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2024 Reunion in Huntsville, Alabama

Page last updated 12/13/2023 10:14:37

President..........................Steve Nye
Vice President...................Vacant
Secretary..........................Ken Frost
Treasurer..........................Darwin Ramker
Director............................Ed Langville
Director............................Ted Rosolowski
Director............................Ray Hochstetler

Chaplain...........................Ron Kruse
Membership/Promotion....... Tom Mott
E-Mail Communications.......Ron Kruse
Newspaper Editor...............Ken Frost
Historian...........................Alan Barrick

USS Albemarle (AV-5), 30 July 1943, in what is probably Measure 21 (Navy blue/haze gray) camouflage. US National Archives photo # 80-G-76629, a US Navy photo now in the collections of the US National Archives.

USNS Corpus Christi Bay (T-ARVH-1) at anchor off Vung Tau, South Vietnam, circa 1967-1969. A pair of UH-1 "Huey" helicopters sit atop her aft flight deck.

DEDICATED TO ALL SHIPMATES WHO WORKED ON BOARD

The USS Albemarle (AV-5) was one of the only two Curtiss-class seaplane tenders built for the United States Navy just prior to the United States entry into World War II.  Named for Albemarle Sound and Albemarle, North Carolina, and Albemarle County, Virginia she was the third U.S. Naval vessel to bear the name.

During the mid-sixties, The USS Albemarle (AV-5) was recommissioned by the Army as the Army's First Floating Helicopter Maintenance Facility and named the USNS Corpus Christi Bay.

It operated in Southeast Asian waters during the Vietnam War and was manned by Army personnel assigned to the 1st TC Battalion (Seaborn) and by some ARADMAC employees.  It was deactivated in 1975.  The official step leading to the construction of Corpus Christi Naval Air Station was initiated by the 75th training rate nearly doubled after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  By the End of World War II, more than 35,000 naval aviators had earned their wings there.

Former President George H.W. Bush was in the third graduating class June 1943, and the youngest pilot ever to graduate.  NAS Corpus Christi also was home to the Blue Angels from 1951-1954.  It also served as a Project Mercury Tracking Station in the early 1960's.