure tanks rolled right through where I'm sitting now, along with all sorts of other maneuvers and war games. Oddly enough, there were some massive War of Northern Aggression battles all around here as well. This whole area was a major battle field from here to Franklin and Nashville, and the rural areas all around here were used for training during the war. The saddest thing of all is that all of the beauty and history is being destroyed and paved under for crappy houses and damned stupid malls. It breaks my heart to see this beautiful area, so historic, and so good for farming, wrecked because the taxes make it impossible to afford to farm, so the developers snatch it up and build houses 12 feet apart on 1/3 acre lots. It just plain sucks, and it really pisses me off.
Just down the road is Stewart AFB in Smyrna, about 8 miles from the house here. It was an base during the war, and also during and after Korea, my Dad was stationed here, and he was both here and McGee Tyson near Knoxville when he met Mom after Korea. Stewart closed around 1970.
Not too far up the road (20-30 miles) in Tullahoma Tennessee is Arnold AFB, it started as a training base here during the war, and was not known as Arnold AFB then. We hunt there in the fall sometimes, and if you go out into the woods you can see huge barracks foundations with big chimneys. There are miles of concrete runways that are disentegrating. Since the Air Force was part of the Army then, there all sorts of infantry remnants there as well, like tank training tracks if you know where to look. There are even a bunch of barracks built in the woods to hide them from bombing. The biggest part is all overgrown now (at least they don't allow development, so we can hunt and it won't be ruined with 10,000 houses), but the base is super secure, and does some serious high tech R&D. They have all sorts of accelerators and under ground testing for stuff like rocket engines. There's about 100 miles or so of tunnels there. You're even under constant monitoring when you hunt and camp. If you drive around, you can find access points to the tunnels, they are monitored from the air and by all sorts of equipment as well. If you scratch your nards in a tree stand, someone probably will see it.
About 4 miles from here towards Murfreesboro is a big hospital, the Alvin C. York VA facility. It was built with 4 to 6 foot thick walls and deep basements and bomb shelters. It still operates today, but mostly as a psychiatric facility and a nursing home. My Dad was treated there after he developed Alzhiemers, and he died in the nursing home.
Then just a few miles (about 20) from here, in Nashville, at the municiple airport, is a large aircraft manufacturing area. During the war, Consolidated Vultee of Nashville was there, and built 113 P-38s, the only P-38s from a second source and not built by Lockheed. They were a large aircraft manufacturer, and not set up to make fighters, especially the P-38. They should have built B-17s here instead. I had some family that worked there. I'm not sure what all else was built here, but there were a lot of things built at that group of plants. The whole thing is now owned by Textron, and called Textron Aerostructures, formerly Avco, and they built wings and fuselages for several large planes, and still do. They made wings for B-52s and C-130s, some refit work has been done there as well.
