page_title: Naval Air Station South Weymouth
section_title: Post-war demobilization and Cold War use
hierarchical_section_title: Naval Air Station South Weymouth / Post-war demobilization and Cold War use
caption_attribution_description: A U.S. Navy North American YA-5C Vigilante (BuNo 149305) of Heavy Attack Squadron 3 (VAH-3) on display at Naval Air Station South Weymouth, Massachusetts (USA). This aircraft was later modified to an RA-5C and was destroyed in a fire abaord the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal (CVA-59) in the Gulf of Tonkin on 29 July 1967 while in service with RVAH-11.
context_page_description: Naval Air Station South Weymouth, was an operational United States Navy airfield from 1942 to 1997 in South Weymouth, Massachusetts. It was first established as a regular Navy blimp base during World War II. During the postwar era the base became part of the Naval Air Reserve Training Command, hosting a variety of Navy and Marine Corps reserve aircraft squadrons and other types of reserve units. Like most BRAC sites, environmental contamination was detected in 1986, and since 1993 numerous remedies and long term monitoring of ground water are in place. Since 2005, over 600 acres have been transferred to the affected towns for reuse, and in 2011 the Navy signed a $25 million contract to transfer its remaining land.
context_section_description: South Weymouth was downgraded from a naval air station to a naval air facility on 9 August 1945 after Germany surrendered, thus ending the U-Boat threat to the east coast, and was thereafter used to store surplus naval aircraft that were awaiting final disposition. Many of these aircraft, especially Eastern/Grumman TBM/TBF Avengers, were subjected to elaborate cocooning and preservation methods in the two huge blimp hangars. During this period of South Weymouth's history the base was known as a naval aircraft parking station or "NAPS". Naval Air Facility South Weymouth was placed into caretaker status on 30 June 1949 and downgraded again to an auxiliary landing field or "ALF".
  In 1950 the Navy decided to close Squantum Naval Air Station, traditionally the focus of Navy and Marine Corps reserve aviation training in New England, and move the reserve program to ALF South Weymouth. The decision to close NAS Squantum resulted from increasing incidents of airspace conflicts with Boston's commercial airport (modern-day Logan International Airport) in nearby East Boston and due to the fact that Squantum's relatively short and landlocked (waterlocked?) runways were not capable of supporting high-performance jet aircraft.
  Between 1952 and 1953 NAAF South Weymouth was rebuilt to make it more suitable for supporting conventional aircraft operations. In its original World War II format, the base was not really intended for regular use by heavier-than-air aircraft. Its cinder-covered turf runways were only intended for transient aircraft, the station's Beech GB Traveler, and other light utility aircraft. During the 1952–1953 reconstruction effort LTA Hangar Two (the wooden blimp hangar) was razed, three new paved runways (7,000-foot (2,100 m) north–south runway 17/35, 2,000-foot (610 m) east–west runway 08/26, and 5,000-foot (1,500 m) diagonally aligned runway 02/20) were built, and a CPN-4 ground-controlled-approach facility and modern control tower (the wartime base's control towers were located on top of LTA Hangar One) were established. South Weymouth was reactivated as a reserve training base and fully-fledged naval air station on 4 December 1953.
  Though officially a reserve base, NAS South Weymouth hosted an unusual regular Navy unit between 1953 and 1961. This was a secretive research and development outfit called the Naval Air Development Unit, known as "NADU" for short. The NADU, which derived in a way from Special Project Unit (SPU) CAST based at Squantum Naval Air Station during World War II, was tasked with providing flight testing support for research projects associated with the MIT Lincoln Laboratories and other defense contractors. Mainly, these research projects involved experimental electronic equipment such as radars associated with air defense and anti-submarine warfare systems. The NADU operated a diverse aircraft fleet that included (among other things) Lockheed WV-2 Warning Stars, Douglas F4D Skyrays, Douglas F3D Skyknights, Lockheed P2V Neptunes, and the ZPG-2W, which were the world's largest blimps.
  In December 1956 a new hangar, Hangar No. 2, was completed adjacent to runway 17/35 to support the fixed-wing ASW and attack squadrons. Runway 08/26 was lengthened to 6,000 feet during 1959. The construction work required on the eastern end of this runway permanently severed Union Street, which had served as a major thoroughfare connecting the towns of Rockland and Weymouth. Blimp operations were discontinued at NAS South Weymouth in July 1961 in advance of the disestablishment of the Naval Air Development Unit on 1 October.
  In March 1957, a ZPG-2, the Snow Bird, piloted by Commander Jack Hunt, USN, took off from South Weymouth, and landed 10½ days later at Naval Air Station Key West, after making two crossings of the Atlantic Ocean. The airship with a crew of 13 set a new "distance record of 9,740 miles, and an endurance record without refueling. All told, Snow Bird spent just over eleven days aloft in covering 9,448 miles without refueling. For his performance on the flight, the airship commander, CDR Jack R. Hun
caption: YA-5C Vigilante, in 1963
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