During World War II, pilots from NAS Brunswick as well as those of the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm used the station as a base from which they carried out anti-submarine warfare missions with around-the-clock efficiency.

This commercial deviation was short-lived however, when the Navy selected the station as a potential center for development of “Services to the Fleet”.

Acting quickly and on little notice, the American military reversed the post-World War II trend of reduction-in-forces and several subordinate commands stationed at NAS Brunswick were re-commissioned.

While not directly involved in combat operations in Korea, its squadrons contributed to the war effort by assuming the many responsibilities of commands who had been deployed to the Pacific.

Flying the P2V Neptune and PB4Y-2 Privateer, the squadrons played a major part in the defense of the North Atlantic area, tracking Soviet submarines around the clock throughout the Cold War.

In 1962, NAS Brunswick and Fleet Air Wing Five began the transition to the P-3A Orion marking the beginning of a new era in Naval Patrol Aviation.

Fleet Air Wing Five aircraft also played an important part in America’s early crewed space programs in 1965 and 1966, helping to locate Mercury and Gemini capsules after splashdowns.

Based at Naval Station Sangley Point in the Philippines, squadrons flew patrol and combat missions in support of Seventh Fleet operations in South East Asia throughout the years of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

In response, the United States launched a wholly defensive mission to the Middle East named Operation Desert Shield.

Patrol Squadron EIGHT participated in joint operations during Desert Storm, flying combat sorties in the effort to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi forces.

During the mid-1990s with the breakup and subsequent conflict in the former Republic of Yugoslavia, Patrol Squadrons 8, 10, 11, 26 from NAS Brunswick were called upon to fly countless sorties in the Adriatic Sea in support of Operation Sharp Guard.

In the early years of the new millennium, squadrons home ported at NAS Brunswick continued to fulfill their missions by flying intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and maritime patrol sorties in Operation Joint Guardian in Kosovo and Operation Deliberate Forge in Bosnia in support of U.S. and NATO forces.

Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the U.S., those same squadrons began flying missions in support of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in the Middle East.

[8] The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared the base a Superfund Site in 1987 for chemical contamination after open-air detonation of ordnance.

They had been "recorded at levels above the EPA’s provisional health advisory", a number derived from lab tests on animals, at several places, many of which were associated with past use of PFC-containing fire-fighting foam, such as areas around the airplane runway and between hangars.

Restoration Advisory Board members criticized the land use control plan as insufficient, after PFCs found in well water at Pease Air Force Base in neighboring New Hampshire had exposed people including children as blood monitoring has shown.