Navy Pier - Second Use: Navy Training Center

Second Use: Navy Training Center

With war with Germany drawing close, the Navy needed much more space for technical training. In August 1941, Navy Pier was closed to the public, and in a five-month period was fully converted to a Navy training center designated to accommodate up to 10,000 service personnel. A large hangar-type building and a drill hall were built on 20 acres just west of the Pier. Six days before the attack on Pearl Harbor (7 Dec. 1941), classes began for aviation machinest mates, metalsmiths, and diesel mechanics.

The Navy's air group training arm docked a pair of converted flattops at the Pier, the USS Wolverine and the USS Sable (IX-81), to use as freshwater training carriers. During the war, about 15,000 pilots, including future President George H. W. Bush, received carrier-landing training.

Starting in January 1942, the Navy began a very intense and difficult training program for electronic maintenance technicians. Coordinated from a central operation in Chicago, this eventually had three levels: Pre-Radio School, mainly at Chicago Junior Colleges; Primary School, initially given by six engineering colleges across the Nation; and Secondary (or Advanced) School at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington D.C., at Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay, and at Naval Air Technical Training Center Ward Island, near Corpus Christi, Texas. By December 1943, these Secondary Schools had reached their capacity, and a major portion of Navy Pier was quickly converted to a fourth school.

Classes started at the Navy Pier Secondary School on 5 June 1944; Captain Edwin A. Wolleson was the Commanding Officer, and Commander Charles C. Caveny served as the Educational Officer. Lecture rooms, laboratories, and offices of the Navy Pier Secondary School were highly secure, controlled 24 hours by armed Marine guards. Barracks were set up on upper floors of three former exhibition halls, each accommodating up to 1,500 students. In addition to the tough instruction (up to eight months of 12-hour days), the men had the challenge of dealing with birds roosting overhead in the living quarters with little respect for Navy cleanliness.

In mid-1946, with WWII over, the Navy returned Navy Pier to the City of Chicago. In the four and one-half years under the Navy, over 60,000 servicemen fron the U.S. and Allied nations trained at the Pier in several types of schools; this included about 15,000 electronic technicians in the two years of the Secondary School.