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Research dossier · General Reference

MacDill Air Force Base

United States Air Force base in Tampa, Florida, USA

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 30, 2026
Entity authorityQ1583022 ↗
Source-derived summary

MacDill Air Force Base (MacDill AFB) (IATA: MCF, ICAO: KMCF, FAA LID: MCF) is an active United States Air Force installation located 4 miles (6.4 km) south-southwest of downtown Tampa, Florida.

MacDill Air Force Base, located in South Tampa, was constructed as MacDill Field, a U.S. Army Air Corps, later U.S. Army Air Forces, installation just prior to World War II. With the establishment of the U.S. Air Force as an independent service in September 1947, it became MacDill Air Force Base. During the 1950s and 1960s, it was a Strategic Air Command (SAC) installation for B-47 Stratojet bombers. In the early 1960s, it transitioned to a Tactical Air Command (TAC) installation, briefly operating the F-84 Thunderstreak jet fighter before transitioning to the F-4 Phantom II. During the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, it operated F-4 Phantom II fighters under various fighter wings, followed by F-16 Fighting Falcons in the mid-1980s to early 1990s.

MacDill became an Air Mobility Command installation in 1996, with the 6th Air Refueling Wing (6 ARW), assigned to the Eighteenth Air Force of the Air Mobility Command, as the host wing. The wing's 310th Airlift Squadron flies the C-37A, and its 50th Air Refueling Squadron and 91st Air Refueling Squadron fly the KC-135. The 6 ARW is further augmented by the Air Force Reserve Command's 927th Air Refueling Wing and 63d Air Refueling Squadron also flying KC-135s.

MacDill AFB is home to the headquarters for two of the U.S. military's unified combatant commands: Headquarters, United States Central Command, and Headquarters, United States Special Operations Command. Both commands are independent from one another and each is commanded by a respective four-star general or admiral.

Two additional subunified commands are headquartered at MacDill AFB: Commander, United States Marine Corps Forces Central Command, commanded by a three-star general, and United States Special Operations Command Central commanded by a two-star general or admiral.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “MacDill Air Force Base” is united States Air Force base in Tampa, Florida, USA. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through MacDill, Force and Base, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1947, 1996—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, MacDill, Force and Base is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “united States Air Force base in Tampa, Florida, USA” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1583022. VIAF identifies the subject as 154976817. The Library of Congress control number is n2004092237. Authority coordinates are 27.849, -82.521. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1947 and 1996.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “MacDill Air Force Base” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.