The Naval Historical Society of Australia dates the decision to build an airfield at Nowra to the months after war was declared in 1939. Wikipedia, drawing on the same naval history, has land bought in June 1939 and the field declared operational in June 1941, but the Air Force only began operating there on 7 May 1942. Its first residents were RAAF squadrons with Bristol Beaufort torpedo bombers, and in 1942–43 Martin Marauders of the US Army Air Forces trained there as torpedo bombers. The society also records US Army Air Corps and Royal Netherlands East Indies Air Force personnel passing through.

In late 1944 the Royal Navy arrived. The British Pacific Fleet needed shore bases for the squadrons of its carriers, and Nowra became HMS Nabbington, home of Mobile Naval Air Base No. 1. The dates differ by source: the naval society has operations starting in late October 1944, Wikipedia’s MONAB article gives commissioning in Britain on 28 October 1944 and in Australia on 2 January 1945, and its Albatross article dates MONAB I’s operations from 21 December 1944. All agree that Nabbington paid off on 15 November 1945. MONAB V, HMS Nabswick, moved in from Jervis Bay and stayed until 18 March 1946, after which the field went back to the RAAF on care and maintenance.

On 3 July 1947 the Commonwealth Defence Council approved a Fleet Air Arm to be controlled and operated by the RAN, and on 31 August 1948 Nowra was commissioned as HMAS Albatross. The aircraft came by sea: in May 1949 HMAS Sydney landed 805 and 816 Squadrons with Sea Furies and Fireflies, and 808 and 817 Squadrons followed in November 1950. A control tower was built in 1958.

For the next 33 years the base worked to the rhythm of the carriers. Squadrons embarked when Sydney or, from 1955, Melbourne went to sea and came ashore to Nowra when she returned. The Sea Venom and the Gannet arrived in the mid-1950s; in 1967 the A-4G Skyhawk and the S-2E Tracker replaced them. 816 Squadron, one of the two original units, flew Fireflies, then Gannets, then Trackers until Melbourne was decommissioned on 30 June 1982 and the squadron disbanded. With her went the reason for fixed-wing flying at Albatross.

Without a carrier, Albatross became a helicopter base, but jets did not disappear. From February 1991 No. 2 Squadron of the Royal New Zealand Air Force was based at Nowra with A-4K and TA-4K Skyhawks and 50–60 personnel, to give the RAN realistic air threats in fleet training. In August 1994 its Skyhawks sank the decommissioned patrol boat HMAS Adroit in an exercise. The detachment ended when the New Zealand government disbanded the RNZAF’s air combat force on 13 December 2001.

Civil contractors filled the gap. Since 1986 target-towing jets — Learjets and IAI Westwinds — have flown from Nowra for the navy, operated in turn by Lloyd Aviation, Fleet Support, Pel-Air and Air Affairs Australia. On 24 March 2016 Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull opened Air Affairs’ new facility at the Albatross Aviation Technology Park; under a Jet Aircraft Support Contract that began on 1 October 2015 the company flew seven Learjets and had grown from 35 to about 85 staff.

The navy names Naval Air Station HMAS Albatross as the home of the MH-60R Seahawk when it is not deployed. 816 and 808 Squadrons provide the flights that embark in the fleet’s warships, and 725 Squadron, recommissioned on 11 June 2015, trains their crews. 808 came to the Romeo the hard way: it had re-formed in 2011 with the MRH90 Taipan, and converted after the navy stopped flying the Taipan in April 2022.

723 Squadron, the oldest unit on the station (commissioned 7 April 1952), runs the Joint Helicopter School on the EC135 T2+ for Navy and Army crews. 822X Squadron, formed on 25 October 2018, is the RAN’s first developmental squadron and flies ship-launched uncrewed aircraft: ScanEagles since 2013, the Camcopter S-100 until 30 June 2024, and, according to Wikipedia, the Integrator since October 2025. Air Force controllers of No. 453 Squadron run the tower, and the Fleet Air Arm Museum, opened in 1990, keeps the station’s past on show.