Vintage color photos show WWII air cadets in training at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, 1942

vintage photos naval air station corpus christi

Aviation Cadet Thanas inspects an airplane engine.

This collection of photos from Naval Air Station Corpus Christi during World War II shows the American war effort at full speed and the air cadets in training.

The facility covered 20,000 acres (81 km2) and had 997 hangars, shops, barracks, warehouses, and other buildings. It had 800 instructors taking in classes of 300 new cadets every month.

A 980-foot rail-highway bridge and a 400-foot trestle bridge across Oso Bay had been built; a twenty-mile-long railroad was built in thirty-five days. A sixteen-inch cast iron water pipe was laid from Corpus Christi to Flour Bluff.

Eight miles of 100 pair telephone cables for a permanent telephone system were laid in ten days. Completed only three months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the base became a crucial source for planes and aviators.

During the course of World War II more than 35,000 aviators earned their wings there including future President George H.W. Bush, who graduated in 1943 just days before his 19th birthday. In 1944, the base was the largest naval aviation training facility in the world.

In 1942, Office of War Information photographer Howard R. Hollem visited the famous military base and documented Navy cadets and members of the National Youth Administration as they assembled, repaired, and trained with various aircraft and war machines.

The base was just one of the military marvels that popped up when WWII began to take shape and the United States edged closer to entering the fray. Within months of the base’s June completion, Pearl Harbor was attacked and the country was plunged into war.

In World War Two the program took ten months to graduate; today it takes eighteen months, mostly due to the increased complexity of aircraft.

Navy N2S primary land planes.

A sailor tries on a new type of protective clothing and gas mask for use in chemical warfare.

Virginia Davis, a riveter in the assembly and repair department of the Naval Air Base, supervises Charles Potter, an NYA trainee from Michigan.

Jesse Rhodes Waller, A.O.M., third class, tries out a 30-caliber machine gun he has just installed in a Navy plane.

Working inside the nose of a PBY, Elmer J. Pace learns the construction of Navy planes. As an NYA trainee at the Naval Air Base, he gets practical experience. After about eight weeks, he will go into civil service as a sheet metal worker.

Learning to work a cutting machine, two NYA employees receive training to fit them for important work. After eight weeks they will be eligible for civil service jobs at the Naval Air Base.

Doris Duke works on reconditioning spark plugs in the Assembly and Repair Department.

Jesse Rhodes Waller, A.O.M., third class, tries out a .30-caliber machine gun he has just installed on a Navy plane.

Mildred Webb, an NYA trainee at the base, learns to operate a cutting machine in the Assembly and Repair Department.

Cadet L. Deitz boards a plane.

Cowler Lorena Craig works on the tail of a plane.

Virginia Young, right, a Pearl Harbor widow, is a supervisor in the Assembly and Repairs Department of the Naval Air Base. Her job is to find convenient and comfortable living quarters for women workers from out of the state, like Ethel Mann, who operates an electric drill.

Eloise J. Ellis is a senior supervisor in the Assembly and Repairs Department. She buoys morale in her department by arranging suitable living conditions for out-of-state employees and by helping them with their personal problems.