Naval Station Norfolk (Naval Operating Base Norfolk)

Naval Station Norfolk is a United States Navy installation at Sewell's Point, on the Hampton Roads peninsula at Norfolk, Virginia, on the Chesapeake Bay approaches. It is the headquarters and home port of United States Fleet Forces Command and the principal Atlantic Fleet base. The station occupies about 4 miles (6.4 km) of waterfront and 11 miles (18 km) of pier and wharf frontage, and holds the largest concentration of U.S. Navy forces of any single installation.

The station is home port to four carrier strike groups and their assigned surface combatants, to Military Sealift Command ships, and to attack submarines of the Atlantic Fleet. Submarine Squadron 6 and Submarine Squadron 8 are headquartered there, with Los Angeles-class and Virginia-class boats homeported alongside pre-commissioning units of further Virginia-class hulls. Port Services controls more than 3,100 ship movements annually.

Shore and operational commands headquartered at Norfolk include United States Second Fleet, Navy Region Mid-Atlantic, Navy Warfare Development Command, Carrier Strike Group Four, Naval Surface Force Atlantic, Navy Expeditionary Combat Command, the Naval Reserve Force, Navy Fleet Readiness Centers, Naval Computer and Telecommunications Area Master Station Atlantic, the Naval Safety Center, the Navy Exchange Command, and elements of Commander Navy Installations Command. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service maintains its Norfolk Field Office headquarters and a resident agency on the base.

Chambers Field, operated adjacent to the waterfront, provides the station's air component, with aircraft hangars and aviation facilities supporting fleet squadrons. Air operations run in excess of 100,000 movements a year, an average of about 275 flights daily. The field includes an Air Mobility Command terminal handling over 150,000 passengers and 264,000 tons of mail and cargo annually on AMC and AMC-chartered aircraft. Accompanied personnel are housed partly on base through a public-private venture managed by Liberty Military Housing.

The Navy established the Headquarters of the 5th Naval District at Norfolk in 1915, and following United States entry into the First World War the Military Deficiency Appropriation Bill of April 1917 funded purchase and development of the site, with construction of the Naval Operating Base beginning that July; a seaplane field opened in October 1917 and later separated as Naval Air Station Hampton Roads. Expansion resumed from 1939, adding runways and seaplane ramps, and the air station became a fleet training airfield by 1943. The Naval Operating Base was renamed Naval Station Norfolk on 1 January 1953. Post-Cold War consolidation merged Naval Station Norfolk and Naval Air Station Norfolk into a single installation on 5 February 1999.