Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Offutt AFB, NE

Offutt AFB is a census-designated place in Sarpy County, Nebraska, encompassing Offutt Air Force Base, a U.S. Air Force installation south of Omaha and adjacent to Bellevue.

The Offutt AFB CDP had a population of 5,363 at the 2020 census, up from 4,644 in 2010 but well below the 8,901 counted in 2000, when more military families lived on base.

The base is the headquarters of U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), its host unit is the 55th Wing of Air Combat Command, and it also hosts the 557th Weather Wing.

Offutt's origins lie in Fort Crook, an Army post commissioned in 1890 and built between 1894 and 1896 and named for Major General George Crook; its original red-brick parade-ground buildings remain in use today.

Aviation at the site began in September 1918, when the post served as an Army Air Service balloon field during World War I.

The airfield was renamed Offutt Field on May 6, 1924, in honor of First Lieutenant Jarvis Jenness Offutt, an Omaha native and World War I pilot who died of injuries from a training-flight crash in France in 1918.

During World War II, the Glenn L. Martin bomber plant at Offutt built B-29 Superfortresses, including the Enola Gay and Bockscar, the aircraft that dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Offutt became headquarters of the Strategic Air Command in November 1948 and served for more than 40 years as the center of America's Cold War nuclear command, including the round-the-clock Operation Looking Glass airborne command post flown from 1961 to 1990.

On September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush conducted one of the first major strategy sessions responding to the terrorist attacks from the underground command bunker at Offutt.

Military families dominate the CDP's households: at the 2000 census the base counted 2,304 households with an average household size of 3.61, and more than 2,000 family housing units were built on base in the late 1950s and 1960s.