Moffett Field, California is a
United States facility in the
San Francisco Bay Area, formerly a
US Navy base and now used mainly by
NASA.
In 1931, Mountain View, California and Sunnyvale, California acquired a 1,000 acre parcel of land bordering San Francisco Bay, then "sold" the parcel for $1 to the US government as a home base for the Navy dirigible USS Macon[?]. Commissioned in 1933 and originally named NAS Sunnyvale, after the loss of the Macon and the death of Rear Admiral William A. Moffett[?] in the loss of the USS Akron, the Naval Air Station was renamed NAS Moffett Field.
From 1935 until 1941 Moffett Field was under the control of the U.S. Army Air Corps.
From the end of World War II until its close, NAS Moffett Field saw several generations of anti-submarine warfare aircraft, including the Lockheed P2V Neptune[?] and P-3 Orion.
On July 1, 1994, Moffett Field was closed as a military base and turned over to NASA Ames Research Center. NASA Ames now operates the facility as Moffett Federal Airfield.
Onizuka Air Force Station[?], a large blue concrete building and an array of parabolic dish antennas[?] used for control of military satellites, occupies the southern corner of Moffett Field. The base was named for Ellison Onizuka, one of the astronauts that died in the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion.
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