Pensacola was a naval station for nearly ninety years before anyone flew from it. Construction of the Pensacola (or Warrington) Navy Yard began in April 1826, on a site on Pensacola Bay chosen by Captains William Bainbridge, Lewis Warrington and James Biddle. Wikipedia, drawing on the yard’s own payrolls, records that in May 1829 37 of its 87 employees were enslaved labourers, and that by June 1855 the payroll listed 155 enslaved workers; Warrington argued that free labour simply could not be had there.

Yellow fever and malaria killed sailors and workmen for decades. On 12 January 1861 the yard surrendered to secessionist forces, and when the Confederates withdrew in 1862 they reduced most of it to rubble. The rebuilt yard never regained its importance and was closed in 1911 — which is why, two years later, the Navy had a large, empty, sheltered waterfront to give to its new aviation unit.

In October 1913 a board chaired by Captain Washington Irving Chambers recommended an aviation training station at Pensacola. On 20 January 1914 Lieutenant Commander Henry Mustin (Naval Aviator No. 11), Lieutenant John Towers (No. 3) and Lieutenant Patrick Bellinger (No. 8) arrived with nine officers, 23 enlisted men and seven aircraft. Towers and Ensign Godfrey Chevalier flew the first flight on 2 February 1914.

The First World War made the station. In April 1917 it had 38 naval aviators, 163 enlisted support men and 54 aircraft; by the armistice it had trained about 1,000 aviators, and seaplane, airship and balloon hangars stretched a mile along the beach. Between the wars about 100 pilots a year graduated from the twelve-month course, and Pensacola became the "Annapolis of the Air". Station Field, built in 1922, was renamed Chevalier Field in 1935.

The cadet programme of 1935 overwhelmed Pensacola, so the Navy opened Jacksonville and Corpus Christi; Saufley Field (August 1940) and Ellyson Field (October 1941) were added nearby. In the Second World War the station trained 1,100 cadets a month, eleven times the annual output of the 1920s. The Korean War produced 6,000 more aviators, and Vietnam pushed graduations from 1,413 in 1962 to 2,552 in 1968.

Chevalier Field’s 3,100-foot runway was useless for jets. Forrest Sherman Field, named after the former Chief of Naval Operations, opened on the west side of the station in 1954, and the Blue Angels moved in that winter. Today Training Air Wing Six trains Navy and Marine naval flight officers there, the Air Force trains its combat systems officers alongside, and Wikipedia counts 131 aircraft and about 110,000 movements a year at Sherman Field.

Hurricane Ivan in late 2004 damaged nearly every building and almost destroyed the south-eastern part of the station; the main barracks did not reopen until January 2005. With the 2005 base closure round looming, Florida feared the worst, but the list published on 13 May 2005 spared Pensacola, and the station was rebuilt. Rebuilding the rescue swimmer school in May 2006 turned up a Spanish ship that may date from the mid-16th century.

On 6 December 2019 Second Lieutenant Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani of the Royal Saudi Air Force, a student at the station, killed three US sailors and wounded eight people before law enforcement officers shot him dead. The Justice Department called the attack terrorism on 13 January 2020; al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed it, and on 18 May 2020 the FBI said it had corroborated the link. Twenty-one Saudi trainees were sent home. Access to the base, and so to the National Naval Aviation Museum, was closed to the general public for three and a half years, until 17 May 2023.