Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst
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Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst (NAES Lakehurst), New Jersey, formerly the Lakehurst Naval Air Station then the Naval Air Engineering Center Lakehurst.
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[edit] History
It is most famous as the site of the Hindenburg Disaster on May 6, 1937. Despite the notoriety and well documented nature of this incident, today there is only a small white flag that denotes the location of the crash in the field behind the large hangars on base.
Prior to this event, the base was also the center of airship development in the United States and housed three of the Navy's four rigid airships (ZR-1) Shenandoah, (ZR-3) Los Angeles, and (ZRS-4) Akron. A number of the hangars built to berth these ships still survive. Hangar One, in which the Shenandoah was built, held the record for the largest "single room" in the world. According to an article in the January, 1925 issue of National Geographic Magazine, the hangar "could house three Woolworth buildings lying side by side."
The base also housed many Navy blimps before, during, and after WWII.
Today, the base is still used for airship development as well as for other Navy programs.
[edit] Geography
NAES Lakehurst is located at GR1
Elevation: 103 ft. / 31 m (estimated)
Time Zone UTC-5(-4DT)
[edit] Chronology
- 1915-1917 Ammunition proving ground for the Russian Imperial Government.
- 1917-1921 Acquired by U.S. Army as an ammunition proving ground. Named Camp Kendrick.
- 1921 Commissioned as a Naval Air Station (NAS) Lakehurst. Captain Frank Taylor Evans is the first Commanding Officer.
- 1921-1961 The country's (and, perhaps, the world's) Lighter Than Air (LTA) Center. In 1961, the Navy's LTA program was terminated.
- 1937 Hindenburg catches fire while approaching for a landing.
- 1958 The Naval Air Test Facility (NATF) was established.
- 1973 The Naval Air Engineering Center (NAEC) was relocated from Philadelphia as directed by a Shore Establishment Realignment.
- 1977 NAS and NATF were disestablished and merged into NAEC.
- 1992 The Naval Air Warfare Center (NAWC) was established. NAEC becomes the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division Lakehurst (NAWCADLKE).
- 1994 NAWCADLKE becomes the Naval Air Engineering Station (NAES) for shore station management and the Aircraft Platform Interface (API) Group for technical mission support.
- 1994 NAWCADLKE and the rest of the AIRCRAFT DIVISION reorganize into a Competency Aligned Organization.
- 1997 The Aircraft Division and Weapons Division are integrated into the Naval Aviation Systems Team's Competency Aligned Organization
- In February 2004, installation commanders from Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst, the Army's Fort Dix, and McGuire Air Force Base formed a partnership to generate joint solutions for common problems between the three contiguous bases and their tenant commands.
In 2005, the United States Department of Defense announced that Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst would be affected by a Base Realignment and Closure. It will be merged with two neighboring military bases, McGuire Air Force Base and Fort Dix, New Jersey, establishing Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J. This will be the first base of its kind in the United States.
