Name/Title
Naval Air Station Corpus Christi [Cover]Description
This homemade patriotic cover was mailed from Naval Air Station Corpus Christi 8 months after the base was dedicated by the secretary of the navy, 5 months after the originally contracted construction was virtually complete, and 8 days before the attack on Pearl Harbor.Context
The Naval Air Station at Corpus Christi, also known as the University of the Air, began on June 13, 1940, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed a $25,000,000 appropriations proposal. Construction began on June 30 of that year, and the base was dedicated by the secretary of the navy on March 12, 1941. It had the main station at Flour Bluff and six auxiliary stations: Rodd, Cabaniss, Cuddihy, and Waldron at Corpus Christi, Kingsville Naval Auxiliary Field at Kingsville, and Chase Field at Beeville. The total station covered some 20,000 acres in three counties. The originally contracted construction was virtually complete by June 30, 1941. By 1945, 997 hangers and other buildings had been constructed, and the cost had run to more than $100 million. A 980-foot rail-highway bridge and a 400-foot trestle bridge across Oso Bay had been built; a twenty-mile-long railroad was built in thirty-five days. A sixteen-inch cast iron water pipe was laid from Corpus Christi to Flour Bluff. Eight miles of 100 pair telephone cables for a permanent telephone system were laid in ten days. Also constructed was a permanent military highway consisting of eleven miles of twenty-two-foot concrete pavement with a 1,200-foot concrete bridge across Oso Bay, as well as a 4½-mile-long concrete access road to Cabaniss Field. On January 14, 1941, the project reached a peak employment of 9,348 employees and had a weekly payroll of $305,125.