
By 1960, the need for O'Hare as an active duty fighter base was diminishing, just as commercial business was picking up at the airport. Although not its primary base in the area, the Air Force used O'Hare as an active fighter base it was home to the 62nd Fighter-Interceptor Squadron flying North American F-86 Sabres from 1950 to 1959. The United States Air Force used the field extensively during the Korean War, at which time there was still no scheduled commercial service at the airport.
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With the departure of Douglas, the complex took the name of Orchard Field Airport, and was assigned the IATA code ORD. ĭouglas Company's contract ended with the war's conclusion and, though consideration was given to building commercial aircraft at Orchard, the company ultimately chose to concentrate commercial production at its original headquarters in Santa Monica, California. Less known is the fact that it was the location of the Army Air Force's 803rd Specialized Depot, a unit charged with storing many captured enemy aircraft a few representatives of this collection would eventually be transferred to the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. The attached airfield, from which the completed planes were flown out, was known simply as Douglas Airport initially, it had four 5,500-foot (1,700 m) runways. Some 655 C-54s were built at the plant, more than half of all produced. The 2 million square feet (190,000 m 2) plant, located in the northeast corner of what is now the airport property, needed easy access to the workforce of the nation's second-largest city, as well as its extensive railroad infrastructure and location far from enemy threat. The site was then known as Orchard Place, and had previously been a small German-American farming community. O'Hare's place in aviation began with a manufacturing plant for Douglas C-54 Skymasters during World War II. The city government investigated various potential airport sites during the 1930s but made little progress prior to America's entry into World War II. Not long after the opening of what was then called Chicago Municipal Airport in 1926, the City of Chicago realized that additional airport capacity would be needed in the future. Grumman F4F-3 Wildcat on display in O'Hare's Terminal 2, restored in the markings of "Butch" O'Hare's plane It is also a focus city for Frontier Airlines and Spirit Airlines. O'Hare serves as a major hub for both United Airlines (which is headquartered in Willis Tower) and American Airlines.

In 2019, O'Hare had 919,704 aircraft operations, averaging 2,520 per day, the most of any airport in the world in part because of a large number of regional flights. O'Hare became famous during the jet age, holding the distinction as the world's busiest airport from 1963 to 1998 today, it is the world's sixth-busiest airport, serving 83 million passengers in 2018.

As the first major airport planned after World War II, O'Hare's innovative design pioneered concepts such as concourses, direct highway access to the terminal, jet bridges, and underground refueling systems.

Navy's first Medal of Honor recipient during that war. It was named after Edward "Butch" O'Hare, the U.S.

Designed to be the successor to Chicago's Midway International Airport, nicknamed the "busiest square mile in the world", O'Hare began as an airfield serving a Douglas manufacturing plant for C-54 military transports during World War II.
