Presque Isle was where I started my college career back in the late 1970's.
By then it had become a regional airport with a small flight schedual.
They shifted over to fighter/interceptors and cruise missiles after WWII and I think the last AF planes to be based at PQI were either F-101's or F-106's.
Either way, SAC had dropped a lot of its eggs on Loring AFB and Presque Isle quickly became redundant, like Dow AFB near Bangor.
Then story gets weird..
Loring kept its B-52's but lost its nuclear mission by the mid 1970s.
Why? Good luck finding an answer.
Maybe it was because Loring was the closest continental SAC base to Moscow?
This *kind of* makes sense if Loring was used as a bargaining chip.
Maybe there had been an "Oops" in the bomb depot and SAC decided to pull the plug on the weps but kept the 42nd BW active?
When Loring was being handed over for non-military use in the mid 1990's they did find a building that had been "entombed" due to long-lasting radiation contanination.
Either way, the biggest secret at Loring was that they DIDN'T have nukes on-base and the 42nd BW specialized in dropping conventional bombs.
This also held true for the 43rd Strat Wing on Guam and the 379th BW in Michigan.
