Workers building Pax River lived in temporary barracks such as these, with few conveniences and less privacy.
From breaking ground to commissioning, it took less than a year, but that’s how things happen during a war. If there is a need, it gets filled fast.
So it was with Naval Air Station Patuxent River, which opened 65 years ago next week, albeit without ‘‘River” being part of the name. Ground was broken April 4, 1942; the station was commissioned April 1, 1943.
The idea was to centralize the Navy’s testing facilities, and with World War II less than four months old for the United States, construction work went fast as farms at Cedar Point were replaced by runways and hangars in short order.
Like today, the site had the twin advantages of being both isolated and nearby. As the 1943 press release announcing the base’s commissioning stated, ‘‘The new station is 60 airline miles southeast of Washington, D.C.”
At the same time, it could only be reached via a narrow, winding state highway. Two buses a day connected Washington and Leonardtown, the St. Mary’s County seat. The entire county population in 1940 was just 14,600 — not quite two-thirds of today’s Pax River work force.
None of the Sailors assigned to the new base when it opened could say the Navy sugar-coated the isolation. A ‘‘Notice to All New Hands” written in 1943 stated, ‘‘NAS Patuxent River is a big place and a long way from anywhere worth going to.”
To reinforce the point, another section announced, ‘‘Absence over leave is a constant danger because of the very poor transportation facilities in this part of the world.” But don’t bother saying so: ‘‘Unfortunately, this is not accepted as an excuse.”
The approximately 6,500 acres acquired by the Navy included well-developed farmland, numerous farm buildings, a small town, two churches and a summer colony along the Chesapeake Bay shoreline.
The town was named Pearson, and was at the time the business center of the community. It had a combination post office⁄general store, an auto dealership, and a community building. Cedar Point Methodist Church was part of Pearson.
Pearson’s post office was consolidated into nearby Jarboesville, which eventually changed its name to Lexington Park, in honor of the aircraft carrier USS Lexington (CV-2), sunk during the Battle of Coral Sea in May 1942.
Cedar Point Methodist Church was in the path of the new air station’s runways. It was demolished, and the approximately 100 graves moved at Navy expense to Ebenezer Cemetery on Chancellor’s Run Road. Its stained glass windows were removed and reinstalled in what is today the Lexington Park Methodist Church.
Among the few remains of the pre-NAS Pax River world are St. Nicholas Catholic Church, now the NAS Chapel, and the Mattapany-Sewell Historic Site.
The work force began at 650 people, but climbed to 6,000 in six months and peaked at nearly 9,000 within nine. Workmen were on a two-shift, 70-hour a week schedule, with average pay ranging from $110 to $170 a week — big money when the average family annual income was $2,561.
And this was not a commuting work force. To house and feed them all, 33 barrack-type buildings with tar paper roofs were constructed, along with a large cafeteria that could feed 600 workers at one sitting.
With that many workers, construction went at a record pace. By October 1943, maintenance became the responsibility of the base’s Public Works Department, and many of the workers, once released for other work by their contractors, signed on as NAS Patuxent’s first employees, even if government pay at that time was low compared with private industry.
The war made everything move fast. By mid-August 1943, Flight Test, Radio Test, Aircraft Armament and the Aircraft Experimental and Development Squadron were in place. By the end of 1944, there were Service Test, Electronics Test and Tactical Test Divisions.
In addition, the Naval Air Transport Service was here as well in the form of Air Transport Squadron 1.
The Naval Air Test Center became a formal entity on June 16, 1945, for the first time dividing the test and support components of the base. Forty-seven years later, on January 1, 1992, NATC became the Flight Test and Engineering Group with formal establishment of the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division.
NAS Patuxent quickly became known as ‘‘Pax River” throughout the Navy. Even on the day of its commissioning, Navy Bureau of Aeronautics Chief Rear Adm. John S. McCain referred to it as ‘‘Naval Air Station Patuxent River.”
In its early planning stages, the unofficial name had actually been ‘‘Cedar Point” or ‘‘Naval Air Station at Cedar Point,” but officials were concerned about possible confusion with the Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, N.C., so the new base was named for the nearby river instead.
During the war, hundreds of combat-experienced pilots came to Pax River. Because of that experience, they were well-suited to evaluate the combat-worthiness of aircraft and equipment.
Not only did they fly new American planes, they tested captured enemy aircraft as well, passing on their vulnerabilities and flight weaknesses to pilots in the fleet. Radar fire control, radar tracking, field lighting and instrument landing techniques were extensively tested and refined at Pax during the war years.
Pax River also saw testing of the first American all-jet airplane, the XP-59A Airacomet, in 1944. The FR-1 Fireball, a carrier-based plane that combined jet power with a conventional propeller engine followed in 1945. The Navy’s first all-jet aircraft to operate from a carrier, the FH-1 Phantom, was also tested in 1945.
The first American test of a jet on a carrier at sea came in 1946, when Lt. Cmdr. James Davidson flew a Phantom aboard USS Franklin D. Roosevelt. By that time, discussions between those early test pilots and aeronautical engineers led to establishment of a Test Pilot Training Division with formalized classroom instruction.
A year later, Cmdr. Turner Caldwell piloted a Douglas D-558-1 Skystreak to what was then a world’s speed record of 640.663 miles per hour, and in 1949 Capt. W.V. Davis of the Flight Test Division became the first Navy pilot to exceed the speed of sound. Pilots tested ejection seats in 1949, barrier engagements in 1951 and a simulated angled deck on USS Midway in 1952.
The Korean War saw Pax River testing jet aircraft and improving existing weapons for the war effort. Jets routinely eclipsed the speed of sound and airplane cannons were supplemented with guided missiles. In addition, several airborne early warning systems operated from Pax River in the 1950s, patrolling the Atlantic along the Distant Early Warning (DEW) line.
Rapidly advancing technology forced changes in test techniques and the NATC organizational structure. In 1953, the Tactical Test Division was merged with the Service Test Division. The U.S. Naval Test Pilot School was established in 1958, and the Weapons Systems Test Division was formed in 1960 through the consolidation of the Armament Test and Electronics Divisions.
E-Mail This Article
Print This Story