Last Salute at O.C. Base

It will be taps for El Toro Marine Corps Air Station when the curious and the sentimental gather today for a final salute to the base that was closely identified with Orange County for more than half a century.

Tours will be available between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. for those who want to take a last look before the base is demolished. About 2,000 people, including former Marines once stationed there, are expected at the free event.

A noon farewell ceremony will feature speeches and remembrances from dignitaries, including at least one former base commander.

A time capsule that developers plan to bury next to a military memorial planned at the site will be sealed, and the public will be able to view a photo exhibit of the base from 1942 until its closure in 1999.

Weeds growing through cracks of the silent tarmac are a sure sign of El Toro’s demise as a military airfield. But the beginning of the end happened last week when crews started tearing up the main runway, one of two 10,000-foot strips that handled every type of aircraft the Marines have flown since World War II, including propeller-driven planes, fighter jets and helicopters. The base also has two 8,000-foot runways.

Marsha Burgess, spokeswoman for Orange County Great Park Corp., said it may take as long as two years to remove all of the concrete at the base, which covers the runways, streets and just about any area not landscaped.

The Irvine City Council established a nonprofit corporation to develop a village of housing units, commercial and retail shops on about 2,200 acres. An additional 1,300 acres will remain open space or public areas known as the Great Park, Southern California’s second largest, after Griffith Park in Los Angeles.

When construction began at the beginning of World War II, the base sat on 4,700 acres of paved-over bean fields and was surrounded by orange groves. El Toro sprang up at a time when almost every bit of war news in the Pacific was grim, as Japanese forces racked up victory after victory. The base was commissioned March 17, 1943, with a flyover by Grumman F4F Wildcat fighters and SBD Dauntless dive bombers made by the Long Beach-based Douglas Aircraft Co.

Over the years, the base was home to helicopter, transport and fighter units. John H. Glenn Jr., the first American to orbit the Earth and later a senator from Ohio, was stationed at El Toro in 1946. When the based closed on July 2, 1999, it was home to 6,300 servicemen and women.

El Toro Marines fought in four wars and other conflicts, including Grenada and Somalia. Almost every man and woman who served in the Marine Air Wing from World War II until the base closed passed through El Toro, at one time the Marine aviation center on the West Coast. The base also played a role in Richard Nixon’s presidency. He would fly Air Force One to El Toro, take a helicopter to a nearby Coast Guard station and then ride a golf cart to the Western White House in San Clemente.

On the day Nixon resigned in 1974, a blue-and-white Boeing 707 brought the disgraced former president home to Orange County. He was greeted by several thousand supporters who welcomed him at El Toro. In 1994, the same plane brought his flag-draped casket back from New York for burial at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda. Only a few dozen Marines and their families who lived on base saw his final return.

Orange County’s relationship with the Marine Corps from the 1950s through the Vietnam War was much like Oceanside’s ties to Camp Pendleton today. Thousands of Marines going to or returning from Vietnam transited through the base, and for many it was their first taste of Southern California. Many stationed at El Toro stayed in the area after they returned to civilian life.

Retired Marine Capt. Dale Dye, a technical advisor on war movies, was one who stayed.

“The great thing about having El Toro in the middle of a populated area was that Orange County knew us as their Marines, and we saw ourselves as part of the community,” he said. “It was an unbelievably close relationship that I’m afraid is disappearing in other communities with bases. El Toro was a great place to be stationed.”

During the Cold War, the base played an important role in the nation’s defense by training Marine pilots who flew their Douglas A4D Skyhawks and F/A-18 Hornets off aircraft carriers.

But over the years, development pushed new houses almost to the base’s perimeter, cutting swaths through the orange groves that served as buffers. It was not long before homeowners began to complain about the nighttime training flights to perfect carrier landings.

By the mid-1980s, some had begun calling for the base’s closure.

The 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union sealed El Toro’s fate, when the Pentagon began looking to close bases to reduce defense spending.

In 1993, Pentagon officials announced plans to shut down El Toro and move the Marines to the Miramar Marine Corps Air Station in San Diego.

A political and legal battle over the base’s future began almost as soon as the Navy announced its closure.

One side wanted to renovate the airfield as an international airport; the other wanted to develop the property for civilian use, and successfully beat back airport proponents at the ballot box and in the courtroom.

Today’s ceremony marks the last time the public will be able to see the base with its barracks, airstrips and officers’ club.

“I’m sure it will be a day filled with emotion for a lot of people, an opportunity to say goodbye and prepare for construction of the Great Park,” Burgess said.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Events

A farewell ceremony at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station today will include guided tours, exhibits and a ceremony. Enter the base through Marine Way gates, off Sand Canyon Avenue.

Schedule

10 a.m. to 2 p.m.: Gates open, tours of these sites start: MAG 46, MAG 11, control tower, school, Exhbits in Pavilion tent.

11:40 a.m.: Marine Corps band

Noon to 1 p.m.: Final salute ceremony on main stage

*

Source: City of Irvine