A HISTORY OF NAVY WEATHER RESEARCH FACILITY 

October 1950 to October 1970
(As recorded in 1970)

The Navy Weather Research Facility was established 17 October 1950 aboard Naval Air Station, Norfolk, Virginia, as Bureau of Aeronautics Project AROWA (Applied Research; Operational Weather Analyses), with CAPT F. A. Berry as Officer in Charge. The activity was redesignated the Navy Weather Research Facility on 29 October 1957, and a command on 19 May 1969.

The initial personnel allowance was four officers, seven aerographer's mates and one civilian secretary. Of the four officers ordered to the activity upon its establishment, one is the present Commander, Naval Weather Service Command, CAPT W. J. Kotsch (then LCDR, and Assistant Officer in Charge). A second is the retiring present Commanding Officer of the Research Facility, CAPT W. L. Somervell, Jr. (then LT, and Research Officer). The only other plank owner remaining on active duty, and the first Leading Chief Petty Officer, is LCDR R. A. Wright, JR., presently Officer in Charge, Naval Weather Service Environmental Detachment, Oceana Naval Air Station.

Additional and more complex research tasks were assigned as the activity proved its worth, and from modest beginnings in 4 rooms of Building R-48 the Facility grew to 8 officers, some 50 aerographer's mates, 5 civilian employees and half of Building R-48 by 1955. Thereafter, tasking continued to increase; but progressive civilianization and more recently budgetary reductions caused a return of Research Facility staffing to the original military personnel allowance of 4 officers and 7 aerographer's mates plus some 50 civilian research meteorologists, oceanographers, mathematicians, meteorological technicians and supporting employees who occupy all of Building R-48, except that portion assigned since 1962 to Antarctic Support Activities Detachment CHARLIE as an austral winter tenant of the Research Facility.

Among the major facilities now available to the command are: a weather satellite automatic picture transmission receptor; a technical reference library in excess of 50,000 volumes, which also serves the Naval Weather Service at large; a modern computer system, which also provides computing services to Fleet Weather Central, Norfolk and Naval Air Rework Facility, Norfolk; and a pre-prototype video-disc/computer system being developed under a spectacular new concept for more effective display and presentation of environmental data for both operational forecasting and research purposes.

The Norfolk Naval Air Station has long been a location with special meaning for Navy meteorologists; for it was here, during the summer of 1935, that modern meteorology was first introduced into this country. Dr. Sverre Petterssen, Regional Director of the Norwegian Meteorological Service, was invited in behalf of the Navy by RADM Ernest J. King, then Chief, Bureau of Aeronautics and a former Commanding Officer of NAS Norfolk, to visit the United States for the purpose of teaching meteorology (or aerology, as it was then called) to a group of naval officers. This first U.S. course in which meteorology was taught as a science was conducted aboard the Norfolk Naval Air Station 35 years ago. It was in this initiative, that meteorology, as we know it today in America had its beginnings.

Therefore, in establishing the Research Facility at Norfolk, there was some precedent. More importantly, however, selection of the world's largest naval base as the site for this new activity would enhance mission-oriented endeavor rather than research for research's sake, 
through the opportunity for ready exchanges of information between fleet personnel and the Research Facility staff. As a consequence, the Navy Weather Research Facility has flourished in Norfolk, and a constant awareness of the operating environment has promoted attention to fleet problems on a first-things-first basis.

The Facility was assigned an additional responsibility of cognizance for exploratory and advanced development in meteorology at the Naval Postgraduate School on 14 December 1965, as a step toward the attainment of a single, integrated, Navy program of applied research in meteorology and air-sea interactions. On 13 June 1969, in a further action to achieve this objective, Naval Air Systems Command Project FAMOS (Fleet Applications of Meteorological Observations from Satellites) - established originally on 11 April 1962 - was transferred to the Research Facility and redesignated Navy Weather Research Facility Detachment, Suitland.

The Naval Weather Research Facility is unique, within both the Department of Defense and the U.S. Federal weather services, and is the only organization dedicated to performing applied research in meteorology and air-sea interactions in response to fleet requirements for the improved forecasting services needed to enhance naval operating effectiveness. The command is internationally recognized as being exceptionally productive in exploiting contemporary scientific knowledge to develop practical field techniques for predicting the operationally significant sensible weather phenomena.

More than 450 research reports have been published in the first 20 years of its existence, encompassing virtually every environmental influence of concern to the Navy-USMC team and without regard to terrestrial boundaries or the academic and largely arbitrary limits, which separate the several environmental sciences. Emphasis is given to

weather analysis and prediction at various scales of motion, but research accomplished by the Facility also extends: from oceanographic analysis and prediction to the exploitation of environmental satellite data; from air pollution to weather modification and control; from radar and ballistic meteorology to quantitive determination of environmental effects upon naval operations; from extraterrestrial matters to sonar propagation; etc., and pertains to all of the "seven" seas, from the South China Sea to the Arctic, from the Greenland Sea to the Mediterranean, from the Arabian Sea to the Antarctic.

These diversified efforts and areas of interest serve to punctuate the impact of Navy Weather Research Facility contributions upon a modern Navy, one wherein every new advance in weapons system technology has demanded an ever more sophisticated and comprehensive weather service - and yet for which there is not now or does the foreseeable future promise any alternative to the necessity for afloat meteorologists to produce the forecasts required by major on-scene operational commanders.