Naval Station Argentia - World War II Operations

World War II Operations

On August 28, 1941 Naval Air Station Argentia was commissioned. NAS Argentia was built on the plateau atop the triangular peninsula adjacent to Naval Station Argentia's anchorage and shore facilities. The air station was used to base convoy protection, coastal patrol and anti-submarine aircraft, both land-based aircraft and seaplanes. While NAS Argentia was nominally an independent facility from Naval Station Argentia, both facilities are largely viewed as one.

Beginning that summer, USS Prairie was used to house Flag Headquarters at the base.

February, 1942 saw the Argentia base at the centre of one of the worst disasters in the US Navy's history when USS Pollux and USS Truxtun were wrecked 75 miles southwest of the base. Over 100 victims were buried in Argentia's military cemetery.

In March 1942 the United States Army established Fort McAndrew at Argentia to provide security to the navy base through an anti-aircraft battery. Later that spring the Royal Navy established a small maintenance base at Argentia to service its ships involved in convoy escort groups operating out of Halifax, Sydney, St. John's and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

In the spring of 1943 a 7,000 ton floating drydock was installed at Argentia, along with a ship repair facility. In August 1943, CTF-24 Flag Headquarters moved ashore to permanent facilities after having been housed aboard USS Prairie.

In 1944, Argentia served as one of the two stopover bases for the refueling, maintenance, and crew changes of the six United States Navy (USN) K-ships (blimps) that made the first transatlantic crossings of non-rigid airships. Blimps K-123 and K-130 from USN Blimp Squadron 14 (also known as ZP-14, Blimpron 14, or "The Africa Squadron") left South Weymouth Naval Air Station in Massachusetts on May 28, 1944 and landed at Argentia about 16 hours later. The two K-ships then flew for approximately 22 hours to Lagens Field on Terceira Island in the Azores, the second stopover base for the transatlantic flights. The last leg was a ~20 hour flight to the squadron's final destination with Fleet Air Wing (FAW) 15 at Port Lyautey, French Morocco (now Kenitra, Morocco). Blimps K-123 & K-130 were followed by K-109 & K-134 and K-112 & K-101 which left South Weymouth on June 11 and 27, respectively, in 1944. These six blimps initially conducted nighttime anti-submarine warfare operations to complement the daytime missions flown by FAW-15 aircraft (PBYs and B-24s) using magnetic anomaly detection to locate U-boats in the relatively shallow waters around the Straits of Gibraltar. Later, ZP-14 K-ships conducted minespotting and minesweeping operations in key Mediterranean ports and various escort missions including that of the convoy carrying Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill to the Yalta Conference in early 1945. In late April 1945, K-89 and K-114 left Weeksville NAS in North Carolina and flew a southern route to NAS Bermuda, the Azores, and Port Lyautey where they arrived on May 1, 1945.