In 1941, seeking to find a suitable location for the site of an air station for the primary purpose of conducting testing on naval aircraft, Navy officials settled on a wooded peninsula at the confluence of the Patuxent River and Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. Its remoteness proved its greatest asset, there being only one road linking it to the nation’s capital sixty-five miles away, and unlimited air space above it, the latter allowing naval aviators to push aircraft to their limits unfettered by commercial airline traffic. When Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox approved the site for the establishment of a naval air station exactly one month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, little did he know that it would eventually train men who one day would blast into outer space and eventually walk on the surface of the moon. That day lay years in the future when construction began on what was initially called the Cedar Point Naval Experimental Flight Test Center. The 6,500-acre site blended past with present, the land encompassing two former estates complete with historic eighteenth century mansions, the farmland soon traversed by three concrete runways from which modern flying machines unimaginable to the estates’ early residents would operated. Commissioned on 1 April 1943 as Naval Air Station (NAS) Patuxent River, the station and its personnel were left with a clear mandate by Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics Rear Admiral John S. McCain, who stated in his speech for the occasion, “A great responsibility is put into your hands, for growth and change is still the very life of any air service which hopes to survive. I look to Patuxent River to carry a large part of the burden of ensuring that quality, imagination and resourcefulness are all included in our future equipment and in its typical use. You have the chance to make a great reputation...” The key step towards achieving that reputation came on 16 June 1945, when the process of consolidating all of the Navy’s aircraft testing at the new location was recognized with the establishment of Naval Air Test Center (NATC) Patuxent River. For naval aviators, “Pax River” developed into the place where there skills were put to the ultimate test outside the arena of combat, particularly with those assigned to the Flight Test Division, where new aircraft designs were put their paces to determine the absolute bounds of their flight envelopes. A formal program for teaching the proper procedures for flight testing convened its first class in 1945 and later developed into the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School, among its graduates Medal of Honor recipient James Stockdale, and astronauts Alan Shepard, Wally Schirra, John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, Pete Conrad, and John Young. Since that June day in 1944, NATC Patuxent River has been at the leading edge of naval aviation. The foundation for the Navy’s transition from propeller-driven aircraft to jets occurred in the hands of Pax River test pilots, who performed the initial evaluation of the adaptability of jet aircraft to aircraft carrier operations, made the first fully automatic carrier landing, and even tested the feasibility of operating a C-130 cargo plane from a flattop (that aircraft is currently in the museum’s collection). Aircraft that successfully waged war in hostile skies prepared for that service in the more peaceful skies over the Chesapeake Bay. In those same skies, test pilots of today are evaluating the VH-71, the new helicopter slated to outfit the Marine Corps’ Executive Flight Detachment in transporting the President of the United States, and the EA-18G Growler, the Navy’s newest electronic attack platform. In a sign of the times, test pilots are not on board another aircraft being evaluated at Pax River, the MQ-8B Fire Scout unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). All told, echoing the words of RADM McCain, Patuxent River remains today what it was in the days of yesteryear, “the most needed station in the Navy.” At right, an image showing the waterfront at Patuxent River in 1950 reveals the host of aircraft assigned to the Naval Air Text Center (NATC), including an F8F Bearcat, AD Skyraider, UF Albatross, and the tailless F7U Cutlass. Naval aviators felt that they had arrived when they passed through the front gate at Pax River, among them Lieutenant Alan B. Shepard, pictured third from left as part of the team evaluating the carrier suitability of the FJ-2 Fury in 1952. May 2008 April 2008 March 2008
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