South Weymouth Naval Air Station
| Naval Air Station South Weymouth | |||||||||||||||||||
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NAS South Weymouth in 2006
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| Summary | |||||||||||||||||||
| Airport type | Military: Naval Air Station | ||||||||||||||||||
| Operator | United States Navy | ||||||||||||||||||
| Location | Weymouth, Rockland, and Abington, Massachusetts | ||||||||||||||||||
| Built | 1941–1942 | ||||||||||||||||||
| In use | (NAS) 1942–1945, (NAF/NAPS) 1945–1949, (ALF) 1949–1953, (NAS) 1953–1997 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Occupants | Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard | ||||||||||||||||||
| Elevation AMSL | 148 ft / 45 m | ||||||||||||||||||
| Coordinates | 42°08′55″N 070°56′23″W / 42.14861°N 70.93972°W | ||||||||||||||||||
| Runways | |||||||||||||||||||
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Closed To All Aviation Traffic
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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. Environmental contamination from wastes stored in 3 landfills was detected in 1986, and since 1993 the site has been on the National Priorities List of Superfund sites. 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.
In 1938, the site was surveyed as a possible location for a municipal airport, which was never built. Construction work on the base began in September 1941 and the base was commissioned as the United States Naval Air Station South Weymouth on 1 March 1942. During World War II the base's primary mission was to provide support for anti-submarine blimp operations. In its original as-built format South Weymouth's main facilities consisted of two gigantic blimp hangars, the earlier (LTA Hangar One or "The Big Hangar") of steel construction and the second (LTA Hangar Two) of the more common World War II standardized design of nearly all-wooden construction employed to conserve rationed metals. The base also had a 2,000-foot-diameter (610 m) Macadamized blimp landing mat, six mooring circles, and a 4,500-foot-long (1,400 m) cinder-surfaced turf runway.
Throughout the war with Germany, NAS South Weymouth served as the home base of airship patrol squadron ZP-11, which operated up to twelve K-class blimps employed on ASW patrols and convoy escort missions in and around Massachusetts Bay and the Gulf of Maine. Some historians and former Navy personnel allege that a ZP-11 blimp, the K-14, which crashed with loss of life off the coast of Bar Harbor, Maine on 2 July 1944 was actually shot down by a German submarine.
In addition to ZP-11, NAS South Weymouth also hosted wartime detachments of airship patrol squadron ZP-12 based at NAS Lakehurst, New Jersey and airship utility squadron ZJ-1 based at Meacham Field in Key West, Florida. ZJ-1 was unique, being the only airship utility squadron in the Navy. ZJ-1's South Weymouth detachment (Detachment 1) flew K and G-class airships in support of electronics research projects conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, performed aerial photography missions, and helped to recover test torpedoes for the Navy torpedo station in Newport, Rhode Island. A sub-detachment operated from Elizabeth Field on Fisher's Island, New York.
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