One Century Ago: Building Naval Airpower's First Permanent Home in Hampton Roads

Five days before the official commissioning of Naval Air Station Hampton Roads (later renamed NAS Norfolk), bulkheading, dredging and filling operations for a new runway complex are in full swing.  The airfield established on the landfill forming in the middle of the photograph was named in 1938 after Capt. W.I. Chambers, the first person appointed to lead aviation development in the Navy.  The area hosting the seaplane hangars  nearest the camera is home today to the MWR Norfolk Naval Sailing Center. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)  

On August 27, 1918, Naval Air Station Hampton Roads (later renamed NAS Norfolk)  was officially commissioned as a subordinate command of Naval Operating Base Hampton Roads, ten months after Lieutenant Henry B. Cecil led the first naval aviators and support staff to the former Jamestown Exposition grounds at Sewells point, north of downtown Norfolk, Virginia.  They brought with them seven Curtiss seaplanes and some tents to store them in, but little else.  The aviators originally lodged in a former resort hotel on the grounds of the naval operating base.  By the time it was officially established as its own command, much had changed on the eastern part of the former Jamestown Exposition grounds bought in July 1917, yet there was a long way to go.  The Hampton Roads Naval Museum has amassed many photographs, some seen here for the first time online, showing the huge amount of work carried out to create the air station, which ceased to be a separate command from Naval Station Norfolk in 1999.  

This photograph, one of the earliest showing naval aviation personnel at Naval Operating Base Hampton Roads (now Naval Station Norfolk), shows some of the the very first naval aviators and support staff who had moved to the former Jamestown Exposition Grand Basin from where they had been training at Glenn Curtiss's Atlantic Coast Aeronautical Station as "Naval Air Detachment Curtiss Field." Here we see a "landing stage" ramp being built on the spot that was known as "Discovery Landing" during the exposition, which had welcomed foreign dignitaries as well as President Theodore Roosevelt ten years before.  At its edge is a Curtiss Model R floatplane.  They also used trainers made by the Aeromarine Plane and Motor Company.  Note the canvas tents that served as rudimentary hangars and the clock tower of the Pennsylvania House in the background, which is still a landmark on the naval station.  The basin is home to the naval station's marina today. (National Archives and Records Administration)   

  

About two weeks after the arrival of naval aviators to Naval Operating Base Hampton Roads in October 1917, wooden hangars started going up.  This one, which appears to be near the corner of present-day Farragut Avenue and Dillingham Boulevard (today the site of a parking lot on Dillingham opposite a bachelor officers' quarters), features a Curtiss JN-4 being worked on by naval aviation detachment personnel. (National Archives and Records Administration) 

During the ten months between the arrival of the first naval aviators and the commissioning of NAS Hampton Roads, over a dozen wooden hangars and other support structures tailor-made for aviation training and operations were erected, including a huge dirigible hangar.

The huge dirigible hangar under construction at NOB Hampton Roads, more than six months before the naval air station was commissioned as a separate administrative command from the naval operating base. (National Archives and Records Administration)

Within the giant hangar for lighter-than-air operations at NAS Hampton Roads later in 1918, Sailors are inflating one of the nonrigid dirigibles, or blimps, with hydrogen gas.  The blimps were a mainstay of patrol and convoy guarding activities in the area during the war, and remained a common site over the air station for several more years.  One of the highly flammable blimps caught fire above the air station in 1921 due to leaking hydrogen, but luckily the crew escaped before it exploded.  A much larger Army Air Corps airship, the Roma, exploded and crashed just south of the nearby Naval Operating Base less than a year later, killing 34 of the 45 officers, crewmen, and civilian personnel on board.  (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

The aviation-specific buildings have attracted the most attention from researchers studying the early history of the naval air station, yet the general support infrastructure for the hundreds of aviators, mechanics, aviation quartermasters and other enlisted support personnel who would be training there and patrolling the East Coast against the German submarine threat during the last months of World War I and beyond have not received as much attention.

Five months before the official establishment of NAS Hampton Roads, permanent barracks and a mess hall  for aviation personnel are under construction not far from the main hangars.   (National Archives and Records Administration)

In this photograph taken in March 1919, roughly over the former Grand Basin looking southeast, the completed aviation barracks complex can be seen behind the dirigible hangar (extreme right). Some of the original Jamestown Exposition state houses are still standing (center left).  According to some sources, a former life saving station behind the barracks (near the center of the photograph), which was also left over from the exposition, served as a temporary control tower shortly after the arrival of the naval air detachment a year and a half earlier. (National Archives and Records Administration)

Among the most obscure parts of early NAS Hampton Roads was the area known as East Camp, which was built on where the large East Field (today the main part of Chambers Field) was completed in 1941.  A new collection of photographs taken by Albert Kloth, one of the contractors who constructed that part of the station, was recently donated to the museum.  Some are being shown here for the first time.

An overall photo of the southern end of the barracks complex known as East Camp, with a new drill hall (far left) at the southernmost end. The project was begun in late 1918 and completed sometime the following year, even though the reason for its existence, World War I, ended not long after the contract for its construction was awarded.  (Albert Kloth/ Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

A closer look at the drill hall under construction at East Camp. (Albert Kloth/ Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

Barracks rows under construction at East Camp. (Albert Kloth/ Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

The laundry and galley area of East Camp, circa 1918-1919. (Albert Kloth/ Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

This aerial photograph from September 1918 shows land reclamation going on at the mouth of Boush Creek, which became the nucleus of what later became known as the Naval Aviation Depot. At this point, construction on East Camp had yet to begin on the fields to the east. During the interwar period, Boush Creek was gradually filled in until there was nothing left of it by the time World War II began.  The mouth of Mason Creek (which is now cut off from Willoughby Bay) can be seen at the upper right of the photograph, and part of Willoughby Spit can be seen at the upper left. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

In July 1918, United States Shipping Board, which was responsible for transporting the American Expeditionary Force and its supplies from ports in the United States to Europe during World War I, estimated that approximately 200,000 additional men, above those already at naval training stations across the country, would be needed to crew ships due to be completed in 1920.  In response, plans were drawn up for a new training facility to be established at Yorktown, Virginia, that would accommodate 14,000 men and feature its own 800-bed hospital.  Bids for the project opened on September 9, 1918, but the Yorktown project was cancelled in favor of a major expansion of the Naval Training Station at Sewells point on the east side of Boush Creek, across from the naval operating base as well as the training and air stations covering the northeast corner of Sewells Point.  According to the official history, War Activities of the Bureau of Yards and Docks (1921), "it is to-day the best example of a naval training camp constructed during the war period." 

The completed East Camp area in September 1919, looking east.  Willoughby Spit can be seen at the upper left.  (National Archives and Records Administration)

(Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)

Anecdotal evidence suggests that East Camp ended up serving as a part of the air station instead of the naval training station as originally intended.  In any case, by the time a major expansion of the runways at what was by then Naval Air Station Norfolk was carried out during the late-1930s, the entire East Camp had been razed for some time. East Field (now the current Chambers Field of Naval Station Norfolk), opened at the former site of East Camp in 1941.

Editor's Note: Hampton Roads Naval Museum Curator Joe Judge conducted much of the original research that contributed to this post, and much of that research as well as many of the photographs of both early NAS Hampton Roads as well as the naval training station and naval operating base shown here can be found in the book Images of America: Naval Station Norfolk (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2014) published with the support of the Hampton Roads Naval Historical Foundation (HRNHF).  To order a copy, please call the HRNHF gift shop at (757) 423-8118.