Norfolk Naval Shipyard (Gosport Shipyard)

Norfolk Naval Shipyard (NNSY), also known as the Norfolk Navy Yard, is a United States Navy industrial facility at Portsmouth, Virginia, on the western shore of the Elizabeth River a short distance upriver from its mouth at Hampton Roads. It is the oldest and largest industrial installation owned by the U.S. Navy. Despite the name, the yard lies in Portsmouth rather than Norfolk; the designation dates from 1862 and refers to the county in which it then stood, chosen to avoid confusion with Portsmouth Naval Shipyard at Kittery, Maine.

The yard provides repair, overhaul and modernization services for every type of ship in U.S. Navy service, including amphibious ships, submarines, guided-missile cruisers and aircraft carriers. Work in recent years has concentrated on nuclear-powered ships and nuclear support vessels. It is one of the few facilities on the East Coast able to dry dock nuclear aircraft carriers, the other being the Huntington Ingalls Industries yard at Newport News across Hampton Roads, which builds and refuels them. The shipyard is commanded by a rear admiral; Rear Admiral Kavon Hakimzadeh assumed command in August 2025.

The installation comprises several noncontiguous areas totalling about 1,275 acres, together with the South Gate Annex. Its docking facilities include Dry Dock One, completed in the 1830s and still in service, and a dry dock lengthened in 2011 to take carriers of the Nimitz class from CVN-75 onward fitted with bulbous bows. A 350-ton hammerhead crane serves the waterfront. From the Reconstruction era until 1917 the yard also functioned as the homeport for ships stationed in the Hampton Roads region, a role since assumed by Naval Station Norfolk.

The site was established in 1767 as Gosport Shipyard and passed to the federal government, which leased it from Virginia under the 1794 naval armament act and purchased it outright in 1801; the frigate Chesapeake, laid down in 1799, was the first ship built there for the U.S. Navy. The yard was destroyed and rebuilt several times, most recently in 1862, after which it took its present name. Expansion followed in the First World War and again in the Second, when its area doubled. After 1945 the yard converted from ship construction to overhaul and repair; its last new-built vessels, the wooden minesweepers Bold and Bulwark, were christened in March 1953.