Norfolk Naval Base in Virginia Is the Largest in the Country

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jan 11, 7:01AM EST

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Norfolk Naval Base in Virginia Is the Largest in the Country — © Public Domain / Wikimedia Commons

There are more than 40 naval bases spread across the country. The one officially known as Naval Station Norfolk is the largest. It is also the largest military base in the country based on active-duty personnel. NS Norfolk has 4 miles of waterfront in southeastern Virginia in the Sewells Point peninsula of Norfolk city. It is the headquarters of the Navy’s Atlantic Fleet.

Naval Station Norfolk supports 75 ships and 134 aircraft in 14 piers and 11 hangars, according to the site Naval Technology. The piers are located west of the entryway to the Chesapeake Bay from the Atlantic Ocean. The site describes Norfolk as “providing facilities and installation services for the biggest concentration of the US Navy.”

The base was first established in 1917 as the U.S. entered World War I. It has become a huge naval shipyard and repair location for naval warships. This part of the base describes itself as “America’s Shipyard.” (This is the largest military base in each state.)

The number of active-duty military personnel stationed at Norfolk is just over 47,000. Including family members and other personnel assigned to the base, over 100,000 people work and live at the base, according to the Department of Defense military demographics data for 2019, the most recent year of comprehensive data by base.

Across the 26 military largest installations, active-duty personnel range from just over 10,000 to nearly 50,000.

These are America’s largest military bases.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.