A high pressure, radio frequency discharge nozzle beam source has been developed for the production of very intense (⩾1018atoms sr−1  s−1) supersonic beams of oxygen atoms. An efficient impedance matching scheme has been devised for coupling the radio frequency power to oxygen–rare gas mixtures as a function of gas pressure, temperature, and composition. Techniques for localizing the discharge directly behind the orifice of a specially designed quartz nozzle have also been developed. The above combine to yield a beam source which reliably produces a high degree of molecular dissociation in oxygen–rare gas mixtures at pressures up to 350 Torr. Atomic oxygen mean translational energies from 0.14–0.50 eV have been achieved using the seeded beams technique with Mach numbers up to 10 being realized. When helium is used as the carrier gas both O(3PJ) and O(1D2) atoms are present in the beam, while only ground state atoms appear to be present in argon seeded mixtures. This paper describes the design, construction, and operation of this beam source and provides a characterization of the atomic oxygen beams it has reproducibly generated in our laboratory.