NAVAL STATION NORFOLK
The world's largest naval base — homeport of the Atlantic Fleet.
OVERVIEW
Naval Station Norfolk is the world's largest naval base by personnel and the headquarters of U.S. Fleet Forces Command, the Navy's force-generating command for the Atlantic. Spanning more than 4,600 acres on the Sewell's Point peninsula in Hampton Roads, Virginia, the installation supports roughly 75 ships and 134 aircraft across 14 deep-water piers and 11 aircraft hangars. On any given day, more than 75,000 active-duty Sailors, civilian employees, and contractors report to work here, supporting deployments to the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and beyond.
The base shares a peninsula with Chambers Field — one of the busiest military air operations centers in the world — and serves as the East Coast home for nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, guided-missile cruisers and destroyers, amphibious assault ships, and supporting auxiliaries. Naval Station Norfolk is the operational hub of a Hampton Roads military complex that also includes Naval Air Station Oceana, Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story, Naval Weapons Station Yorktown, and the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, making the region the largest concentration of U.S. Navy assets anywhere in the world.
KEY FACTS
- Largest Naval Base in the WorldBy personnel and infrastructure
- Home Port For~75 ships and 134 aircraft
- Piers14 piers and 11 aircraft hangars
- Daily Aircraft OperationsRoughly 100,000 per year at adjoining Chambers Field
- RegionHampton Roads, Sewell's Point peninsula
HISTORY
Naval Station Norfolk traces its origin to the 1907 Jamestown Exposition, a 300-year commemoration of the founding of the Virginia colony held on the Sewell's Point peninsula along the Hampton Roads waterway. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, the federal government purchased the exposition grounds — including the surviving "State Houses" — and commissioned Naval Operating Base Hampton Roads to support the rapidly expanding fleet. Several of the original brick exposition buildings still stand today as flag officer quarters along Dillingham Boulevard.
During World War II, Norfolk grew into the principal Atlantic Fleet anchorage, dispatching convoys to the European and Mediterranean theaters and training hundreds of thousands of Sailors and aviators. By war's end, the installation was sending warships, fuel, and material across the Atlantic on a near-continuous basis, and Chambers Field — built on adjacent Willoughby Bay marshlands — had become one of the busiest naval air stations in the country. The Cold War cemented Norfolk's role as the strategic homeport for U.S. carrier task forces patrolling the North Atlantic, the Caribbean, and the Mediterranean Sea.
In 1953, the installation became the headquarters of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, the predecessor command to today's U.S. Fleet Forces Command. The base expanded steadily through the latter half of the 20th century, accommodating the arrival of nuclear-powered cruisers and aircraft carriers as the surface and aviation forces modernized. Naval Station Norfolk supported every major U.S. naval contingency from the Cuban Missile Crisis to operations in the Persian Gulf, providing forward-deployable carrier strike groups, amphibious ready groups, and surface action groups.
Today, Naval Station Norfolk remains the operational center of gravity for the East Coast Navy. As the homeport of multiple carrier strike groups, the base routinely surges combat power into the Atlantic and Mediterranean and serves as the principal point of departure and return for nuclear-powered aircraft carriers operating from the East Coast. Its piers, hangars, schools, and headquarters facilities continue to define both the city of Norfolk and the modern American naval profession.
MAJOR COMMANDS & TENANT UNITS
- U.S. Fleet Forces Command
- Naval Air Force Atlantic
- Naval Surface Force Atlantic
- Submarine Force Atlantic (subordinate elements)
- Carrier Strike Group 12
- Carrier Strike Group 10
- Naval Information Forces
LOCATION & GEOGRAPHY
NOTABLE EVENTS
- 1917EstablishedCommissioned on the grounds of the 1907 Jamestown Exposition during World War I.
- 1953Atlantic Fleet HQBecame headquarters of U.S. Atlantic Fleet (now U.S. Fleet Forces Command).
- 2010USFFC RealignmentHosts U.S. Fleet Forces Command following Navy realignment.