Attended Fire Control Technician (FT "A") School at Bainbridge from December 1960 to July 1961.
On at trip to a nearby location in 1998, I purposely drove to see what Bainbridge looked like. USNTC Bainbridge looked absolutely awful, neglected and vandalized with many buildings already demolished. That experience did something emotional to me, I couldn't get the place out of my mind.
On a subsequent trip I actually drove onto the base, demolition was in full swing, contractors with their tracked excavator backhoes were efficiently ripping down barracks along Bainbridge Avenue while water was being played onto the barracks to mitigate the asbestos dust from the exterior siding sheeting.
I returned once more in 2004 and walked all over the base. It was a truly sad experience, little remained but enough tell-tale items reminded one of the vibrancy this place once held, was now forever gone.
What happened here shouldn't have been so callously plowed under. In eight months from 1942 to 1943, 508 building were constructed and a training base capable of training 20,000 at a time was in operation. Such a Herculean achievement and the sacrifice of the hundreds of thousands trained at Bainbridge NTC should not be so summarily forgotton.
