The Navy’s first extensive installation at Newport, the U. S. Naval Torpedo Station, was established on Goat Island in 1869. Today, a hundred years later, the Naval Complex includes 35 shore commands with operational functions which vary in nature from the Naval War College, on the east side of Narragansett Bay, to the Naval Construction Battalion Center at Davisville, on the west side. The deep waters of the bay, and the facilities at Newport, Quonset Point, and Davisville, provide excellent headquarter sites for the Commander, Cruiser-Destroyer Force, Atlantic Fleet; Commander, Service Squadron Two; Commander, Fleet Air, Quonset; Commanders, Carrier Divisions 14 and 20, and the Commander, Naval Construction Battalions, Atlantic Fleet.
Approximately 38,000 officers and men are required to man the Newport/Quonset Point Naval Complex and the 66 ships home ported there. In addition, 10,000 civilian workers are employed by the Navy throughout the complex. The annual Navy-civilian payroll, which exceeds $225 million, makes a significant impact on the Rhode Island economy.
Naval War College
Overlooking Narragansett Bay from Coasters Harbor Island in Newport, is the U. S. Naval War College, the senior educational institution in the Navy. Established in 1884, the college is now composed of the schools of Naval Warfare and Command and Staff, which teach 10-month, graduate-level courses to 350 senior and mid-career officers.
A Naval Command Course is also conducted for about 30 Free World forces officers selected for participation by their respective countries.
The faculty, a blend of highly qualified civilian professors and military instructors, is augmented by an impressive list of guest speakers.
A diversified curriculum places emphasis on the development of reasoning powers and the exercise of judgment in positions of high responsibility. Included are studies on seapower, economics, international relations, and military management.
In June, studies culminate with the highlight of the academic year, the Global Strategy Discussions. Leaders of many professions in America are invited to the discussions as guests of the Secretary of the Navy.
A graduated development plan calls for 700 resident students by 1980, and the planning for five new buildings on campus is now in progress.
Construction Battalion Center
Headquarters for the Commander, Naval Construction Battalions (Seabees), Atlantic Fleet, is the sprawling Construction Battalion Center at Davisville, across Narragansett Bay from Newport, adjacent to NAS, Quonset Point.
Four mobile construction battalions are homeported at Davisville and, between deployments, intensive training in various Seabee skills is offered at the Naval Schools Construction command at the Center.
The Center also provides logistical support for naval construction forces, and has supported Antarctic exploration through the Seabees assigned to Operation Deep Freeze since 1954.
Davisville was commissioned as an Advanced Base Depot in July 1942. The Construction Battalion Center’s plant is now valued at $86 million, and 81,000 construction items, from shovels to bulldozers, are stocked.
Officer Candidate School
Established in 1951 to provide officers during the Korean Conflict, the Naval Officer Candidate School (OCS) now trains about 44 per cent of the officers commissioned in the Navy each year. The mission of OCS is to prepare its students for duty as division and watch officers at sea.
Four months of intensive classroom and physical training introduce Navy organization, tactics, and technology to the more-than-4,000 officer candidates now annually graduated. Seamanship, weapons, basic engineering, and navigation have been stressed in recent years, and the curriculum totals 565 hours. Training afloat is accomplished in the flotilla of eight Patrol Craft (YP).
Officer candidates in training hold degrees from colleges throughout the United States. They are commissioned in the Supply, Engineer, and Medical Service Corps, as well as the Line. Another source of officer candidates is the Naval Enlisted Scientific and Education Program (NESEP).
More than 60,000 officers have been graduated from OCS since 1951, and the top 15 per cent of present classes are offered commissions in the Navy.
The material plant of OCS has improved from a random collection of 40 World War II-vintage structures to a permanent modern campus, where the completion of eight new buildings is scheduled for 1973.
NAS, Quonset Point
Jutting into Narragansett Bay 22 miles south of the state capital at Providence, is the Quonset Point Naval Air Station, chiefly a base for antisubmarine air units.
Commissioned in July 1941, the base site was chosen for its relative freedom from fog and its access to a deep water channel to the open sea. Two antisubmarine aircraft carriers, the Wasp (CVS-18) and the Intrepid (CVS-11), are homeported at Quonset.
The base, which “loaned” its name to the ubiquitous Quonset Hut of World War II fame, presently supports nine aircraft squadrons, plus various tenant and fleet activities. A wide variety of aircraft fly from Quonset, ranging from the S2E Trackers and SH-3A Sea Kings of the ASW air groups, to the ski-equipped LC-130 Hercules of Antarctic Development Squadron Six.
The base is comprised of more than 900 buildings, and employs over 1,600 civilian workers. About 6,700 military personnel are attached to Quonset in addition to the ships’ companies of the two carriers.
Naval Air Rework Facility
The Naval Air Rework Facility (NARF), a tenant activity at the Quonset Point Naval Air Station, is the largest industrial employer in Rhode Island. Fifty-two officers and men and approximately 3,300 civilians, representing 109 skills, spend about six million man hours yearly overhauling more than 450 aircraft and 425 engines at NARF.
Other responsibilities include annually reworking over 10,000 types of aircraft components, such as avionics equipment and air-to-air refueling devices.
The Facility is the designated overhaul point for six aircraft types, among them the S-2 Tracker, the A-1 Skyraider, and the H-3 Sea King. It also provides service for a wide variety of other aircraft when required. Overhaul and maintenance is performed on four jet and two reciprocating types of engines.
Designated in 1941 as the Overhaul and Repair Department of the Quonset Point Naval Air Station, NARF was commissioned as a separate command in April 1967. Expansion and improvement of the plant is under way, with $26 million already appropriated for this purpose for the next five years.
U. S. Naval Justice School
As the Navy’s only “law school,” the U. S. Naval Justice School in Newport has the responsibility of teaching the principles of military justice to officers in the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard.
Here, non-lawyer line officers from various commands attend a five-week course that qualifies them to cope with legal matters in commands not having billets for Navy lawyers. Professional Navy lawyers, on the other hand, attend a 10-week course which emphasizes practical law exercises and moot courts. A course in court reporting, legal clerkship, and administrative procedures is offered to enlisted men of all the Services.
The Naval Justice School began at Port Hueneme, California, during the early days of World War II with a mission to indoctrinate Seabees in the procedures of naval courts and boards. The course evolved into a formal school in 1947, and was relocated in Newport in 1950.
All officers on the Justice School staff, with the exception of one line officer, hold degrees in law and have been admitted to practice in state or federal jurisdiction, or both.
Naval Underwater Weapons Research and Engineering Station
Placing major emphasis on solving problems associated with antisubmarine warfare, the Naval Underwater Weapons Research and Engineering Station (NUWS) has been assigned the responsibility, by the Chief of Naval Material, for the development of advanced underwater weapons systems and missiles.
The station employs more than 1,400 civilian workers, including some 500 engineers, mathematicians, and scientists.
The NUWS has conducted research, tests and evaluations on various projects, including a prototype target motion analyzer integrated with a Poseidon computer, an acoustic influence exploder device for torpedoes and the ASROC launcher. Laboratories, such as those used for testing the SUBROC missile and fire control systems, evaluate not only existing weapons, but also the feasibility of other systems not yet in existence.
The NUWS Deep-Depth Propulsion Test Laboratory, used to test torpedoes at extreme depth, is believed to be the only one of its kind in the world. A torpedo-firing pier and range are located on Gould Island in Narragansett Bay to assist NUWS in the evaluation of these weapons.
Fleet Training Center
The Fleet Training Center (FTC) traces its history back to the first U. S. Naval Recruit Training Station established at Newport in 1883.
Its mission today is to provide training, much of it with simulators and mockups, that cannot practically be accomplished on board ship.
More than 85 courses in antisubmarine warfare, damage control, communications, weapons, navigation and leadership are offered at the school. Last year, more than 39,000 students were trained in courses lasting from a half-day to six weeks.
The Center’s facilities range from ship mockups, built during World War II, for fire fighting and damage control, to a new $2.5 million antisubmarine attack trainer which began operation in March 1968.
The FTC trains pre-commissioning crews as well as ships’ companies.
U. S. Naval Destroyer School
The U. S. Naval Destroyer School was established in July 1961 to provide instruction for officers in such subjects as weapons, operations, and engineering.
Designed to provide the qualifications necessary for an officer to be head of a department, the School’s course is divided almost equally between classroom and practical, on-the-job-like training. Destroyers are assigned to the school, when they are needed, for four-week training cruises during which students practice skills learned in the classroom.
The School accepts only candidates qualified as officer-of-the-deck, and last year graduated 590 students. Student officers make extensive use of the school’s engineering laboratory, as well as tactical and shiphandling trainers located at the near-by Fleet Training Center.
Special training is also extended to prospective destroyer commanding and executive officers, and to a small number of officers from the Australian and West German navies who are serving in destroyers built in the United States.
Also, more than 1,000 enlisted men of the Destroyer Force received engineering training at the school in 1968 in courses ranging from boiler maintenance to repairs on electrical components in the fireroom.