Naval Training Center, San Diego

The last three days turned out to be a beautiful, hot weekend! The temps hit the 80s all three days!!! With such gorgeous days, I couldn't resist taking my Harley out for some riding. I didn't do any long rides, just stayed around town and played tourist. Just up the road from the San Diego Airport is the remains of NTC San Diego. Great Lakes is the only Recruit Training Command now indoctrinating recruits into sailors, but for over 70 years (1923-1997), just about every enlisted man in the Navy had been run through the training facilities of NTC San Diego. That includes my dad who went through boot camp here in 1958!

One of the enduring symbols of naval boot camp are the training ships. The ship you see in this picture is the USS Recruit and has never sailed a day in its life! It was commissioned in July of 1949 and has helped train over 50,000 recruits in ship borne duties. It's a 2/3 scale model of a destroyer escort that in 1983 was reconditioned as a training guided missile frigate. The fact that it has always been permanently dry-docked earned it its nickname USS Neversail. It's now a California Registered Historical Landmark.

In 2001, demolition and deconstruction began at NTC to transform it into a community and development center now known as Liberty Station. What used to be the training grounds for all enlisted sailors now contains housing developments, service & retail businesses, parks and museums. It's pretty amazing what a great job San Diego has done to preserve the history of this place while still allowing progress and drawing the public back to the city's history. This picture is of the North Chapel which was built in 1942. There's a great stained glass window on one side of a sailor with head bowed and cover in hand.

Although the redevelopment of NTC is still in progress, it's easy to see how this place is already becoming a city center. A lot of the old buildings have been refreshed and have a distinctly Spanish flair. The Command Center faces the waterfront and the rear is adjacent to a beautiful flower garden complete with a pond. There were several groups hosting events here as I wandered in and out of buildings; a uniquely historical setting in which to hold meetings.

Back in the 1940s, the station housed 33,000 men, 75% of whome were recruits. For some new sailors, NTC remained home for a while longer as they completed their "A" schools. That's a lot of buildings and space! Most of the barracks are gone and have been replaced with residential neighborhoods and parks. The residential areas are a mix of civilian and military housing and don't stray far from the Spanish architecture seen in the commercial buildings.

As you can see in this last picture, the nautical theme has definitely been kept throughout the commercial area. It's pretty cool that you can now grocery shop at Von's and Trader Joe's and do your banking at Navy Federal Credit Union in the same place that recruits were getting their heads shaved and issued boondockers back in the day! It's really cool how pieces of the original base have been placed throughout the new Liberty Station. In Trader Joe's, there's a black & white picture of a sailor standing guard next to the front gate with the NTC Gate sign next to him. Next to the picture on the wall of this grocery store is the original gate sign.

That's it for today. I visited another picturesque place here in San Diego that I'll do a post on later this week. Thanks for stopping in!