Drafted — not technically validated
Record revision 1 · The Navy's first air station, opened in 1914: where naval aviators and flight officers start training, and home of the Blue Angels.
A real-world airfield as described in public sources, and how sim maps represent it. Units, facilities and names change; each is dated where the sources allow, and the charts are not for navigation. Use current official publications for flight planning.
Location and identity
- Country or territory
- United States
- Coordinates
- 30.3527° N, 87.3186° W [4]
- Elevation
- 28 ft (9 m) [2]
- Identifiers
- ICAO KNPA · FAA NPA
- Other names
- Forrest Sherman Field (since 1954) [1]
- Opened
- Navy Yard from 1826; the Navy's first air station from 1914; Forrest Sherman Field opened in 1954 [1]
- Theatre
- North America
Role and operators
- Status
- Active · Military
- Roles today
- Flight training
Units
Permanently based units belong to the airfield; rotational and temporarily deployed units are there for a period or an operation. Dates are when the sources place each unit there; "as of" is when a source described it as current.
Current
Training Air Wing Six: undergraduate training for all Navy and Marine Corps naval flight officers [1]
- Service
- United States, navy
- Basing
- Permanently based
- When
- as of Oct 2026
479th Flying Training Group: all Air Force combat systems officer training [1]
- Service
- United States, air force
- Basing
- Permanently based
- Aircraft
- T-6A, T-1A
- When
- as of Oct 2026
US Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron, the Blue Angels [1]
- Service
- United States, navy
- Basing
- Permanently based
- Aircraft
- F/A-18 Super Hornet, C-130 (Marine Corps)
- When
- as of Oct 2026
Naval Education and Training Command, the Naval Aerospace Medical Institute and the Naval Air Technical Training Center [1]
- Service
- United States, navy
- Basing
- Permanently based
- When
- as of Oct 2026
Runways and facilities
From data effective Oct 2026. Facilities not listed here are not documented in the sources cited, which does not mean the airfield lacks them.
| Runway | Length | Width | Surface |
|---|---|---|---|
| 07L/25R [2] | 8,001 ft (2,439 m) | 200 ft (61 m) | asphalt |
| 07R/25L [2] | 8,000 ft (2,438 m) | 200 ft (61 m) | asphalt |
| 01/19 [2] | 7,136 ft (2,175 m) | 200 ft (61 m) | asphalt |
- Arresting gear
- E-28 near the ends of all three runways [3]
- Navaids
- TACANTACAN GlossaryAirfield and ATC: Tactical air navigation. An ultra-high frequency electronic rho-theta air navigation aid which provides suitably equipped aircraft a continuous indication of bearing and distance to the TACAN station. NPA, on the field; it operates only during field hours [2]
- ILS/DME runway 07L (I-NPA, channel 30X) [2]
Sim maps
Represented in: no map checked so far
No sim map has been checked against this airfield yet. That is not a claim that no map represents it.
Other maps in North America, not yet checked for this airfield, which may lie outside them: DCS: Nevada Test and Training Range.
Role today
Pensacola is where naval aviation began, and it is still where most naval aviators and naval flight officers start. [1] Every Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard officer heading for flight training begins here, and Training Air Wing Six at Forrest Sherman Field trains all the Navy’s and Marine Corps’ naval flight officers. [1] The Air Force trains all its combat systems officers here too, in its own 479th Flying Training Group. [1] Some 131 aircraft fly from Sherman Field, about 110,000 operations a year. [1]
History
The site was a Navy Yard from 1826. [1] After the yard closed in 1911, a board under Captain Washington Irving Chambers recommended an aviation training station at Pensacola, and on 20 January 1914 the aviation unit from Annapolis arrived aboard the former battleship USS Mississippi: nine officers, 23 enlisted men and seven aircraft. [1] The first flight was on 2 February 1914. [1] When the United States entered the First World War, Pensacola was still the Navy’s only air station, and by the armistice it had trained 1,000 naval aviators, with seaplanes, airships and kite balloons housed along a mile of beach. [1] Between the wars it was known as the “Annapolis of the Air”, and in the Second World War it trained 1,100 cadets a month. [1]
Jets needed more than the 3,100 ft runway of the old Chevalier Field, so Forrest Sherman Field opened on the western side of the station in 1954, named for the late Chief of Naval Operations, and the Blue Angels moved in from Corpus Christi soon after. [1] The station was badly damaged by Hurricane Ivan in 2004, when nearly every building was hit, and was rebuilt. [1] The National Naval Aviation Museum stands beside the airfield. [1] [3]
Sources
- Naval Air Station Pensacola. Wikipedia (secondary source). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Air_Station_Pensacola (accessed 2026-10-27).
- Airport data: NPA (KNPA), Pensacola NAS (Forrest Sherman Fld). Federal Aviation Administration, Aeronautical Information Services, data effective 1–29 October 2026. https://nfdc.faa.gov/nfdcApps/services/ajv5/airportDisplay.jsp?airportId=NPA (accessed 2026-10-27).
- Airport Diagram, Pensacola NAS (Forrest Sherman Fld) (KNPA). Federal Aviation Administration, digital Terminal Procedures Publication, cycle 2610, 1–29 October 2026. https://aeronav.faa.gov/d-tpp/2610/00736AD.PDF (accessed 2026-10-27).
- Airport data, KNPA. OurAirports open data (public domain, community-maintained). https://davidmegginson.github.io/ourairports-data/airports.csv (accessed 2026-10-28). Row for KNPA: latitude, longitude and identifiers.
Wikipedia articles are secondary sources and can change; they are cited with the date they were read. FAA airport data and diagrams are official but are reissued every 28 or 56 days; each is cited with the edition read. pydcs mirrors the DCS terrain data at the commit linked.