In the nation's quest to provide security along its lengthy coastlines, air reconnaissance was put forth by the futuristic Rear Admiral William A. Moffett. Through his efforts, two Naval Air Stations, including Airbase Sunnyvale CAL, were commissioned in the early 1930s to port the Naval Airships (dirigibles) which he believed capable of meeting this challenge.

1910s

1914–1918 WWI: the Germans demonstrate Zeppelin Airships as weapons of war

1920s

1921 The first large US airship hangar is built at Lakehurst, New Jersey

1923

September, USS Shenandoah is launched and flown from Lakehurst

1924 25 November, USS Los Angeles built by the Zeppelin Company in Germany is delivered to the US Navy in Lakehurst

1925 September 3, the USS Shenandoah encounters a squall line in Ohio and crashes.

1926 June 24 (Washington, DC), The Navy department authorizes construction of two large dirigibles, named USS Akron and USS Macon, to be the nucleus of the modern Air Force.

The Navy begins searching for a west coast base for these airships.

1927 The Beginning of Airships in the Bay Area, Beginning of Airbase Sunnyvale CAL.

Looking at 1,700 acres of broccoli, cauliflower and hay fields, Laura Thane Whipple, a local real estate agent, then selling a ranch in Sunnyvale, recalled reading of the need for a 'metropolitan area' dirigible base on the west coast. The photos she took the first day she saw the ranch would become a panorama that she sent in a pitch to the Navy.

Whipple alerted representatives of the Bay Area Chambers of Commerce and state politicians who began the campaign for a base. Competition was heated, particularly with the city of San Diego which offered Camp Kearny for $1. Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Francisco, and Alameda counties collaborated to raise $470,000 ($6.2 million in 2012 dollars) to buy 1,000 acres of the Rancho Ynigo, believed to be the last intact land grant in California.

The negotiation to purchase the 1,000 acres of the Rancho Ynigo, a 1844 Mexican Government land grant to an Ohlone Native American Lupe Ynigo, begins, involving eight different landowners. Hirsch Land Company Henry Wong Him of San Francisco The South Shore Port holdings Minnie and Antone Medeiros The Holthouse family Merrill Lion who leased to the Fosgate-Lion Seed company

1929 July 30, The San Jose Chamber of Commerce acquired a parcel of the Yñigo Ranch bordering San Francisco Bay, paid for with nearly $480,000 raised by the citizens of Santa Clara County,McDonell, Michael G., "NAS Moffett Field ...a long way from Macon", Naval Aviation News, Chief of Naval Operations and the Naval Air Systems Command, Arlington, Virginia, March 1971, Volume 52, page 36. then "sold" the parcel for $1 to the US government as a home base for the Navy airship USS Macon. The location proved to be ideal for an airport, since the area is often clear while other parts of the San Francisco Bay are covered in fog. This is due to the Coast Range to the west which blocks the cold oceanic air which is the cause of San Francisco fog.

The base was originally named Airbase Sunnyvale CAL as it was thought that calling it Mountain View would cause officials to fear airships colliding with mountainsides.Daniel DeBolt, "NAS Moffett Field's serendipitous 75th anniversary," Mountain View Voice, Nov. 28, 2008, p. 6

1930s

1931

February 12 (Washington, DC), NAS Sunnyvale was the Pacific Coast location selected. Congressional Bill Accepts 1,000 acres and signed by President Herbert Hoover. The land was sold to the government for $1, in order to match San Diego's deal. The new base would bring much needed jobs and income to Northern California.

The hangar was designed and developed to port the USS Macon (ZRS-5). The immense structure, Hangar One, designed to house this dirigible, remains the second largest structures in the United States without internal support. The Goodyear Airdock in Akron, Ohio, where the USS Macon was built, is the largest.

1931–1935 The USS Macon years

May (Akron, Ohio), USS Macon commenced being built

July 8, Construction of Hangar One begins. Its construction preceded the other buildings located on the base which date from 1933. Hangar One is a true landmark: a colossal structure marking the land and skyline of Silicon Valley. It is 1,133 feet long, 308 feet wide, and 198 feet high. By comparison, aircraft hangars in the early 1930s were about thirty to fifty feet high and seldom exceeded 200 feet in plan dimension.

1932

USS Akron visits Sunnyvale

1933

Construction begins on the remainder of Moffett Air Base. From an architectural and engineering standpoint, the oldest and most historically significant buildings at NAS Moffett, include Hangar One and the formal cluster of buildings that lead up to it (and also the later-built blimp Hangars Two and Three). This area, is named the Shenandoah Plaza after the USS Shenandoah is bounded by Bushnell Street, the parking behind Sayre Avenue, and Westcoat and Clark Roads. The central area is laid out in an axial plan with the major buildings symmetrically placed along a grand central greensward. There are also significant historic officers' residences clustered around Berry Drive to the south of the main gated entrance in another formally layout with grass medians, a grass island at the end of the southern cul-de-sac and a characteristically suburban curved residential street. Another residential complex was originally planned for the northern side of the entrance drive in keeping with the symmetry of the plan but was never built.

These earliest buildings were designed and built by the Navy Department Bureau of Yards and Docks. They exemplify California's and the Government's most popular contemporary architectural style of the 1920s and early 1930s, that of the late Spanish Colonial Revival architectural style.

March 11 (Akron, Ohio), USS Macon christened by Jeannette Whitton Moffett

April 4, (Atlantic Ocean), USS Akron crashes, 74 lives lost, including Rear Admiral Moffett, then Chief of the Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics.

April 12, The airbase “NAS Sunnyvale” and Hangar One were dedicated and commissioned and go into service.

April 21 (Akron, Ohio), USS Macon's first official flight

May 18, After the death of Rear Admiral William A. Moffett, who is credited with the creation of the airfield, and in recognition of the significant contribution to naval history by Rear Admiral Moffett, contributions that have gained him the unofficial title, "Father of Naval Aviation", in the loss of the USS Akron, the airfield is renamed NAS Moffett Field

June 23 (Akron, Ohio), US Macon is commissioned

July 6, Macon receives her first aircraft on board

October 12 (Lakehurst, New Jersey), USS Macon departs the east coast for its new home base at NAS Moffett Field

October 15, The USS Macon completed its maiden voyage across the United States to Sunnyvale, arriving with much fanfare after a 70-hour flight.

1934

April, USS Macon flies east To Florida

Mid July, USS Macon surprises President Roosevelt on board ship, coming back from a trip to Hawaii.

1935

February 12, USS Macon shares the same fate as the USS Akron, crashing into the ocean off of Point Sur, California. Only two people were killed

February 26 (Washington, DC), The US Navy cancels its large rigid airship program, since USS Shenandoah, USS Akron and USS Macon were all plagued by crashes, and the large airship era ends.

July, Five naval aircraft squadrons start operating from NAS Moffett Field on a trial basis.

After the crashing of the USS Macon, the Navy wanted to close NAS Moffett Field due to its high cost of operations.

In San Diego, the Army and Navy were having jurisdictional issues over North Island in San Diego harbor, which had both NAS San Diego as well as the Army's Rockwell Field dividing the island. The Navy wanted the Army out of North Island in San Diego harbor as it needed to expand NAS San Diego as a training airfield for its growing number of aircraft carrier pilots. The Army resisted strongly, as Rockwell Field was a major training airfield for flight cadets, and had been using the field for flight training since 1912.

A proposal surfaces for the Navy to trade NAS Moffett Field to the Army in exchange for Rockwell Field, California; Bolling Field, Washington, D.C.; and Ford Island, Hawaii.

1935–1943 Army Air Corps Training Base Sunnyvale, CA

October, With the subtle assistance of President Franklin Roosevelt, a former assistant secretary of the Navy, a complex arrangement of facilities realignment was made by the War Department which transferred Moffett to Army jurisdiction and Rockwell Field was transferred to the Navy, becoming NAS North Island.Forgotten Air Pioneers: The Army’s Rockwell Field at North Island The Army definitely felt shortchanged by the President, considering him an "old Navy man" as Roosevelt had served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy from 1913 to 1920.

September, The Army took over NAS Moffett Field in September 1935, and immediately became disenchanted with it, mainly due to the high cost of Hangar One's maintenance, and wanted to inactivate the facility.

President Roosevelt would not allow the closure of the facility, and the Army assigned Moffett to its Western Flying Training Command as headquarters for pilot and aircrew flight training west of the Rocky Mountains. The base became the home for the United States Army Air Forces 82nd Army Observation squadron and the 9th Air Base Material squadron.

Among the pilots earning his wings at the base was 2nd Lt. Jimmy Stewart, who later became a well-known actor.

1939 Also in 1939, Moffett saw the establishment of the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory.Historic California Posts Naval Air Station, NAS Moffett Field

1940s thru 1950s

1941

7 December, The Japanese attack Pearl Harbor

As an aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Navy wanted to use the airship hangars at Moffett for blimp operations along with Pacific Coast. However, the Army, still stinging about having to transfer Rockwell Field to the Navy, resisted strongly. Again the inter-service rivalry was overruled by the War Department, citing the Navy's need for coastal defense a priority and ordered the Army to move its training headquarters to Hamilton Field in Marin County, north of San Francisco.

1943

February, The last Army aircraft departs as the headquarters of the Western Flying Training Command moved to Santa Ana Army Airfield.

1942

April 16, Control of the facility was returned to the Navy and it was recommissioned as NAS Sunnyvale. Four days later it was again renamed NAS Moffett Field.

From the end of World War II until its closure, NAS Moffett Field saw the development and use of several generations of land-based anti-submarine warfare and maritime patrol aircraft, including the Lockheed P2V Neptune and Lockheed P-3 Orion. Until the demise of the USSR and for some time thereafter, daily anti-submarine, maritime reconnaissance, Fleet support, and various training sorties flew out from NAS Moffett Field to patrol along the Pacific coastline, while Moffett's other squadrons and aircraft periodically deployed to other Pacific, Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf bases for periods of up to six months.

1942–1947 WWII blimps and gas balloon operations The significance of the historic district is attributed to the association with the expanding defense capabilities of the Navy, the engineering technology found in lighter than airships, the design of the hangar and system for porting the dirigible and in the layout and architectural style of the station designed to support this defense technology.

After Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Navy desperately needed NAS Moffett Field back to start West Coast blimp operations. While the Army resisted the transfer, Washington D.C. persisted and ordered the Army to vacate the base.

January,