NAS Ellyson Field

Mid-World War II view of Ellyson Field looking northwest, 8 Sep ’43. VN-2 Vultee SNV Valiants occupy the ramp area.

Ellyson Field, the Navy’s helicopter training base for more than two decades dating from 1950, began as a proposed outlying landing field in 1940.

With the World War II expansion of flight training in 1940, the Navy purchased open farmland, designated Base Field 01913 (Site 3), 16 miles northeast of NAS Pensacola to serve as an auxiliary field for Chevalier Field. The new ALF was to be equipped with a hangar and repair unit.

As the war intensified, it was decided to make Site 3 into a larger field similar to Saufley and Corry Fields to assist in the planned increased flight training. Construction on the expanded facility, officially named Ellyson Field in honor of CDR Theodore G. “Spuds” Ellyson, the Navy’s first aviator, began on 26 February 1941.

Secure From Dedication, Launch Aircraft

The land version of the OS2U-3 Kingfisher was used along with the SNV at Ellyson Field from 1941 through late 1942.

Completed at a cost of slightly over $1.7 million, the new field consisted of six taxiways and runways, three hangars, administrative and operations buildings, barracks and a mess hall. On the morning of 1 October 1941, five divisions of aircraft from VN2D8 (Basic Training Squadron) flew in a huge V of division V’s from Chevalier Field to their new home at Ellyson. By 1100, dedication ceremonies for the new field were completed — and training flights began that afternoon!

VN-2A (VN-2 was split into two squadrons in October 1942) became Ellyson’s only training squadron during WW II and conducted intermediate basic training there until it was disestablished on 20 September 1945. At the time war was declared, VN-2’s old Vought SU, O3Us and SBU biplanes were being replaced by the landplane version of the Vought OS2U-3 Kingfisher and Vultee SNV-1/-2 Valiant, more commonly known as the “Vibrator.” The Kingfisher, used for formation training, was replaced by the SNV by fall 1942. At its peak, VN-2A operated almost 250 SNVs, which were used to conduct four weeks and 36 hours of familiarization, formation and night flying in single-engine monoplanes before the cadets, enlisted and officer students moved on to specialized intermediate courses in the SNJ, PBY, SNB and OS2U.

Ellyson Field was designated an NAAS on 1 January 1943, and in 1945 Pensacola’s Intermediate Instructor School with its SNJs, N2Ss, SNVs and N3Ns moved its operations to Ellyson. At the same time, a Gunnery Instruction Unit was based at Ellyson using SNJs for its fixed-gunnery curriculum. By 1945 the SNJ began to replace the SNV, and by the end of the war the Vibrators had disappeared from Ellyson and the Training Command.

From Idle to Full Power

In November 1945, with primary and basic training moving to Corpus Christi, the field was placed in a reduced status and used for trainer storage until it was deactivated and eventually disestablished in March 1947. During its three years of inactivity, portions of the field were released for civilian use. Occupying the facilities at Ellyson was a school for handicapped children and a training center for the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball club.

As the Korean War built up, an obvious factor in the progress of the war was the excellent job the helicopter was doing in the war zone. A large expansion of the helicopter flight training program was in the making.

A Bell HTL-6 hovers over the Ellyson ramp area while receiving an airborne refueling during an 8 Jun ’61 flight endurance attempt.

With this in mind, the Navy decided to reactivate Ellyson Field as a training base and move its helicopter pilot training from HU-2 at NAS Lakehurst to the Pensacola area where training activities were more easily controlled. In addition, there was land nearby available for expansion.

ALF Ellyson and Helicopter Training Unit One (HTU-1) were officially established together on 3 December 1950. The first 24-man class began its eight weeks of training on 15 January with a syllabus consisting of 60 hours of flight training and 35 hours of ground school. Prior to 1954, only Naval Aviators were eligible for what was considered post-graduate training.

All training flights except for some advanced instruction were initially conducted within the field boundaries. Since the mid-1950s training was also conducted at several outlying auxiliary fields that included Spencer and Sites 4, 6 and 8. “Pinwheel” or “Whirlybird” students, as they were known then, began their pre-solo and intermediate stages in the Bell HTL-4 and Hiller HTE-1/-2 trainers, and went on to fly the service-type Sikorsky HO3S-1 and Piasecki HUP-2 in the advanced stage. The HTEs were removed from Ellyson by late 1952 and the Sikorsky HO4S replaced the HO3S as an advanced trainer in mid-1957.

Helicopter Training in the Jet Age

HTU-1 was redesignated in March 1957 as a training group (HTG-1), and on 1 July 1960 it was in turn redesignated as Helicopter Training Squadron Eight (HT-8), the eighth squadron in the Basic Training Command.

A Sikorsky SH-34G Seabat hovers near the main gate of NAS Ellyson Field on 8 Feb ’64 as security personnel brace themselves against the heavy rotor wash.

In the late 1950s the helicopter came into its own with the development of the automatic stabilization equipment (ASE) and doppler navigation that provided helicopters with an all-weather capability. The jet-powered helicopters that quickly followed increased the community’s versatility and effectiveness. Following on the heels of the technological advances was the Vietnam War, which increased the need for helicopter pilots as well as the HT-8 training load.

In mid-1963 helo training was increased from 60 to 80 hours, with the extra 20 hours devoted to night and instrument training in the Sikorsky UH-34D/G Seabat/Seahorse, the new advanced trainer.

In November 1963, NASA requested that HT-8 provide a two-week familiarization course in the Bell TH-13 for 14 of its 15 original astronauts. The training also provided Lunar Excursion Module simulation used in the Project Apollo lunar landing program. This training continued throughout the 1960s for NASA support personnel and additional astronauts.

As a result of the increasing importance of helicopter aviation within the Navy and the accelerating activity at the installation, Ellyson was redesignated an NAAS on 26 August 1967 and, on 31 July 1968, as a Naval air station.

Training Activities Draw to a Close

Striving to establish an all-jet helicopter training program by mid-1970, HT-8’s piston-powered Bell primary trainers were replaced by the jet-powered Bell TH-57A Sea Ranger by 1969. The UH-34 advance trainer gave way to the Bell TH-1L Huey beginning in 1969.

Helicopter training at Ellyson was split with the establishment of HT-18 on 1 March 1972. Under the new system, students spent six weeks and 35 hours training in HT-8’s TH-57As and 10 weeks and 60 hours of advanced training in TH-1Ls assigned to HT-18.

Due to constant conflict with Pensacola’s civilian airport traffic pattern and the reorganization of the Training Command in 1972, it was decided to close Ellyson and move helicopter training in December 1973 to NAS Whiting Field.

The Bell UH-1L replaced the H-34 as the advanced helo trainer in 1969.

Flight operations ceased at NAS Ellyson Field on 28 December 1973, and soon afterward the base was declared a non-aviation activity and claimed by the Naval Education and Training Program Development Center. Following the training center’s move to Saufley Field in 1979, Ellyson was declared excess and the gates were permanently closed.

Visitors to the site of the former NAS Ellyson Field will discover that it is now an industrial park in which just a few of the buildings still stand, including the operations building, the two hangars, the academic training building, the dispensary and the BOQ that served the Navy personnel assigned to Ellyson. Portions of the runway and mat area likewise may be detected. Of the outlying sites, only Site 8 and Spencer Field remain actively used for helicopter training activities from Whiting.

But the days of constant day and night training activities in which thousands of student Naval Aviators sweated under instruction by sea-duty-hardened Navy, Marine and Coast Guard instructors in low-flying rotary wing aircraft are gone forever from the base on the bluffs above Escambia Bay.

The Bell TH-57 brought helo training into the jet age when introduced in 1968. Here, a fully instrumented TH-57C is en route to a training area over the Florida Panhandle countryside, 1998.