Commodore, a 200-foot 'ship' built on dry land. Recruits were trained in shipboard duties aboard the R.T.S. The recruits were given a battery of tests to determine their educational and skill levels, then trained in ordnance and gunnery, seamanship, fire fighting, physical training, and military drill. They came in busloads from transportation collection points at Havre de Grace and Perryville, Maryland. The center was activated on 1 October 1942, and the first batch of recruits arrived 10 days later to begin 'boot camp' training. More than five hundred new buildings were built, some designed by Eggers & Higgins. The campus was expanded by government purchase from 330 acres (1.3 km 2) to 1,132 acres (4.58 km 2). Roosevelt also chose the name to honor Commodore William Bainbridge, who commanded the frigate Constitution when it defeated the British frigate HMS Java during the War of 1812. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt personally approved the site, which was seized from the Tome School by Congressional order.

It was reached via Maryland Route 222, about halfway between US 1 and US 40.

Located on the appropriated campus of the Tome School for boys, the training center sat between various important naval centers of World War II: about 35 miles (56 km) northeast of Baltimore, Maryland, and 75 miles (121 km) from Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was active from 1942 to 1976 under the Commander of the Fifth Naval District, based in Norfolk, Virginia. Navy Training Center at Port Deposit, Maryland, on the bluffs of the northeast bank of the Susquehanna River. United States Naval Training Center Bainbridge ( USNTC Bainbridge) was the U.S. Not to be confused with United States Training Center.

World war 2 navy boot camp