NAVAL AIR STATION WHITING FIELD

This 1940's photograph of Whiting field clearly shows the arrangement of the North and South Fields.

As America entered into the hostilities of World War II, the requirement for training Navy pilots increased dramatically. The center of Naval Aviation training was the Pensacola area and its seaplane and land-plane facilities. The land-plane facility at Naval Air Station Pensacola was Chevalier Field, which was small and inadequate for pilot training of such magnitude. By 1941, the Navy had already added three auxiliary airfields to facilitate pilot training—Corry, Saufley,  and Ellyson Fields. These airfields were followed by Barin and Bronson Fields in 1942, and by Whiting Field in 1943. The site selected for Whiting Field, named in honor of Captain Kenneth Whiting, was a 2920 acre site located six miles north of Milton, Florida.

Whiting Field was the largest of Pensacola’s auxiliary airfields, actually consisting of two separate airfields—North Whiting and South Whiting. Each Airfield had four 6,000 ft. paved runways, and the two fields were located about one mile apart. The outlying fields (OLF’s) used by the training units at Whiting Field included the airfields at Brewton and Evergreen, Alabama, and the present site of the Pensacola Regional Airport.

During World War II, various kinds of training were conducted at Whiting Field, with SNB, SNJ, and PB4Y-1 aircraft.

The Navy’s first jet training squadron was based at Whiting Field after the war, as was the Navy’s Blue Angel Flight Demonstration Team, flying the F8F Bearcat. After the outbreak of hostilities in Korea in 1950, Whiting Field provided basic training in the SNJ Texan for virtually all Navy flight students. In 1955, the Beech T-34 was introduced into the primary training role at Whiting Field. A year later, the T-34 unit was transferred to Saufley Field, and in 1956 the T-28 Trojan was introduced at Whiting. The T-28 was eventually replaced as the primary training aircraft by the Beech T-34. The current basic trainer used at Whiting Field is the turboprop powered beech T-34C, which replaced earlier piston-powered versions of the T-34. Interestingly, the T-34C will soon be replaced by the Raytheon T-6A Texan II, another turboprop powered aircraft.

In 1974, Navy helicopter training, which had previously been located at Ellyson Field, was moved to South Whiting, and Ellyson Field was closed. Today, Whiting Field continues to provide all Navy primary flight training, and all Navy helicopter training.

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

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