NAVAL TECHNICAL TRAINING CENTER, CORRY STATION

(Formerly NAVAL AUXILIARY AIR STATION CORRY FIELD)

This historical photograph of Corry Field clearly shows both the East and West Fields. The former NAAS is now the site of the Naval Technical Training Center, Corry Station. The hangars and other buildings are still in use, although in a highly modified form. The West Field runways are now the site of the Naval Hospital, Pensacola, while the East Field runways are the site of the Navy Exchange Shopping Mall.

Corry Field was the first auxiliary field established by the Navy to support flight training operations at the Pensacola Flight School. In 1922, a site north of Pensacola was obtained from the Escambia County Commission on a no-cost, five-year lease. The airfield constructed at this site was named Corry Field in honor of LCDR William M. Corry, who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his attempt to rescue a fellow crew member from a burning aircraft.

At the end of the lease period the site was deemed too small, and a new and larger site—located three miles north of NAS Pensacola—was presented to the Navy by the County Commission. The Corry Field name was applied to this new site, and the older field became an outlying field (OLF) known as Old Corry Field. Old Corry Field Road in Warrington remains today as a vestige of this early symbol of Navy flight training.

Flight training began in 1927 at the new Corry Field, and in 1932 construction of hard surfaced runways, hangars, and other buildings transformed Corry Field into a first-class training field, one of the first airfields in the United States to be hard surfaced. The new Corry Field actually consisted of two separate fields, each with three asphalt runways. The longest runways were 4200 feet in length. In the years preceding America’s entry into World War II, primary flight training, fighter training, and multi-engine land-plane training was conducted there. An instructor school was also housed there.

In 1943, Corry Field was designated a Naval Auxiliary Air Station (NAAS), and primary flight training was moved to other airfields in the area. For the remainder of the war, Corry Field hosted advanced training in multi-engine land-planes, using SNB aircraft. A transport squadron operating R4D and R5O aircraft was located there as well, because the runways at NAS Pensacola were too short for the safe operation of these aircraft.

At the end of the war, Corry Field was decommissioned as a NAAS, but remained an active training field until its closure in 1958. At the time of closure, Corry Field provided the basic instrument portion of primary training in SNJ, SNB, and T-28 aircraft.

In 1960, the Naval Communications Technician School was transferred from Imperial Beach, California, to a newly refurbished Corry Field, now renamed Corry Station. This transfer began a rejuvenation of the Corry Field site as major Navy training facility. Today, it is known as the Naval Technical Training Center, Corry Station, and it hosts the Navy’s cryptology, electronic warfare, and optical/instrumentation schools. The hangars built in 1934, internally highly modified for their specific training purposes, remain today as visual reminders of those early days of Navy flight training. The control tower also remains intact and has been designated an historic structure.

(Excerpted from U.S. Naval Air Stations of World War II, by M. L. Shettle, Jr.)

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