THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 21, 1994 TAG: 9406210328
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JACK DORSEY AND KERRY DEROCHI, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: 940621 LENGTH: VIRGINIA BEACH
With mock solemnity, the fliers toasted one another, clutching plastic cups of draft beer as they peered into the open casket. Inside lay a dummy in a flight suit and baseball cap, its head resting serenely against a pillow.
{REST} The funeral scene was supposed to symbolize the demise of yet another squadron decommissioned this year at Oceana.
It may have represented the air station itself.
Oceana, built more than 50 years ago on what was once a sprawling, empty Virginia Beach landscape, is struggling to escape the ax of a federal base-closing commission.
Home to aging fighter jets and a nearly extinct bomber, Oceana is faced with the prospect of losing its place as the vaunted East Coast hub of naval aviation and taking with it more than 10,000 employees and an annual $392 million payroll.
The base needs new planes to replace the ones that are disappearing, and its only hope - some 200 F/A-18 Hornet strike-fighter jets - are headed to a Marine Corps air station 200 miles south, in rural eastern North Carolina.
The move, heralded for creating the nation's first joint Marine-Navy air base, is viewed by some as the possible death knell for Oceana.
``At the present time that's the aircraft of the future,'' said Leslie K. Fenlon Jr., a retired Navy captain and president of the Virginia Beach Council of Civic Organizations. ``Oceana has to have that. But how we get it is a major problem.''
One Virginia Beach is struggling to solve.
Ask Capt. William H. Shurtleff IV about getting the F/A-18 and the naval aviator shows something between a grin and a grimace, then begs to change the subject.
The new base commander had been here just a month.
``I've got 23 months to go, so don't get me fired,'' he said.
Shurtleff and other Navy officials are careful discussing the 1995 round of base closings - the fourth and, under current plans, final round. They are under orders not to talk about recommendations Navy leadership will present to the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission.
Shurtleff can only discuss what already is law, the results of earlier commission decisions. For him, the most important one was the 1993 decision to close the giant Cecil Field air station in Jacksonville, Fla., and how the spoils were split: Cherry Point, N.C., got the prized Hornet, the plane with a future, and Oceana got an aging anti-submarine plane, the S-3 Viking.
As many as six S-3 squadrons, about 50 aircraft and 1,200 personnel are scheduled to come to Oceana by 1997.
That's one thing Oceana can count on. Maybe the only thing.
All else will remain unknown until next summer, when the base-closing commission makes further reductions to bring the number of installations in line with the post-Cold War military drawdown.
In the absence of hard and fast answers, some alternative scenarios for Oceana's future are developing. They fall into three general areas:
The status quo: The A-6 Intruder attack jets retire by September 1997 and the F-14 Tomcat fighters dwindle to five squadrons, plus a training squadron two years later. Counting the S-3s transferred from Cecil Field, Oceana would be host to just 160 planes. Built to handle up to 500 aircraft, Oceana would have a hard time justifying continued operations and could become a base-closing target.
All Tomcats in one place. Oceana absorbs the F-14 training squadron from the West Coast - eight to nine new planes. That might put the base at the center of another plan under consideration - locating all the Navy's carrier-based F-14s, about 200 of them for both the Pacific and Atlantic fleets, at one place. Oceana would have 250 planes under this scenario, counting the S-3s, and might be able to hang on for the life of the F-14. The jet is scheduled to leave service by 2015.
Gaining the Hornets. Through the persuasion of Oceana boosters or changes in Navy strategy, the 1995 base-closing commission decides to overrule the 1993 commission and divert the F/A-18s from Cherry Point to Virginia Beach. This would enable the base to retain its position as the premier naval air station on the East Coast. Cherry Point would continue operating at its current level, as a Marine Corps air station. If Oceana gets the Hornets as well as all the Tomcats and Vikings, it would have 450 planes by 1999 - more than it has ever had.
\ Oceana supporters are banking on the Hornets.
There is a sense of urgency to their campaign.
The A-6 Intruder, the Vietnam War-era bomber that has been a mainstay of Oceana, will be gone by the end of fiscal year 1997 because of Navy budget decisions made in 1994-95 to terminate the program.
The A-6 has accounted for half of Oceana's planes during the past 30 years. For the past 20 years, the other half have been F-14s.
Today, Oceana has only four of the eight carrier-based A-6 squadrons that it had in the mid-1980s - Attack Squadrons 34, 35, 85 and 75, plus VA-42, a training squadron. One of those, the VA-85 Black Falcons, goes out at the end of September.
When the A-6s die, the entire east side of Oceana's flight line will be empty, leaving more than enough space for the S-3s, another dying breed scheduled to be phased out early in the next decade.
Meanwhile, the F-14 fleet is being reduced, too - from the 12 squadrons operating in the mid-1980s to five squadrons plus a training squadron today.
It's a far cry from the mid-1980s, at the peak of the Reagan administration's push to ``rearm America,'' when Oceana had 305 airplanes and 20 squadrons assigned to its ramps.
Oceana supporters are trying to relive those days.
In recent months, they have launched a campaign touting the Virginia Beach base and challenging the logic of sending the Navy's prized jet to a Marine Corps station in rural North Carolina.
Their arguments for Oceana are simple: proximity to the carrier fleet in Norfolk, unrestricted airspace, good weather and an enormous capacity for launching and recovering airplanes.
The Navy owns 6,500 acres outright at Oceana and controls 10,000 more acres in easements around it. Oceana has four runways - three 8,000 feet long and one 12,000 feet - built as dual, parallel strips. That allows the base to launch 100 planes in 30 minutes.
``It can do that and more under any weather conditions,'' Shurtleff said. ``We have the potential to launch and recover airplanes at roughly twice the rate of Atlanta, Dulles and National airports combined. It's a magnificent facility.''
A practice bouncing field at Fentress in Chesapeake - where student pilots simulate landing on a carrier deck - is just six miles away and available at all times.
Shurtleff discounts one of the arguments raised for closing his base: the encroachment of homes, shopping centers and public buildings at Oceana's borders during the past five decades.
Oceana has dealt effectively with those problems, the commander said, by working with Virginia Beach officials on building codes and on accident-potential zones that extend beyond the runways.
``Yes, there are some things built around the field,'' Shurtleff said. ``But everyone understands the codes and zones. . . . People talk about encroachment and everybody may have a different agenda . . . but we are all working together.''
The question is whether members of the base-closing commission will see it that way.
Concern over encroachment played a key role in the 1993 round of base closings. It was the battle cry used by supporters of the Cecil Field air station and resulted in Oceana being added to the list of possible closures.
At a June 1993 meeting in Norfolk, commissioners heatedly questioned city and military officials about two schools located in the flight path of one of Oceana's runways. They wondered why the Lynnhaven shopping mall was built over the Navy's objections.
Some worry the scene may play out again next year.
``We've got enough problems with Oceana, considering the development we've allowed around it,'' said Fenlon of the council of civic organizations. ``Every time I'm over at Lynnhaven Mall and see the F-14s' landing pattern right over the building, it worries me.''
To fight back, Fenlon and other Oceana supporters hope to raise issues of their own.
They question the cost of moving the Hornets to Cherry Point, a price they say is too high to pay, both in dollars and in the potential damage to naval aviation.
In a letter last October to U.S. Rep. Owen B. Pickett, the Navy estimated it would cost $170 million in military construction funds to move the planes to Cherry Point.
The letter, from Vice Adm. Stephen F. Loftus, a deputy chief of naval operations, did not specify how the money would be spent.
An added $36.5 million in Defense Department community-assistance money would be needed for new classrooms around Cherry Point, Loftus wrote.
But retired Rear Adm. Fred Metz of Virginia Beach, who served as the Navy's carrier and air station program director, estimates it will cost up to $600 million to move the F/A-18s to Cherry Point.
At least nine new hangar buildings would be needed, along with engine test cells, ramps, maintenance facilities, trainers, barracks and more, Metz said.
There are no official estimates on the cost of moving the planes to Oceana, but Metz puts it at less than $80 million.
``When the military wants to do something and it is expensive, they underestimate the cost,'' Pickett explained. ``And when they don't want to do something, they overestimate the cost.''
Both Metz and Pickett say the cost cannot be measured in dollars alone.
They question the motive and need for picking Cherry Point over Oceana and warn of the move to consolidate Navy and Marine operations at a single base as part of a continuing push for joint operations among the military services.
The Navy and Marine Corps have different missions, weapons and tactics, they say. They should not train and operate at the same base. Cherry Point is already home to 130 airplanes - about 20 C-130 Hercules transports and tanker aircraft, 20 EA-6B Prowler radar-jamming jets, 90 AV-8B Harrier jump jets and a few helicopters and jet transports.
Adding Hornets to the mix could cause problems, Pickett contended.
``In my view you can only handle so many different kinds of aircraft, several of which I don't think are compatible with joint use of a Harrier field,'' Pickett said. ``There is a point beyond which you go that you lose operating efficiency.
``If we are going to continue to move toward consolidation, we should do it in a measured way and prudent way so we don't wake up one morning seeing we made a tragic mistake and there is no where to back up to. Once this place goes, if it does go, you will never get it back.''
For Metz, a retired rear admiral who flew the A-6 Intruder, the issues stretch beyond operations.
Cherry Point would mean a loss of control for Navy aviation.
The F/A-18 Hornets and their operators would be tenants on a Marine Corps base.
``I am as strong as ever in my convictions that an aggressive effort needs to occur to save naval aviation and especially the people involved, who will definitely suffer great hardships,'' Metz said.
Not to mention those left behind.
Oceana, with 9,500 military personnel and more than 1,700 civil service workers, is a community unto itself and the largest employer in Virginia Beach. Each year it pays out $392 million in salary, to everyone from pilots to movie ticket-takers, and spends about $150 million on goods and services.
It has been a powerful lure for local business.
Rows of car dealers, antique shops and square cinder-block restaurants line all roads that lead to Oceana.
For now, business is brisk in this congested corner of Virginia Beach, where giant red, white and blue flags hang from awnings, and signs read, ``Military Welcome.''
``I think everyone is just sort of waiting to see what decisions are made,'' said John Vest, owner of Vest & Sons Auto Sales on Virginia Beach Boulevard.
``If it closes, it's going to affect every dealership in this town,'' said Vest, a used-car dealer. ``Here, Norfolk. It's going to affect them all. Every one of them is getting business from Oceana, whether it's a lieutenant commander or an E-1.''
The community's charge to save the base has been led by elected officials such as Virginia Beach Mayor Meyera Oberndorf and Pickett, who set up a group of business and civic leaders and retired military officers.
Metz, the retired admiral, is a former member of Pickett's committee and now serves on statewide committee announced Friday by Gov. George F. Allen. He warns that Oceana needs even more backing to stay open.
``The community needs to make a stand,'' Metz said. ``The community is not three to four retired officers.
``Unless something is done now, an aggressive coordinated plan of action, a definite commitment, the F/A-18s will go . . . to Cherry Point,'' Metz said. ``There is no future for Oceana when the F-14s go away.''
In some ways, the fate of Oceana will be seen in a bright yellow and blue 3,500-square foot expansion built for a used-appliance business on Virginia Beach Boulevard.
Rob Nicholson, owner of East Coast Appliances and a former Navy signalman, opened the new building Thursday.
``I just spent $100,000 moving here,'' Nicholson said, as workmen pounded on walls to install new phone lines.
``I don't know what will happen if Oceana closes.''
{KEYWORDS} BASE CLOSURE OCEANA NAVAL AIR STATION U.S. NAVY
by CNB