FROM PLOWS TO PISTONS AND PROWLERS
On Jan. 17, 1941, almost 11 months before the U.S. entered World War II,the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations asked the Commandant of the 13th Naval District to find a location for the re-arming and refueling of Navy patrol planes operating in defense of Puget Sound, should such defense be necessary.

Lake Ozette, Indian Island,Keystone Harbor, Penn Cove and Oak Harbor were considered and later rejected because of mountainous terrain,bluff shorefront, inaccessibility, absence of sufficient beaches and lee shores. But within 10 days, the commanding officer of Naval Air Station Seattle recommended the site of Saratoga Passage on the shores of Crescent Harbor and Forbes Point as a base suitable for seaplane takeoffs and landings under instrument conditions.

A narrow strip of land tied Oak Harbor to what is now Maylor's Capehart Housing.Dredging, filling and running water and power lines to the city were under way when at the end of November word came to find a land plane site.

CLOVER VALLEY
On Dec. 8, three workers started a topographic survey of what would become Ault Field, about four miles to the north. The crew would soon grow to 17. None of them were engineers, but with the attack at Pearl Harbor, everyone went to work. Regardless of the weather, there were 175 men on the job at the peak of survey work.

Bewildered citizens, caught up in the war effort, signed up for jobs to build the station. There were approximately 20 farms on 4,325 acres. Farmers turned over the titles to their ancestral lands, known for growing some of the finest wheat in the country, to the government for runways and hangars. They quietly moved to other farms in Skagit County.

Clover Valley—level,well drained and accessible fromany approach—was tailor-made for a landing field.The strategic location,commanding the eastern end of the Straits of Juan de Fuca,guarded the entrance to Puget Sound. It was far enough from populated areas to carry on operational training flights with live loads. The area experienced visual flying conditions about 89 percent of the time and there was plenty of room to grow.

Actual construction of Ault Field started on March 1, 1942. The first plane landed there on Aug. 5, when Lt.Newton Wakefield, a former civil engineer and airline pilot who would later become Operations Officer, brought his SNJ single-engine trainer in with little fanfare. Everyone was busy working on the still-incomplete runway.

COMMISSIONING DAY
On Sept. 21, 1942, from the steps of Building 12,Commanding Officer Capt. Cyril Thomas Simard read the orders and the watch was set. U.S. Naval Air Station Whidbey Island was duly commissioned. There were 212 present for the ceremony.

A year later, on Sept. 25, 1943, the land plane field was named Ault Field, in memory of Cmdr.William B.Ault, missing in action in the Battle of Coral Sea.

Following the recommendation of the Interdepartmental Air Traffic Control Board, an area 2½ miles southeast of Coupeville was approved as an auxiliary field to serve Naval Station Seattle. Survey work began in February 1943,and work started in March.Outlying Field Coupeville was in use by September. Crews surveyed the Rocky Point area in the summer of 1943. It became the transmitter and machine gun range. Air gunners going to the fleet were trained there.

Patriotic fervor ran high in the early 1940s. The need to train America's fighting force in a hurry was evident here on Whidbey Island.

PBY CATALINA
Squadrons of PBY Catalinas flew from the Seaplane Base to Dutch Harbor, Cold Bay, Umnak, Nazan Bay, Adak, Amchitka, Shemya and Attu.

Like big flying boats, PBY patrol bombers took off with a churning of water and a roar of engines for their practice runs in Saratoga Passage, and then returned, skimming the hill above the hangar and settling into the bay to repeat the maneuver.

Residents of Oak Harbor soon became accustomed to the circling bombers training for the real thing in the Aleutian Islands.And with the attack by the Japanese there, a real concern gripped Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. The late Bob Walker first set foot on Whidbey Island in 1944 to attend aerial gunnery school, followed by a tour with training squadron VPB-61 at the Seaplane Base.

He described his job as sitting in the PBY-5A aircraft's "tower," which was the heart of the plane. "That's where the engines were started and things like the fuel system, wingtip floats and slats were monitored. The PBY took off at 75, climbed at 75 and flew at 75. It was low and slow."

Walker, an aviation machinists mate second class, later worked with HL-10, performing hydraulic and structural maintenance on the PB4Y-2 aircraft in 1945.

"We'd spend six months here and then three months in Kodiak, Alaska, on patrol." The Navy established an amphibious patrol squadron in Alaska during 1946, and Walker went there as a flight engineer. The squadron later relocated to Whidbey Island and again to Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii.

Members of Patrol Wing Four still tell stories of their Catalinas and Venturas being shot down, and their crews either killed,wounded or captured on their hunt for the Japanese during World War II.

Retired Cmdr. Ellis Skidmore of VPB-61 recalled, "Our PBY Catalinas carried a lot of cold weather gear, plus four square-nosed depth charges, which made us 2,000 pounds over maximum gross when we took off.

"As dawn came up, our planes would be lined up, ready to take off. We could tell when the plane ahead of us left the runway because the plane would settle down over the water to where only the exhausts on top of the engines were visible to us," Skidmore said.

"I can still remember that sinking feeling as our plane settled below the runway.We would stay on full power as the wheels came up and we kept the yoke pulled back to start our rate of climb at 75 feet per minute until we got up to our cruising altitude of 200 feet.

"Sometimes we'd fly like that for 10 hours, almost eyeball-to-eyeball, looking for submarine periscopes and shipping."

Patrol planes flew long-range navigation training missions over the North Pacific. Fighters and bombers made bombing, rocket and machine gun attacks on targets in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Torpedo overhaul equipment was transferred here unexpectedly in 1942 from Indian Island, Wash. At the start, the torpedo shop refurbished six torpedoes per day. By January 1945, production had increased to 25 per day. At the Seaplane Base, several PBM seaplanes were aboard in the summer of 1944, and a few B-26s arrived early that year to be used in towing targets.

Today, visitors are invited to see Catalina aircraft memorabilia in Building 12 on the Seaplane Base as part of a Command Display in conjunction with Oak Harbor's PBY Memorial Foundation.

WILDCATS AND HELLCATS
Over at Ault Field, the earliest squadrons of aircraft were F4F Wildcats, which came aboard in 1942, followed by F6Fs. Later that year, PV-1 Venturas arrived for training. By the end of 1943, the F4Fs were gone, replaced by the F6F Hellcat. In 1944, SBD Dauntless dive-bombers became the predominant aircraft at Ault Field.

WORLD WAR II ENDS
From 1945 to 1950, three patrol bomber squadrons (VPHL 7,VPHL 10 and VPHL 12) were based here along with FASRON 12. Squadrons deployed on a three-up and six-month back rotation from Kodiak, Alaska.