This document summarizes and analyzes four sources that document the history of two major military installations in Norfolk and Portsmouth, Virginia - Norfolk Naval Station and Norfolk Naval Shipyard. The sources include a book on the history of Norfolk Naval Station published by a naval historical foundation, a 1995 article in Naval Aviation News about the origins of Norfolk Naval Air Station, a 1944 publication by the Army-Navy Publishing Company with details on personnel at Norfolk NAS during WWII, and a 1951 publication on the history of expenditures to build facilities at Norfolk Naval Shipyard. The analysis discusses how each source provides insights for historians studying different aspects of naval and local history, such as military operations, social history, infrastructure development, and the economic and

1. History of Military Installations and their Support Infrastructure: A Historiography
John Murray
Honor Pledged: 10/20/15

2. Norfolk and Portsmouth are marked and defined by their massive maritime infrastructure.
Throughout the past hundred years that development has exploded from a tiny series of small
dockyards and fisheries, to a massive shipping terminal, naval shipyards, dry docks, submarine
ports, and several air stations. The purpose of this paper is to analyze documentation pertaining
to the development, growth, and contributions of two facilities, Norfolk Naval Station ( including
Chambers Field) and Norfolk Naval Shipyard (located on the border of Norfolk and Portsmouth),
and to explain why documenting this growth is so important. In essence, the growth of these two
massive complexes, outside of the civilian shipping terminal, have been the greatest contributors
to the local area in terms of population, jobs, military readiness, as well as a service to the
economy. To fail to recognize these facilities and their importance is to fail to understand the
existence of Norfolk as it exists today. As such, this paper will showcase several sources, such as
the Army-Navy Press, the U.S. Navy Print Office, and Naval Aviation News Magazine (1995),
as well as classic introductory books, such as those provided by the local museums, all with the
goal of displaying the historicity of these facilities. This is a long standing subtopic of both
military and local history, one which, for the purposes of this paper, will be defined as History of
Military Installations and their Support Infrastructure.
The first and most recent piece of research into the Naval History of Hampton Roads I
encountered was Images of America: Naval Station Norfolk. Published only a year ago, in 2014,
this piece of historical research provided the springboard which launched the research for this
paper further and further back, in an attempt to trace the early origins of Hampton Roads Naval
Research. Published by the Arcadia Company, the book was commissioned by the Hampton
Roads Naval Historical Foundation, and hosts many different authors and photographers. This

3. book, being owned and published by a historical foundation, is not published under direct
command of the Navy. As such, these would have been civilian historians, although many of the
contributors likely had prior military service. As such, their research would have been from
outside the navy, looking inward. This is important, as researchers not directly affiliated and
employed by the Navy would not have access to personnel files and base records to the same
degree as Enlisted or Commissioned Naval Archivists, whose clearance would have allowed
them access to sailors birthplaces and time-specific information regarding their stations.
Nevertheless, research into the facility from a historical foundation gives a different perspective
on the Naval Stations of the area, a view, as stated above, from the outside in, in which Hampton
Roads as a whole would get to view a timeline of the growth of these facilities from “A sleepy
place until 1907”1, before there was any infrastructure there at all, to an explosion of activity in
the same year, at the Jamestown Exposition, which was a World’s Fair to celebrate the 300th
anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, the first landing in Virginia by the English.2 One of
the key differences in this source from the one that follows is in its closing, tenth chapter, in
which it outlines the role of the naval station in port activities and harbor oversight for the
Hampton Roads lower James River area, which gives great insight into the impact of the Naval
Station’s impact on water traffic in this locale: “The Job includes port service for all ships under
naval control in coordination with Atlantic Fleet commands. Activities on the busy waterfront
include docking and undocking ships, towing, and firefighting services. Navy personnel deliver
potable water, explosives, and bulk fuel to waterfront customers. In addition, the Naval Station
assigns berths and anchorages, provides pilots, schedules towing services, and controls harbor
1 Hampton Roads Naval Historical Foundation.Naval Station Norfolk.2014. Chapter 1 Preface
2 ibid

4. movements in the Hampton Roads area.”3 This chapter in particular, and the photographs that
follow can provide key information, as well as a good starting point for research by both
demographers and entry level historians who are interested in the impact of the Naval Station in
providing waterfront and dockyard jobs to the surrounding community, as most of these
positions are filled by Department of Defense (DOD) contractors, and not active duty sailors,
thus bolstering the economy of the area with a plethora of jobs to support the Navy. A final topic
could be derived from this work in the field of environmental history, as chapter 2, Beginnings,
features a section which reads: “ flats had to be dredged to allow sufficient depth for ships to
berth. The dredged material, eight million cubic yards’ worth, was used to create new land,
increasing the size of the station to 793 acres”4 Information of this sort is very useful for
outlining changes to the geography and possibly documenting the environmental impact of such
changes, as soil removal of such scale cannot have been without consequence.
In 1995, Naval Aviation News, in an article published by Gayle Lemieux, is outlined the
origins of Norfolk Naval Air station, via resources provided him as a Naval Officer of Public
affairs5 The article’s purpose, given the time it was published, would have been to provide its
audience (active duty sailors) a look back into the history of the base on which they served. In
the article he takes the station through its roots in the early 1900’s starting with the Jamestown
Exposition, with references to the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk preceding. The article follows
in fashion of a timeline, with important events, such as the moving of the airfield to the location
of the former Jamestown Exposition6, which has hence become Chambers’ Field, in honor of
3 Hampton Roads Naval Historical Foundation.Naval Station Norfolk.2014. Chapter 10 Preface
4 Hampton Roads Naval Historical Foundation. Naval Station Norfolk. 2014, Chapter 2 Preface: Beginnings
5 See bottom of articlevia hyperlink in thebibliography,“GayleLemieux is Public AffairsOfficer,NAS Norfolk, Va.”
6 Lemieux, Gayle. 1995."NAS Norfolk." Naval Aviation News 77, no. 2: 10. MasterFILE Premier, EBSCOhost
(accessedOctober19, 2015).

5. Captain Chambers, who first investigated the possibility of establishing a Naval Aviation
service7 The article goes on to describe the process of the installation’s expansion, and makes
mention of an increase in personnel from 1917 to 1920, from 200 officers and sailors, to over
1200, for the purposes of training them to operate and maintain naval aircraft.8 This shows an
increase in importance for the base as seen by “Big Navy”, and by Washington, and also helps to
exhibit the effect of the installation on the local population, as an addition of 1200 families to the
area surrounding the naval port would have had dramatic effect on the local economy, as well as
pressed the city to expand its infrastructure and housing capability around the base, to feed and
lodge these sailors and their families. Gayle’s article, in addition to stressing the importance of
the mission of Norfolk Naval Air Station, serves a second purpose. As part of the Naval Aviation
News magazine, it would have been regularly available to sailors in 1995, and its wide
accessibility on base would have helped sailors to understand not only the importance of their
jobs and the ongoing mission of the base, but to help them to understand the heritage of their
facility, which is why Naval Aviation News is one of many publications that the navy keeps in
its archives, for the purposes of posterity. Such articles do not fall under the traditional categories
of history for the purpose of education, but are more, “History for history’s sake”, preserving this
information for those with interest in the heritage of the area. Additionally, keeping the heritage
of the base on record could help to influence city and base planning, should the federal or local
governments ever decide to make drastic changes to the base, which might affect the local
economy or infrastructures.
7 ibid
8 ibid

6. The next source related to Norfolk Naval Air Station was collated and published by the Army
and Navy Publishing Company of Louisiana. This is a very special source, the publishing
company being under supervision of the Department of the Navy, and therefore has a very
specific purpose. It is a brief historical primer of the base, with several introductory pages in
which it introduces the origins of the base and takes the reader through what would have been
the “present” date of publishing, which was in 1944. The book was published during the height
of the European campaign by the Americans in World War II, and even has special notes on the
back page, reading “This book is produces in full compliance with government wartime
regulations regarding the conservation of paper and other materials”. This in itself could be
useful to historians interested in how the United States rationed and prioritized material, and it
says quite a bit about the book’s importance to the Navy as well. The binding is very thick and
solid, with no material being wasted, and all pages containing information about the base and its
personnel are on very thick, laminated and acid free paper, akin to card stock. Within the book is
a full list and photograph set of every personnel member of the base, opening with a photo of
President Truman, and the at the time acting Secretary of the Navy, James Forrestal. The list
continues down through all the departments, from plane maintenance, to pilots, fueling units,
assembly departments, operations, logistics and supply, ordinance, right down to cleaning and
transportation. All names are fully listed, and even the home addresses of these sailors are
included with the photographs. The purpose of such an extensive list to naval historians is to
provide a complete picture of exactly who was working on this base at that time, and would
enable researchers to trace the careers of these sailors and their officers, as well as their heritage.
Any historian interested in the demographics and the diversity of the Navy would also benefit
from such an extensive list, as it shows sailors from practically every state, and every ethnicity,

7. and the high quality photographs would even be useful in determining the average ages and
levels of fitness of all personnel on base. Naval historians interested in physiology and physical
education would also benefit from such a resource, as there is a chapter on the Physical
Recreation and Physical Training Departments9 This source, the documents, history and
photographs therein would have been culled from offices of Naval Archives, as well as the
offices of Naval Personnel, with the express purpose of the preservation of the memory of the
facility and those who operated it during wartime. Its contribution to historical research as a
whole is twofold, the first being to provide sailors with a sense of history in their own facility,
much like the magazine article listed above, and the second to provide the Department of the
Navy a clear sense of “Who, What, and Where” in 1944. This piece is therefore without a thesis
or argument, and can be viewed as a purely archival contribution to the field of Naval history,
from within the U.S. Navy sphere.
The final piece of historical research is into one of the support facilities for the Navy in
the area, Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Portsmouth. Published in peacetime for the United States in
1951, it represents an effort by the City of Portsmouth, in partnership with its neighbors in
Norfolk, to catalog the expansion of support facilities for the surrounding Naval Stations.
Written by Marshal W. Butt, a Museum Curator and Technical Librarian employed by the city of
Portsmouth, this is possibly the most data intensive piece of research out of the four selected.
This piece in particular focuses very much on expenditures for building the docks and shipyards
required for the facility, and gives researchers an idea of just how much money the navy was
willing to spend at this time, for example: “Begun in 1827 and finally completed in 1834, the
dock was built of huge blocks of Massachusetts granite and cost $974,365.65, a fabulous sum for
9 U.S. Naval Air Station, Norfolk, Virginia. Baton Rouge, La: Printed by Army and Navy Pub, 1944. P170-175

8. those days”10 It also showcases some important landmarks in maritime infrastructure, such as its
drydocking of the ship DELAWARE “the first vessel to be drydocked in the United States”11, a
landmark in American port technologies. The piece continues in this fashion throughout, giving
detailed lists of costs and expenditures by the Navy and the surrounding cities to build all of
these facilities, and is a useful contribution to the history of economics of this area, showing the
in and outflow of money and appropriation of funds for the military to support its operations,
from the 1700’s12, through ongoing shipbuilding and maintenance today. The work can also be
seen as a contribution to the history of shipbuilding in general, and alongside works on the
Newport News shipbuilding complex, could help to provide historians with a wider view of use
of materials and cash expenditure over the last few centuries.
The historiographical purpose of bringing such sources together is manifold. The first among
these is to contribute to the field of naval history as a whole, because such sources help to define
the facilities of Norfolk and Portsmouth as part of a massive effort by the Navy in the early 20th
century to build up their facilities, and maintain a higher state of combat readiness, as was
demanded first by World War I, and through all subsequent conflicts. Within the sources
outlined above are four different historical methods, all with different purposes. The first piece,
Images of America, serves the casual historian, as well as the community of local museums,
whose purpose is to catalogue the relationship of the navy to the surrounding area from a civilian
perspective, and to give the public a view of navy life, and how the navy affects their lives in
turn, as well as to show just how important Norfolk Naval Station is to water traffic, and how it
serves as a port authority of its own. The second method of historical insight provided in these
10 United States, and Marshall W. Butt. Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Portsmouth, Virginia; A Brief History. Portsmouth: [U.S.
Navy, Publications and Print. Office, Fifth Naval District], 1956. p.6
11 ibid
12 Ibid,p.4, “In 1794 the Gosport Shipyard was leased from the State of Virginia”

9. sources is that of the Gale Lemieux article in Naval Aviation News magazine, in which it
provides a brief overview of the facility to service personnel in the area, and helps to teach
newcomers the heritage of the facilities in which they serve, as well as to outline the importance
of the mission of the base and its support facilities to military personnel, thus providing clarity
and a sense of purpose to our sailors, essentially, for helping morale. Third comes the insight
provided by the work of the Army and Navy Publishing Company. The 1944 piece gives
historians access to Naval archived materials, demographics on individual personnel at the time
of World War II. This could be particularly of interest to social historians, as it features sections
outlining the roles and duties of African American Sailors in the 1940’s. In addition, it shows the
outsider what life was like for sailors on the base, and the Navy in general, in addition to giving a
sense of clarity to the civilian population as to what exactly the navy is doing “in their
neighborhood”.
Finally, outlining the development of the Naval Station and its supporting shipyards, as shown
in Norfolk Naval Shipyard Portsmouth, Virginia, also helps to provide a timeline in terms of the
two cities’ development, as infrastructure in Norfolk and Portsmouth expanded in parallel to the
increased demand for naval power and technology in the area. It also shows, on a macro scale,
how much infrastructure is dedicated in the surrounding area to the navy alone, in contrast to its
surrounding civilian port facilities. On a smaller scale, local historians and sociologists can also
benefit from the collation of these sources into a historical subtopic, as measuring the growth of
naval power and the influx of sailors into the area will provide important demographic
information, such as a timeline of population growth, housing needs, food import, and
technological developments as a result of the presence of the Navy in the area. The presence of
Norfolk Naval Station, the Naval Shipyard, and the Air Station, are necessary topics of study in

10. order to understand the demography, economy, and culture of Hampton Roads as a whole,
Though deeper sociological research would be required to make use of these sources for that
purpose, that avenue does exist for the intrepid historian, looking to merge local history and
sociology.

11. Bibliography
1. Lemieux, Gayle. 1995. "NAS Norfolk." Naval Aviation News 77, no. 2: 10. MasterFILE
Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed October 19, 2015).(accessible via web at
http://proxy.lib.odu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5
h&AN=9504034022&site=eds-live&scope=site)
2. U.S. Naval Air Station, Norfolk, Virginia. Baton Rouge, La: Printed by Army and Navy
Pub, 1944.
3. Hampton Roads Naval Historical Foundation. Images of America: Naval Station
Norfolk. Arcadia Publishing, Charleston, South Carolina, 2014. (Accessed via ODU
Special Collections, Perry Library)
4. United States, and Marshall W. Butt. Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Portsmouth, Virginia; A
Brief History. Portsmouth: [U.S. Navy, Publications and Print. Office, Fifth Naval
District], 1956. (Accessed Via ODU Special Collections, Perry Library)