For two decades, the Naval Air Technical Training Center's U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Air Traffic Controllers' and Air Traffic Control Maintenance Technicians' 'A' and 'C' Schools have graduated students from Calhoun Hall, Bldg. 3220 aboard Naval Air Station Pensacola.

Before that, however, NATTC functions - the bulk of aviation technical training - resided at Naval Air Station Millington, Tennessee. Thousands of Sailors studying material in aviation technical rates - including ACs - were part of NATTC Millington.

But on March 29, 1996, AC students boarded busses in Millington bound for NAS Pensacola, a result of a 1990 Defense Base Realignment and Closure Act special commission to review Department of Defense installations for disestablishment or reorganization.

And after a seven hour trip, the first NATTC Pensacola students arrived, a group of ACs who would both continue and begin training in their rate at the newly relocated NATTC.

According to then NATTC Air Traffic Control Training Department Officer-in-Charge CDR (ret) David W. Kelch, the transition from Millington to Pensacola, although well-planned, happened very quickly.

While the hundreds of courses instructed and the thousands of Sailors studying would move from NAS Millington to NAS Pensacola over the course of the next few months, the Air Traffic Control School marked the first of NATTC's courses to begin instruction, officially opening with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on April 1, 1996.

Training began that day, with courses picking up from where they had left off three states away, according to [Air Traffic Controller 1st Class (ret)] Pete Durmont.

"I remember the first time I entered the building and it was a shell," he said. "[Senior Chief Air Traffic Controller (ret)] Jeff Abbott and I designed the interior and I was responsible for the move and developing interim training methods so as not to lose any training time resulting from the move. We also had to develop baseline testing for all of the equipment to ensure it was working correctly after the move."

For more than 70 years, with the last two decades aboard NAS Pensacola, the Naval Air Technical Training Center has been providing training and increasing readiness within the Naval Aviation Enterprise. The facility graduates approximately 15,000 Navy, Marine Corps and international students annually and is the largest training facility in the Navy post Recruit Training Command.

NATTC is part of the Center for Naval Aviation Technical Training, which provides single site management for Navy and Marine Corps aviation technical training.

CNATT is the technical training agent for the Naval Aviation Enterprise (NAE), an organization designed to advance and sustain naval aviation warfighting capabilities at an affordable cost, and is the largest training center under the Naval Education and Training Command.

For more news from Center for Naval Aviation Technical Training, visit www.navy.mil