Naval Station Norfolk - History - World War II

World War II

World War II profoundly changed the appearance of the Naval Station. With the eruption of war in Europe in September 1939, the station began to vibrate with activity. By December, the Navy had over $4 million in projects underway on the station. By the summer of 1940 the Station employed some 8,000 personnel, a number larger than any time since the end of World War I.

The Hepburn Board had made recommendations to Congress earlier in the year that would also double the size and workload of the station. Since Chambers and West Fields were encroaching on the activities of the former Naval Operating Base, it was decided to expand to the east.

East Camp, with an area of about 1,000 acres (4 km²) between the east side of Naval Station and Granby Street, had been sold off by the Army at the end of World War I. Congress authorized its repurchase in early 1940. On June 29 of that year, a contract was signed with the Virginia Engineering Company of Newport News for the expansion of the station. The cost of expansion and construction was to reach more than $72 million.

Hangars, a new dispensary, three runways, magazine areas, warehouses, barracks and docking areas were patterned after similar existing airfields. The plan was revised and approved by Captain P.N.L. Bellinger, returning as commanding officer 20 years after first holding the job. Bellinger insisted that as many structures as possible be permanent ones. The air station was still largely composed of temporary hangars and workshops left over from World War I. Many were unsafe and costly to maintain.

The last permanent structure added had been the administration building, constructed in 1930. Special attention was paid to control facilities. Prior to the expansion, operations from Chambers Field had no traffic control system except for a white placard inserted through a slot on the roof to indicate the direction of the runway in use.

Some 353 acres (1.4 km²) were eventually reclaimed at a cost of $2.1 million. Two large hangars and ramps for seaplanes, barracks, officer quarters and family housing were built. This construction cut off Mason Creek Road and the Navy compensated the city by improving Kersloe Road between Hampton Boulevard and Granby Street.

Norfolk responded by renaming the road, Admiral Taussig Boulevard, in honor of the retiring commander of the Naval Operating Base.

In July 1940, the Federal government began dredging Willoughby Bay and the Naval Air Station seaplane operating area at Breezy Point, Virginia was constructed from reclaimed marshlands at the mouth of Mason Creek, Virginia. By the time President Roosevelt visited at the end of July, the station was clearly reaching the point where it could support ships engaged in war overseas.

In 1941, the possibility of U.S. involvement in the war looked more likely. Construction of more new facilities was pushed forward to match increased requirements. Directives from Washington meant facilities had to be developed to operate five aircraft carrier air groups, seven to nine patrol squadrons, the fighter director school and the Atlantic Fleet operational training program for 200 pilots prior to their fleet assignment. Further requests were made to provide training and maintenance facilities for British aircrew from HMS Illustrious and Formidable.

In June 1941, the personnel count at the Naval Station dramatically increased once again. There were now about 10,000 new recruits at the Naval Training Station, 15,559 officers and enlisted on station, and 14,426 sailors assigned to ships homeported in Norfolk. After Pearl Harbor, another $4 million was put into the receiving station to elevate its capacity by some 5,500 individuals. The Navy planned to double hospital capacity, as well as adding a full range of indoor and outdoor athletic facilities to go along with the construction of a new auditorium.

In all, these new requirements led to enlarging the construction project to five times its original scope. At the completion of the first round of construction, East Field was estimated to have the capacity for 410 land planes while Breezy Point's capacity was estimated at 72 seaplanes. From a manpower viewpoint, NAS Norfolk grew from an average of 2,076 officers and enlisted in December 1940 to 16,656 active duty in December 1943. For the first six months of 1943, the flight operations department recorded an average of 21,073 flights per month and an average of 700 flights per day. This represents a take-off or landing every two minutes, 24 hours a day.

The increased pace of operations made it necessary to further physical plant growth. In order to extend runways and provide more parking areas, an additional 400 acres (1.6 km²) including the old Norfolk airport were acquired. Finally, by 1943, the Naval Air Station had become the hub for a series of outlying airfields. Facilities were commissioned at Chincoteague, Whitehurst, Reservoir, Oceana, Pungo, Fentress, Monogram, and Creeds, Va., as well as Elizabeth City, Edenton, Manteo, and Harvey Point, N.C.

A new command, Naval Air Center, had been formed October 12, 1942 under Captain J.M. Shoemaker, the 15th and 18th commanding officer of NAS Norfolk, to coordinate operations within the Norfolk area. The outlying fields were used for training, patrol plane operations, practice bombing and aerial gunnery. The assembly and repair (A&R) department also offers an excellent example of expansion at the Naval Air Station. In 1939, A&R occupied four World War I hangars and a few workshops. It employed 213 enlisted men and 573 civilians in the overhaul of aircraft engines and fuselages.

In 1940, the naval aircraft program passed Congress with a production goal of 10,000 new planes later increased 15,000. To support this effort, A&R, after Pearl Harbor, went to two 10-hour shifts per day, seven days a week for a work force that now numbered 1,600 enlisted and 3,500 civilians. Women, who had been employed only as seamstress for wing and fuselage fabric, began working in A&R machine shops as labor shortages became acute. During the summer of 1942, the apprentice school was opened to provide training in nine trades. By war's end, assembly and repair had developed into a Class "A" industrial plant with peak employment of 3,561 civilians and 4,852 military workers.

After war was formally declared following Pearl Harbor, Germany began a U-boat offensive, "Operation Drumbeat", against shipping along the Atlantic coast. The Eastern Sea Frontier, a command headquartered in New York, directed the American response.

Locally, Fleet Air Wing 5 units flew under its operational command of the 5th Naval District. Wing 5 units involved consisted of scouting squadrons, 12 OS2U Kingfisher seaplanes and VPs 83 and 84 equipped with PBY5A Catalinas. By 1942, NAS Norfolk was home to 24 fleet units.

In this early phase of the war, the U-boats had the best of it. With a peacetime mindset still prevalent, valuable ships sailed independently—backlit by the lights of seaside towns.

From January through April 1942, the Eastern Sea Frontier recorded 82 sinkings by U-boats. During the same period, only eight U-boats were sunk by U.S. forces. Eventually, coastal convoys were instituted and more aircraft became available. German U-boats moved elsewhere and sinkings decreased. To move closer to their patrol areas and free up space for the training of new squadrons, NAS Norfolk-based patrol squadrons transferred their operations from Breezy Point to Chincoteague and Elizabeth City.

NAS Norfolk's biggest contribution to the winning of World War II was in the training it provided to a wide variety of allied naval air units.

At the start of the war, training activities at NAS did not fall under the direction of a single overseer. This changed on January 1, 1943 with the creation of Commander Air Force Atlantic Fleet with Rear Admiral (later Vice Admiral) Bellinger in charge. The former NAS commanding officer was tasked with providing administrative, material and logistic support for Atlantic Fleet aviation units. AIRLANT also furnished combat-ready carrier air groups, patrol squadrons and battleship and cruiser aviation units for both the Atlantic and Pacific fleets. To complete this task, Fleet Air Wing 5 in Norfolk turned over its operational commitments for the Eastern Sea Frontier to Fleet Air Wing 9 at NAS Quonset Point, Rhode Island.

In December 1942, recruit training at the base was abolished since the base was now more suitably equipped for advanced training for men going directly to the fleet. With the change in the training station and the declaration of war, the mission became that of a pre-commissioning training station. Three 1,000 foot (300 m) piers, which were used as convoy escort piers, were built during World War II.

On September 18, 1943, FAW-5 assumed the primary mission of providing training under the direction of AIRLANT. The aviation service school offered courses in metalsmith work, engine repair, radio repair and ordnance. Aviation machinist's mate A school consisted of two months of training and two months of practical experience in A&R department shops.

The advanced base aviation training unit helped sailors develop the skills necessary to maintain all types of aircraft at advanced bases in combat area. The aircraft they completed went to the fleet pool for distribution to squadrons in the process of commissioning.

A similar service for maintenance crews in squadrons awaiting the commissioning of new carriers was provided by the carrier air service unit. Among the earliest schools at NAS was the fighter director school, which taught fleet communications and tactics, radar operations and direction of aircraft from ships before moving to Georgia. The celestial navigation training unit instructed pilots being assigned to patrol squadrons. The aerial free gunnery training unit was originally located at Breezy Point, but moved to Dam Neck in 1943 to be able to carry out range work without restricting airspace.

Carrier qualifications training unit provided for field carrier landing practice, simulated carrier search techniques and qualification landings. Any carriers available in Hampton Roads were used to deck-qualify pilots, but the bulk of the load went to USS Charger. For most of the war, Charger acted as school ship both for squadrons in training and for flight deck personnel assigned to newly commissioned carriers.

The air station's impact on winning World War II was more extensive than most people think. With only a few exceptions, all Navy air squadrons that fought in the war trained in Norfolk. The air station also trained numerous British fighter squadrons and French and Russian patrol squadrons. From 1943 to the end of the war, a total of 326 U.S. units were commissioned and trained under the control of AIRLANT.

Undoubtedly, the loudest noise heard and one of the most devastating Navy accidents in Hampton Roads during World War II occurred at 11 AM September 17, 1943. A NAS ordnance department truck was pulling four trailers loaded with depth charges on the taxiway between NAS and the NOB piers. Each trailer was designed to carry four aerial depth charges. To save time, two additional charges were loaded on top of each trailer. Compounding the problem, the charges on top were not properly chained down. One of the charges slipped loose and became wedged between the trailer and the ground. The friction of being dragged against the road caused the charge to begin smoking.

An alert Marine sentry spotted the smoke and notified the driver who immediately stopped the truck and ran to a nearby fire station. Assistant Fire Chief Gurney E. Edwards hurried to the scene and attempted to cool down the charges with a fire extinguisher. As soon as he started his attempt, the first depth charge exploded, killing him instantly. For several minutes, charges continued to explode. The blasts shattered windows up to seven miles (11 km) away (10 km) and were heard in Suffolk, 20 miles (30 km) distant.

In the center of the explosion was a group of old enlisted men's barracks opposite the dispensary, the vicinity of the current location of V-88. A total of 18 buildings were destroyed by the blast. They were so badly damaged that they had to be razed. Thirty-three aircraft were also destroyed with a monetary damage of $1.8 million.

According to official histories, the shock of the explosion found people scaling fences that had been considered man-proof and impossible to climb. Other persons found themselves some time later with shoes in hand, waiting for street cars, with no memory of the event. The casualties amounted to 426, including 40 dead. Among them was Seaman 2nd Class Elizabeth Korensky, the only woman killed and the first WAVE to die in the line of duty in the war.

NAS Norfolk responded to the tragedy by building six new brick barracks to house the troops and added industrial space by building R-80, the largest airplane hangar in the world. Winning the war was a full-time effort.