Albemarle Tradewinds October 2018 Web Final

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Mud Flats to Mission Ready – NAS Oceana by Amy Waters Yarsinske
In the 1880s, a whistle stop named Tunis was the only oasis
of civilization on the Norfolk Southern Railway spur between
the city of Norfolk and the popular amusements and resort
atmosphere of the Virginia Beach oceanfront. Everything
in-between was sprawling farmland that divided Princess
Anne County like a patchwork quilt. Farmhouses, dependencies,
country stores and a couple of schoolhouses and other
public buildings dotted the landscape. Near Tunis – the next
to last rail stop to the oceanfront – a small community had
sprung, growth that prompted residents to give it a name
more fitting to the train’s ultimate destination along Virginia’s
golden shore. The hamlet of Tunis was rebranded Oceana
in 1891.
More than four decades later, in 1938, with the threat of
war on America’s doorstep and the United States Navy
limited to one air station and two grass auxiliary fields for
aviation practice in the Norfolk, Virginia operating area, Rear
Admiral Patrick Neison Lynch Bellinger, then commander in
chief of Naval Air Force Atlantic, received orders to locate
four additional airfields in proximity of Naval Air Station
Norfolk. As retired captain Dexter C. Rumsey II later put it,
Bellinger’s marching orders came down “because they had
so damn many pilots to train so fast.” Two decades after the
war, Rumsey commanded Naval Air Station Oceana.
Between the village of Oceana and the Princess Anne
County courthouse lay five thousand acres of farmland from
which the navy would carve out an air station. The navy’s
choice of this vast tract was purposeful. With low population
density and plenty of elbowroom, the tract made the perfect
location for a military airfield. From auxiliary airfield to master
jet base, Oceana would become a significant example
Amy Waters Yarsinske is the author of several best-selling,
award-winning nonfiction books, most recently An American
in the Basement: the Betrayal of Captain Scott Speicher and the
Cover-up of His Death, and while it has led to major media interviews
and speaking engagements across the country, it importantly continues
the national conversation of POW/MIA accountability. The book
won the Next Generation Indie Book Award for General Non-fiction
in 2014. Amy’s new books include an historical series based on her
favorite Virginia, North Carolina and Washington, D.C. locales and
historic sites, the first of which, Norfolk Through Time was published
on the spring list this year; a whistleblower’s story set against the
backdrop of rampant scientific misconduct; the biography of one of
America’s greatest twentieth-century aviators; the story of a murder
in Tehran that would change the trajectory of history, two more
narratives that will make it clear that America still has a crisis of accountability
for its missing service members, and the story of Norfolk
Botanical Garden, a Virginia Historic Landmark that is also listed on
the National Register of Historic Places.
Yarsinske lives in Norfolk, Virginia, with her husband and three
children.
Want to know more? Follow Amy’s blog ‘The Author’s Desk’
amywatersyarsinske.com/blog
of an air station that had a city grow around it, not the other
way around.
Bellinger’s effort to secure auxiliary airfields had been a
work in progress for nearly three years when the worst that
could have happened did. On December 8, 1941, the United
States Congress declared war on the Empire of Japan in
response to that country’s surprise attack on the American
naval base at Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, the prior day.
The declaration was drafted an hour after President Franklin
D. Roosevelt delivered his remarkable “Day of Infamy”
speech. Following the United States’ declaration, on December
11, Japan’s allies, Germany and Italy, declared war
on the United States, and the United States reciprocated,
bringing the United States fully into the Second World War.
With a new sense of urgency, naval personnel descended
quickly on the mud flats of auxiliary landing field Oceana,
hastily building a series of nineteen Quonset huts to accommodate
32 officers and 172 enlisted men. At the peak of the
war, the remote and largely inaccessible auxiliary landing
field was commissioned Naval Auxiliary Air Station Oceana
on August 17, 1943. This was just the beginning. In the
decades that followed the Second World War, the air station
and the community around it grew with naval aviation. The
nascent auxiliary air station grew so fast that less than a
decade after the war, the navy built additional runways and
training facilities. The evolution of Oceana postwar sent a
clear message that it could no longer function as a subordinate
to any other air station. The secretary of the navy
redesignated Oceana a naval air station on April 1, 1952, a
move that ultimately laid the foundation for development of
the master jet base.
Garrett Smith
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A once-remote auxiliary air station that sprung from the
mud flats of old Princess Anne County near the whistle stop
of Oceana, from which it gets its name, Naval Air Station
Oceana has advanced in the decades since World War II
to become the navy’s East Coast master jet base and one
of the largest and most advanced air stations in the world.
Through interviews, exhaustive research and rare and
often never-before-seen photographs that are her hallmark,
author and historian Amy Waters Yarsinske tells the story of
vision, courage and commitment that reinforce what Admiral
Michael G. Mullen, then chief of naval operations, said of
Oceana when he testified before the Base Realignment and
Closure (BRAC) commission regional hearings on August
4, 2005, his words just as relevant today as they were then.
“We know how important it is to our training. We know how
important it is to our preparation for warfighting. We know
how important it is to be good neighbors, and we will continue
to be. Our sailors and their families – and I include my
own family on that list – enjoy living in the wonderful communities
of the great state of Virginia,” he continued. “Mr.
Chairman [Anthony Principi], I need now – your navy needs
now – Naval Air Station Oceana.”
VA/NC
252-232-8779
470 Caratoke Hwy
Rt. 168, Moyock, NC
www.linex.com
Shane Gerres
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