THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, May 5, 1995 TAG: 9505050543
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KERRY DEROCHI, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 110 lines
This morning, in a hangar at Norfolk Naval Air Station, a group of military and civilian workers will gather around a newly painted F-14 Tomcat and cut a giant cake.
The symbolism will be profoundly bittersweet.
The ceremony is to celebrate the end of an ambitious and highly touted rework program at Norfolk Naval Aviation Depot, a program that was supposed to guarantee a future for the aging fighter jets and the depot that repairs them.
But military policy changed after the rework started six years ago and the Navy switched its emphasis to another plane.
Now, both the Tomcat program and NADEP are slated, one day, to close.
This morning's ceremony will be the first in a long line of ``lasts'' for the Norfolk depot.
``Our mission has changed, our mission is now closure,'' said Ron L. Sparrow, aircraft department head at NADEP.
``Our people are not in denial. They know we're going to close it. We want to close with dignity.''
Two years have passed since the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission voted to close the Norfolk NADEP in a move that shocked a military complex believed to be immune to downsizing.
In the months that followed, employees throughout the depot refused to think the giant complex would close, and they clung to hopes that the federal commissioners would someday, somehow change their minds.
They spoke of a military regional maintenance facility that was supposed to offer them jobs. They thought a Navy decision to bring 76 more F-14s to Oceana Naval Air Station would make a difference.
Surely, NADEP - a 75-year-old installation where airplanes and other Navy equipment are upgraded and repaired - would stay open to maintain the jets.
But when the 1995 base-closing process started this spring without a word on the Norfolk facility, reality began to seep across the campus of buildings.
Today, it's as noticeable as the large, empty spaces in the cavernous hangars and a newsletter's list of employees who have moved on.
``All these things tied together, a rational person would have to come to the conclusion it's real,'' said Ron Perry, special assistant for transition and corporate matters. ``The thing a lot of people are overlooking is that in the 1997-1999 time frame, the Navy will be probably half the size that we are now.
``Something had to go.''
As it now stands, employment at NADEP has dropped from more than 4,300 to 2,661, said Bill Couch, the depot's BRAC implementation manager.
Nearly one-third of the 1,681 who have left took retirement. More than 200 have taken jobs with the Navy depot in Jacksonville, Fla., where the routine retooling for the F-14 and EA-6B Prowler will be relocated. Another 70 are going to the depot at the Marine Corps Air Station in Cherry Point, N.C.
Those numbers are expected to grow in the coming months as the depot nears the Sept. 30, 1996, closing date. The workload at the depot's transition assistance center has increased in recent weeks as workers have started taking advantage of computer and other skill classes designed to help them land new jobs.
``I think it was really scary for a lot of people at first,'' said Jean Lamkin, director of NADEP training programs. ``What's been happening is people are realizing it will work out.''
Nowhere has the downsizing been felt more than in the depot's F-14 hangar bays, where employment has dropped by half since the Tomcat's heyday, when some 1,200 workers retooled 60 jets.
Once the star of naval aviation, the F-14 has been eclipsed in recent years by the F/A-18 Hornet, the Navy's only tactical jet in production.
The F-14 Tomcat is expected to be phased out by the year 2010.
Today, 25 Tomcats are undergoing routine overhauls at the depot. Another five are expected in the coming months to go through a sophisticated upgrade that will provide the jets with improved avionics.
And then it will be over.
The pipeline bringing Tomcats to NADEP is expected to close in October. All other F-14s will be sent to the Jacksonville depot for maintenance.
``We didn't just quit because our future was determined for us,'' said Rick Lewis, F-14 planning/business division director. ``We wanted to work in a professional manner. It's been tough, but we have not given up.
``The plan is to complete everything in-house and fly everything out.''
By the end of the year, the majority of Tomcat work will be handled by the Florida depot. By the summer of 1996, the final Tomcat will leave the Norfolk NADEP hangar for the last time.
The ambitious retooling of the Tomcats that was started six years ago at Norfolk NADEP was discontinued, and the Navy opted to concentrate its resources on the F/A-18. The program, which included remanufacturing the jets with new, more powerful engines and installing more sensitive radar, will end with this morning's ceremony.
The last remanufactured jet will leave the Norfolk Naval Air Station next week.
Paul Heilig, an aerospace engineer who directed the remanufacturing, expects to walk to the runway and watch it. That's where he stood six years ago, when the first of the retooled jets taxied down the runway.
Now he wants to see the last.
``There's no way I'll ever forget that feeling of watching that jet on the runway,'' Heilig said. ``When the last one goes over the fence, I know I'll feel it again.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/Staff
Lloyd Evans of Virginia Beach, a quality assurance worker at Norfolk
Naval Aviation Depot, checks over an F-14 engine Thursday. As the
facility winds down, Evans is to join the 200 or so other NADEP
workers who have taken jobs at the Navy depot in Jacksonville, Fla.
KEYWORDS: BASE CLOSINGS MILITARY BASES by CNB