NAVAL STATION NORFOLK

[OLDNAVYMCPO]

The worlds largest Navy Yard is 100 years old this mouth. I never spent a great deal of time there, just long enough to catch a ship leaving or to offload one when we returned from deployment.

Went aboard the USS America there in '65 for carrier quals. Went there again in '70 to make preparations to deploy on a round the world cruise and deployment to Westpac, again on the America.

Went there again in '71-'72 for deployment on a Med cruise on the USS Independence. Interspersed, went there for conferences and carrier quals.

I'm sure some of you East Coast sailors were home-ported there. Some pretty wild times were to be had on the waterfront in those days.

 

[Chuck24]

The local paper, the Virginian Pilot has been running a lot of stories and photos. They are available on line. Today they had photos of women mechanics on the Catalinas and Truman visiting the Missouri.

 

[OLDNAVYMCPO]

The local paper, the Virginian Pilot has been running a lot of stories and photos. They are available on line. Today they had photos of women mechanics on the Catalinas and Truman visiting the Missouri.

Check this out, some really neat photos.

 

[chopshopcop]

Just drove there on Father's Day weekend, actually to Yorktown to see my granddaughter graduate high school. My daughter retired from the Navy in 2015, her last duty station was Norfolk. She decided to remain there and currently works at Naval Weapons Station Yorktown.

Beautiful country and tons of history there, would have loved to stay longer, but the wife had to get back for work.

 

[i1afli]

My mom was born and raised in Norfolk and had a clerical job at Norfolk Naval Station during WWII. She met my father while he was stationed there hunting Nazi uboats off the coast aboard the Destroyer Escort USS Snowden. As a kid during the 1960s and 70s we'd visit Norfolk and stay at my Aunt's beach cottage directly across Willoughby Bay from the Naval Station. I still remember the sound of the airplanes revving up on the runways. So although I never set foot on the base I definitely feel a connection to it.

 

[Grayback]

I was stationed there in 1962 when the USS Enterprise CVN-65
was brand new. The "Big E" was so big it could not tie
up at the pier at the time. We had to use Liberty Launchs
to get back and forth. We also had "Liberty Cards".

 

[richardw]

The last time I was in Norfolk NB was in 1983. Boarded an LPH to go the relieve the first battalion landing team of 8th Marines. I was a Master Sergeant in the second battalion landing tea. We set sail for Beirut on October 18. We were rerouted on October 20 to Grenada for the invasion. On October 23 we invaded Grenada and the Marine Barraks in Beirut was blown up by a truck bomb. If we had set sail a week earlier I might not be writing this. As I recall Norfolk was a good place to be stationed on permanent duty because you could get to Virginia Beach easily. Ah yes, I did have a few good times in Virginia Beach while stationed at Quantico and with a few days liberty. I shipped out on number of cruises from Norfolk. First one was Baybof Pigs and second was Cuban Missile Crisis. The thing I rember most about Norfolk how many ships they had there. I thought it was the whole Navy until I got to Pendleton in CA and shipped out of SanDiego.

 

[NYlakesider]

My biggest relocation of being there is under 21 had to drink the dishwater NEAR Beer. Very week. As I came from NYS where the drinking age was 18 it was a very big let down. As a big boy I got served at home at about 16 YO.

 

[ohioseabee]

In 1966 I learned that Granby Street was a den of iniquity for a young Seaman Deuce!

 

[Bastogne71]

I was born and raised in Norfolk. One of my favorite USN memories was the sign in a bar window on South Granby Street that said "No dogs or sailors allowed" It was not a joke!

As a kid of 8-9 years old, it was perfectly safe for me to wander alone past the bars and hot mattress hotels to my favorite pawn shops to ogle the knives and guns.

When it came time for me to serve, I went Army - I had seen enough of Navy life.

 

[CajunBass]

I've never been in the Navy, but when I was in the 5th grade we took a class trip to "Norfolk." Must have been about '65 or so. I remember we visited a destroyer tender "Shenandoah" maybe...that sounds right, but it was a long time ago. Anyway, I remember one of the guides, who seemed to be an old man to me, telling us they pulled the ship away from the pier twice a year and turned it around and put it back in. That way they could say they'd been to sea. He also said they had to break the ship off the mound of coffee grounds it was sitting on every time.
Even then I knew a sea story when I heard one.

On the same trip, we went to Oceana NAS as part of the trip. They did a demonstration of firefighting on an old F-8. I was a plane geek even then so I recognized it. They towed it out of the tarmac, spilled fuel around it, and set it afire. A couple of guys in aluminum suits ran in, got a dummy out of the plane, ran out, the firetruck moved in and blew the fire out like you'd blow out a match with foam, which I believe was pretty new then.

That was to set the scene. As we moved away, one of the teachers, a really pretty girl in her early twenties I guess, the first young pretty teacher I'd ever seen (she was my fifth grade teacher.), cried out. "Nobody move. I lost my contact." Everyone stopped. Then they started to carefully look all over the ground. After a few minutes one young sailor spoke up. "I see it." WHERE? "It's right there." he said, pointing at the back of the teachers knee. There it was, caught on her stocking. To this day I remember an older man, probably a chief, yelling, "WHAT IN THE XXXX were you looking THERE for?"