Originally Posted By: Nyogtha
More detail here. CC TX is where I grew up, Kingsville where I finished college.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.caller.com/amp/836881001
Interesting NAS CC says plane is not associated with CC or Kingsville bases, and they have no idea where the plane came from or what it was doing there. Growing up I never saw military planes using the commercial airport for training, there were (and still are) numerous military training fields in addition to NAS CC & Kingsville in South Texas.
Well...
Growing up, you must not have been looking.
We flew approaches into Corpus Christi International all the time when I was in VT-27 (T-34 squadron at NAS Corpus Christi). We did that for several reasons. First, to keep IFR traffic out of the crowded VFR pattern at NAS, because IFR straight in approaches are difficult to deconflict with overhead pattern entries, next, to expose the students (me) to different approaches and procedures, and finally, because the controllers at International requested it.
Controllers have to train, too. Low-traffic airports like Corpus Christi are bad for controller proficiency. The T-34 (and the P-8) are capable of flying civilian ILS approaches. So: win-win. Controllers get the training they need, and military gets better training through varied procedures.
Most carrier based fighters were not capable of flying a civilian ILS. The Navy had to have unique ILS systems on the carrier because the frequencies that civilians use were already in use for tactical systems. So, F-14s at Oceana wouldn't ever fly approaches into Norfolk International, eight miles away. No point.
The safety benefit of keeping big jet airplanes out of the crowded traffic pattern with small propeller airplanes cannot be overstated. They don't mix well. Those small airplanes are being flown by students! And the pattern is crowded with them. The wake vortex, higher speeds, and different approach procedures of airplanes like the P-8 all raise the risk for those students. NAS Corpus Christi is a training base. A T-34 airplane collided with an F-14 in the pattern at Corpus Christi NAS years ago (1993?) and the student and instructor in that airplane were killed.
Finally, the city of Corpus Christi has grown up around the NAS. It was placed outside of the city in World War Two, when it was built, but the city just expanded around it...like Oceana, North Island, and many other Navy airfields. Waldron Field (where the larger T-44 airplanes would go do practice landings, again, to keep dissimilar airplanes from mixing in the traffic pattern) just to the south of NAS CC was in the middle of fields when I was there in the 80s. Now, it's completely surrounded by development.
Little airplanes like T-34s are low risk. Fighters are much higher risk to the encroaching city. Several crashes have happened near fighter bases over the years, and civic planners that have allowed residential building right up to the field boundaries are to blame for the encroachment and greater risk to the public.
The crash of an F/A-18 in Virginia Beach (dual engine failure due to two sequential mechanical failures) in 2012 exemplifies the risk of encroachment. It hit an apartment complex fewer than two miles outside the Naval Air Station. There were no fatalities, fortunately, but keeping people's homes away from fighter bases would be better for all concerned.