Naval Air Station Lemoore or NAS Lemoore is a United States Navy base, located in Kings County and Fresno County, California, United States. Lemoore Station, a census-designated place, is located inside the base's borders. NAS Lemoore is the Navy's newest and largest master jet base. Strike Fighter Wing Pacific, along with its associated squadrons, is home ported there. NAS Lemoore also hosts four carrier air wings: Carrier Air Wing Two (CVW-2), Carrier Air Wing Nine (CVW-9), Carrier Air Wing Eleven (CVW-11), and Carrier Air Wing Seventeen (CVW-17).

History

Commissioned in 1961, NAS Lemoore, as seen from an aircraft flying above, looks significant and stands out from the farmlands of Central California, due to its large construction. It is the newest and largest master jet base of the U.S. Navy. It has two offset parallel runways 4600 ft apart. Aircraft parking and maintenance hangars are aligned between the 13500 ft runways. Separated from the hangars by underpasses beneath taxiways A and C, the remainder of the air operations area is located directly to the southeast. In July 1998, NAS Lemoore was selected as the West Coast site for the Navy's newest strike-fighter aircraft, the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. This decision brought approximately 92 additional aircraft, 1,850 additional active duty personnel and 3,000 family members to NAS Lemoore, and several associated facility additions or improvements. The Navy also brought four new fleet squadrons to NAS Lemoore from 2001 to 2004. Additional military staffing was required at the Aircraft Intermediate Maintenance Department, Strike Fighter Weapons School Pacific, and Center for Naval Aviation Technical Training Unit Lemoore (CNATTU Lemoore) to support this effort. Originally, the officer in charge of construction for building the base was Commander Dennis K. Culp CEC/USN, the first Naval officer in Lemoore. On 31 March 2016, two civilians were killed when the Jeep Grand Cherokee they were driving in collided with a parked F/A-18 jet. They were being pursued by the California Highway Patrol (CHP) and managed to enter the base without hindrance by base security. A CHP helicopter was monitoring the chase from above and captured the event in a FLIR video; the base tower staff can be heard asking if the vehicle was already in the base. A CHP dispatcher can be heard confirming so and that CHP were unable to contact base security for assistance.

Current operations

With the transfer of NAS Miramar to the United States Marine Corps, NAS Lemoore now hosts the Navy's entire west coast fighter/attack capability. NAS Lemoore was built "from the ground up" as a Master Jet Base, and has several operational advantages, and relatively few constraints, as a result. Strike Fighter Wing Pacific with its supporting facilities is home ported here. The primary aircraft based at NAS Lemoore is the F/A-18 Super Hornet strike fighter. In November, 1999, NAS Lemoore received its first F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, which replaced the F-14 Tomcat in fleet service as an air-superiority fighter and has assumed, in a different configuration, the role of older F/A-18 Hornet fighters. Currently, there are a total of 175 Hornets and Super Hornets home-based at NAS Lemoore operating from one Fleet Replacement Squadron and sixteen Fleet [operational] Squadrons. In 2017, the F-35C Lightning II was received onboard NAS Lemoore, establishing the first F-35 Pacific training squadron. Lemoore is home to aircraft assigned to the following Carrier Air Wings.

Based flying units

Flying units based at NAS Lemoore.

United States Navy

Commander, Naval Air Forces, Pacific

Tenant squadrons

Other tenant activities

Educational institutes

Sources