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    Naval Station Norfolk
    Naval Station Norfolk
    Naval Station Norfolk
    Ebook172 pages34 minutes

    Naval Station Norfolk

    By Hampton Roads Naval Historical Foundation

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    About this ebook

    Naval Station Norfolk is the world s largest naval station, supporting the Navy ships, submarines, and aircraft of the US Fleet Forces Command with a multitude of facilities and services. This shore establishment, located on the historic harbor of Hampton Roads, has remained vital to the Navy since its foundation in 1917. Once established, the naval station focused on serving the fleet in four areas: aviation, recruit training, a submarine base, and a supply base. Men and women of the station continued to work on these and other activities through the pressures of World War I, the Depression, World War II, and wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. They made sure that ships and aircraft were successfully deployed to the far reaches of the globe the nation s indispensable response to international conflicts. Nowadays, the station is the hub for Navy logistics supporting the defense of the entire Atlantic area, from the North Pole to the South Pole.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateFeb 24, 2014
    ISBN9781439644805
    Naval Station Norfolk
    Author

    Hampton Roads Naval Historical Foundation

    The Hampton Roads Naval Historical Foundation is dedicated to preserving the naval heritage of Hampton Roads. For this book, the foundation has selected images from the museum�s archives that document the growth and development of the naval station over 100 years.

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    • 5/5
      This brought back great memories. I highly recommend this book.

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    Naval Station Norfolk - Hampton Roads Naval Historical Foundation

    Museum.

    INTRODUCTION

    From Humble Beginning to Largest Naval Complex in the World—thus a 1967 newspaper summed up Naval Station Norfolk’s first 50 years of growth. Decades have intervened since, but the newspaper editor’s headline remains a valuable shorthand summary of the growth of the Sewells Point naval complex.

    The Humble Beginning was a piece of marshy land first inhabited by Native Americans and then by English colonists, who became Americans in the 18th century and fought a civil war in the 19th. Sewells Point saw plenty of human drama over those centuries, especially during the Civil War, but always reverted to a place of quiet agriculture. That changed in 1907 when the Jamestown Exposition, a world’s fair celebrating the 300th anniversary of the Jamestown colony, transformed the area. The fair brought months of excitement to southeastern Virginia. While the exposition was not a financial success, it did gain national attention for the region before it closed.

    After 1907, Norfolk attorney Theodore Wool undertook the task of finding some positive use for the vacant fairgrounds. He decided to lobby the Navy on the benefits of the exposition site. In a small booklet called Reasons, he listed the advantages of Hampton Roads to the Navy: the Chesapeake Bay had deep anchorages and was normally ice-free, there was plenty of vacant land for expansion if needed, the climate in Virginia supported year-round military operations, and rail and maritime transportation networks were in place.

    Wool’s arguments did not bear fruit until World War I when Pres. Woodrow Wilson endorsed the building of a naval operating base in Hampton Roads. An act of Congress, approved June 15, 1917, authorized the president to commandeer the tract of land that had been the site of the Jamestown Exposition. On July 4, 1917, engineers began staking out boundaries and dredging acres of mud on Sewells Point. On October 12, 1917, a little less than four months from the date of approval of the act of authorization, the first regiment moved to the new Naval Operating Base, with appropriate ceremonies. From this date, the population of the station increased rapidly. New regimental units were being completed and turned over to the commandant every week or two. From a complement of 1,669 on October 17, 1917, the new station (Hampton Roads) had increased to a total of 12,693 by November 27, 1918.

    The pressures of war produced explosive growth on the base, seen in barracks buildings, mess halls, lavatory buildings, storehouses, water systems, lighting, roads, and walks. Not to be overlooked were three miles of standard-gauge railroad to afford access to the base, the clearing of approximately 400 acres of ground thickly covered with underbrush, and the development of a system of roads to connect the development with the county road system of Norfolk.

    Later, an especially interesting building appeared, known as the "USS Electrician," which was designed as a battleship. Besides classrooms, this school building contained many shipboard electrical devices such as searchlights, signals, cranes, and turret moving and ventilating machines, all operational for training purposes.

    Once established, the base became the most important naval installation in Hampton Roads and, by extension, one of the most important in the world. It survived lean years of defense spending in the 1920s and the Depression years of the 1930s until it began another period of explosive growth as the nation prepared for World War II. In line with the development of the area as the major naval base on the Atlantic Coast, the Navy gradually replaced temporary facilities with permanent structures. In 1939, Norfolk was home to the largest of all the Navy’s training stations.

    The need for even further expansion of the station was not long in appearing. On July 19, 1940, in response to the spread of war across the globe, Congress authorized the two-ocean Navy. The national effort turned to speed in defense production, and American industry began to produce ships, machines, and equipment at an unprecedented rate. Trained men were needed in ever-increasing numbers, and their flow from the training establishments had to be geared to the flow of ships from the building yards and of equipment from the factories. The supply of personnel became a problem in logistics. Recruiting rates were stepped up, and at Norfolk, 11 new barracks, a drill hall, and attendant auxiliary facilities were begun.

    Training sailors for the fleet was not the only wartime concern of the base. The Navy had to satisfy the logistic demands of a Pacific and an Atlantic war, each larger than any previous war. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, there were only two continental supply depots in commission—one at Norfolk and the other at San Diego. Quickly, the focus of supply construction was on Norfolk, which experienced major expansion that went beyond the limits of the base to the outlying region. In addition to supplying the fleet, Norfolk became, with the passage of the Lend-Lease Act, a supply center for Allied shipping. British trawlers were among the first vessels to use this service. Most of them, built as coal-burning fishing boats, were used for submarine patrol off the East Coast at a time when

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