Marines Capture Past : Aviation Museum at El Toro Base Displays Corps’ Memorabilia

It’s a display of the swift, the highflying--and the unusual.

Sitting among the famous Marine fighter planes featured at an aviation museum here are an odd, bullet-riddled car that helped spark the U.S. invasion of Panama and a chocolate-brown helicopter taken from Iraqi soldiers during the Persian Gulf War.

The fledgling museum that opened in June at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station is quickly becoming one of the best collections of Marine aircraft and aviation memorabilia in the nation.

Since its official opening six months ago, people from all over the world have viewed the displays, historical photographs and paintings, the research center and the gift shop, according to museum director Lt. Col. Jim Rogers.

“Marines make up a large proportion of our visitors,” Rogers said of the 1,000 people monthly who come to the El Toro Historical Center and Command Museum in the southwest corner of the base. “Many are parents of Marines who served as aviators or the children of parents who served.”

The museum, supported by donations and proceeds from the gift shop, is free and open Wednesdays through Sundays.

Many commanders at El Toro and Tustin bring their squadrons to the museum as part of military instruction. Civilian researchers use the books, manuals and videos.

But above all, visitors come to see the planes, which range from a torpedo bomber such as President Bush flew during World War II to a sleek RF-4 Phantom jet.

Sitting just outside the front door of the museum is a 1950s-vintage Soviet MiG-15, which briefly gained air superiority in what was known as “MiG Alley” over Korea because its could fly higher and faster than U.S. planes.

But that changed when the F-86 Saber fighter (another plane on display) entered the war. The Marine version, called the FJ-4 Fury, helped the U.N. forces shift the war’s momentum, according to military historian Bill Gunston.

Both planes had a top speed of just less than 700 m.p.h., but the F-86 could fly as high as 50,000 feet. Some veteran pilots consider the later versions of the Saber, America’s first sweptwing plane, the greatest dogfight jet of all time.

“These belong to the public. They are part of the history of this country,” said retired Marine Brig. Gen. Jay Hubbard of Laguna Niguel, who heads the nonprofit El Toro Historical Foundation.

The 302 charter members of the museum foundation raise money and volunteer time to run the facility and restore Marine aircraft for display. The group hopes to raise $1 million to pay for sheltering aircraft displayed outside and for the restoration of others.

The collection also includes a four-engine C-54 cargo plane; a DC-3, which the military called the C-47; a PBJ, the Marine version of a B-25, and varied helicopters, including an AH-1 Cobra attack aircraft that saw action in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf.

The museum has half a dozen aircraft that are in various stages of repair or awaiting the first touch from a 15-member volunteer restoration crew headed by Tom Dozier, a Douglas Aircraft employee.

Outside the museum hangar--which houses a small OY-1 observation plane, a bright yellow World War II trainer and the most famous Marine plane, a nearly restored F4U Corsair of World War II--is a row of weathered helicopters and fighter jets awaiting attention. Between bent wings and fuselages sits an old gun-metal-gray Buick with bullet holes in the driver’s door, the trunk and the wheels. The windows have been shot out, and there is a menacing hole in the windshield.

Marine 1st Lt. Robert Paz, 25, of Dallas was fatally wounded in the car Dec. 16, 1989, when Panamanian soldiers opened fire on it as Paz and three other military men drove away from a roadblock. Paz was hit in the back and died later at a hospital. His death was cited by President Bush when he ordered the invasion of Panama four days later.

And off to one side of the museum’s hangar sits an Iraqi Bell helicopter that was captured Feb. 28, 1991, by the 1st Marine Division at the Kuwait International Airport. The Camp Pendleton Marines had the helicopter flown back to El Toro and presented to the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing and its commander, Lt. Gen. Royal N. Moore Jr. An Iraqi flag is painted on its side.

Inside the museum, photographs and memorabilia depict Marine aviation on the West Coast. Its roots go back to San Diego and North Island and Miramar, which was originally a Marine aviation depot.

The library includes research literature on the first Marine aviator, Alfred A. Cunningham, who was ordered to Annapolis, Md., in 1912, where the Navy had set up an aviation training facility composed of three hydroplanes. He soloed after three hours.

Michael Starn, aviation curator for the corps in Washington, said the El Toro museum--when completed--will be one of the largest displays of Marine aircraft anywhere. He said the Marine museum system has the important task of preserving artifacts, machinery and memorabilia of war.

“If nothing else, it is to preserve the past for future generations,” he said. “Keep alive the feeling that war is hell. Maybe, just maybe, if we show the terrible loss of life in war and the costly loss of equipment, maybe we can stop the next one.”

Getting There

Visitors headed for the Historical Center and Command Museum at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station should go to the main gate on Trabuco Road and ask for a pass to the museum.

The museum is open Wednesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. There is no charge.

Group tours and information are available if you call ahead at (714) 726-4380.

The museum has a gift shop.

On Display

Things of interest at the El Toro Historical Center and Command Museum:

Aviators’ flight equipment dating from the 1920s to the present, including helmets, goggles and survival gear.

Japanese parachutes and aircraft instruments and a national flag captured by Marines during World War II.

Aircraft models from the beginning of Marine aviation to the present, including the Corsair, F/A-18 Hornet, A-4 Skyhawk and CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter.

The Marine trainer plane for all beginning Navy and Marine pilots during and after World War II.

RF-4 Phantom jet simulator and a maintenance mock-up of the flight control system of the A-4.

Antiaircraft guns from the Soviet Union and China captured in Kuwait during the Persian Gulf War.

A collection of fuses used to trigger bombs carried by Marine aircraft from Vietnam through Desert Storm.