U.S. NAVAL TRAINING CENTER BAINBRIDGE MD: Base Construction 1942

1/01/2014

Base Construction 1942

USNTC Bainbridge -- Recruit Barracks under construction in June 1942. This photo shows workers digging holes for concrete footings.
Still visible in the left center is the drilled rows of barley ran over by construction and also standing barley in the former farmer's grain field.
Particularly notice nearly every man is in working motion, think about that as you pass the next construction crew on a highway project.

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USNTC Bainbridge -- Recruit Barracks Building 431 under construction 1942.

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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.

U.S. NAVAL TRAINING CENTER BAINBRIDGE MD

1/01/2014

Base Construction 1942

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