Naval Air Station Corpus Christi - History

History

The official step leading to the construction of the Naval Air Station was initiated by the 75th Congress in 1938. A board found that a lack of training facilities capable of meeting an emergency demand for pilots constituted a grave situation. They recommended the establishment of a second air training station, and further, that it be located on Corpus Christi Bay. NAS Corpus Christi was commissioned by its first Commanding Officer, CAPT Alva Berhard, on March 12, 1941. The first flight training started on May 5, 1941.

In 1941, 800 instructors provided training for more than 300 student pilots a month. The training rate nearly doubled after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. By the end of World War II, more than 35,000 naval aviators had earned their wings here. Corpus Christi provided intermediate flight training in World War II, training naval pilots to fly SNJ, SNV, SNB, OS2U, PBY, and N3N type airplanes. In 1944 it was the largest naval aviation training facility in the world. The facility covered 20,000 acres (81 km2), and had 997 hangars, shops, barracks, warehouses and other buildings. The Corpus Christi training facility consisted of the main location and six auxiliary air stations at Rodd, Cabaniss, Cuddihy, Kingsville, Waldron and Chase fields.

Former President George H.W. Bush was in the third graduating class, June 1943, and the youngest pilot ever to graduate. NAS Corpus Christi also was home to the Blue Angels from 1951-1954. It also served as a Project Mercury Tracking station in the early 1960s.

A T-34C aircraft with two crewmen, Lieutenant John Joseph Houston, 29, of Houston, and Lieutenant Bret Travis Miller, 30, of East Troy, Wisconsin, from VT-28 on a training mission disappeared on October 28, 2009. Bad weather had initially hampered the subsequent search for the aircraft and crew. Unfortunately both pilots were found dead and were buried with full military honors.