Naval Air Station Melbourne (1942-1946) — Melbourne, Florida

Naval Air Station Melbourne was a United States Navy fighter school that operated at the Melbourne airport in Brevard County from 1942 to 1946. The Florida Division of Historical Resources marker placed in 2001 describes a 129-building station constructed at the Melbourne Municipal Airport at the beginning of World War II, commissioned as Operational Training Unit #2 on October 20, 1942 and closed on February 15, 1946. Its job was narrow and urgent: take newly commissioned Navy and Marine aviators and turn them into fighter pilots before they shipped out.

The marker counts more than 2,200 pilots trained at NAS Melbourne in the Grumman F4F Wildcat and the F6F Hellcat. At its height the station served more than 310 officers and 1,355 enlisted personnel, at a time when Melbourne itself had 4,011 residents in 1945, according to the Genealogical Society of South Brevard. The same field is now Melbourne Orlando International Airport, and the marker notes that the area is operated today by the City of Melbourne Airport Authority.

The airfield predates the war by more than a decade. Space Coast Daily (December 8, 2024) reports that the Melbourne airport began in 1928 when a Pitcairn Aircraft landed on a cow pasture strip north of Kissimmee Highway, today US 192, and that airmail service started late that year when the strip was designated a fueling stop. In 1933 the City of Melbourne acquired 160 acres west of Indian River Bluff to develop as a new airport, the tract the Navy would later build on.

Wartime planning reached Melbourne before Pearl Harbor. The Museum of Florida History states that as early as June 1940 the Civil Aeronautics Authority authorized a Civilian Pilot Training facility at the field, and that Congressman Joe Hendricks convinced the Roosevelt administration to designate the old Melbourne airport a Naval Air Station. Weona Cleveland, writing for the Genealogical Society of South Brevard, adds that the station was developed from the Melbourne-Eau Gallie Airport, which had been dedicated only the year before the Navy arrived in 1942.

Pacific Wrecks records the commissioning itself: on October 20, 1942, Vice Admiral Arthur B. Cook came down from NAS Jacksonville with his staff to commission the Melbourne field as an advanced fighter training base, with Captain Charles W. Crawford as its first commanding officer. The first class to graduate from NAS Melbourne had ten students.

Training at Melbourne was the last stage before combat. The Museum of Florida History lists advanced flight training in SNJ Texans, F4F Wildcats and F6F Hellcats, under the Naval Air Operational Training Command in Jacksonville. Peak activity came in mid-1944, when 150 Hellcats were in use and as many as 1,500 naval personnel were on base. Weona Cleveland's history of Melbourne sums up the station's purpose in a single line: men were trained there in Hellcat planes for combat in World War II.

NAS Melbourne did not work alone. The Museum of Florida History places auxiliary fields at Malabar and Valkaria and notes that the Valkaria field served to launch and land airplanes in simulated aircraft carrier conditions. Pacific Wrecks adds a gunnery target range at Lake Hell-N-Blazes among the Melbourne training sites. The U.S. Bureau of Aeronautics also tested engines and aircraft at the Melbourne station.

Instructors included one of the war's best known naval aviators. Pacific Wrecks reports that Lieutenant Commander David P. McCampbell served at NAS Melbourne as a Landing Signal Officer instructor until August 1943 and went on to become the Navy's highest scoring ace of World War II. Training was dangerous: the state marker records that 63 of the pilots trained at Melbourne died in aerial accidents and two enlisted men died in ground-related accidents.

The base population changed as the war went on. The Museum of Florida History reports that WAVES, the Navy's women's reserve, were stationed at NAS Melbourne in 1944, and that in 1945 German prisoners of war were held at the station as laborers in the base laundry and mess facilities. The war was close to the Brevard shoreline in other ways too: Weona Cleveland records that German submarine warfare took place just off Melbourne's coast, with several ships sunk.

One wartime building is still standing at the airport. According to the Museum of Florida History, the base Ship's Service and Recreation Building survives as the one extant structure, and during the war it hosted basketball games, movies, dance parties and lectures for the Melbourne garrison. Pacific Wrecks lists a Melbourne Airport Museum, also called the NAS Melbourne Museum, inside the passenger terminal.

The Navy left Melbourne on February 15, 1946. Pacific Wrecks reports that in 1947 the entire base was deeded to Melbourne and returned to civilian use as Melbourne Municipal Airport, and Space Coast Daily confirms the field came back to the city as a surplus property airport and was deeded in 1947. Scheduled airline service followed in 1953, when Eastern Airlines began flights with the Martin 4-0-4, according to both Pacific Wrecks and the Genealogical Society of South Brevard history.

The leftover Navy buildings housed the next chapter of Melbourne's economy. The Florida Tech archives record that Radiation, Inc., founded by Homer Denius and George Shaw in 1950, was first located in an old Naval building at the Melbourne Airport; that company was acquired by Harris in 1967. The base also served Melbourne's segregated school system: Space Coast Living reports that after Melbourne Vocational School burned in 1953, Black students attended school at a building on the old naval base at Melbourne Airport until Stone School opened in 1958.

Space Coast Daily reports that the city ran the field as a municipal airport until 1967, when it created the Melbourne Airport Authority. The airport was briefly called Cape Kennedy Regional Airport before city officials renamed it Melbourne Regional Airport in 1973, and Pacific Wrecks records the 2015 renaming to Orlando Melbourne International Airport.

Two markers recall the station. The Florida Division of Historical Resources lists its Naval Air Station Melbourne marker in Brevard County with a 2001 date, and Pacific Wrecks places the Florida Heritage Landmark marker F-441 on the east side of Eddie Allen Road between Joe Walker Road and the Trailer Haven Community Center, on the airport grounds in Melbourne. The marker text closes the story where the field stands today, operated by the City of Melbourne Airport Authority.

Space Coast Daily (December 2024) describes the present MLB as a public airport governed by a seven-member board appointed by the Melbourne City Council and the private sector, whose budget is part of the Melbourne municipal budget and which receives no local tax dollars. The same report lists Northrop Grumman, L3Harris, Embraer and Collins Aerospace among the companies on the former Navy field.