The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 167

LOS ANGELES TIMES WEDNESDAY. JUNE 30, 1999 V3 EL TOItO 1943-1999 i LI I'li fi -w -V. Lost Buddies Crowd Ciampa's Memories There was the one they called the "All-American Boy," who flipped his plane while trying to land. Then there was the pilot whose oxygen mask caught on fire, sending flames into his lungs. Another one didn't come back after a divebombing training run.

He had flown, unnoticed by the others, straight into the target, unable to pull up in time. Many of their names now escape E. Roger Ciampa, 78, but to him they are the legacy of El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. "It's not something you get used to talking to them in the morning and finding out in the afternoon they're gone," he says. Ciampa is keenly aware of the sacrifices made to protect their country by the men and women of El Toro.

In the base's early days, without the benefit of sophisticated flight simulators, the Marine Corps lost as many as one aviator a day to training accidents. "Seldom would a day go by when you didn't see a column of black smoke rising out in the distance, causing you to say, 'I hope that wasn't one of my Ciampa says. Ciampa arrived at El Toro in January 1944 and soon was flying divebombers over the Philippines. He would fly in so close that when he dropped the bombs, his plane would absorb not only enemy fire but shrapnel from his own shells. A few years later, he found himself in the Korean War, this time flying Corsairs.

A Marine staff job took him to the East Coast. But when he retired, he returned to Orange County and began a second career as a teacher. Eventually, he became a docent at the base's aviation museum, energetically telling others of the base's rich past. Today, Ciampa is suffering from leukemia, and must use a wheelchair DON BARTLETTI Los Angeles Times Grass and weeds poke through tarmac outside control tower at all-but-abandoned fighter jet base where thousands of combat pilots left to go to wars around the globe. Departure Leaves Hole in County's Heart don't have the expertise to know if El Toro should have been on the closure list, but we had to start somewhere.

Doing the right thing, however, doesn't preclude an overwhelming sadness that Orange County must now turn past this rfv: JERRY HICKS Adieu, El Toro. We won't forget. I felt its importance each time I drove through its front gate and past the deep green ficus, a radiant arbor row that eventually gave way to winding roads lined with scores of drab brown buildings. Working centers, where assignment and duty outweighed attention to decor. Born of war before midcentury, El Toro Marine Corps Air Station always was bustling with labor of consequence.

Most of us came to Orange County in search of sun and sand. The leathernecks came on business. Their training jets were a daily part of our I drove to El Toro the other day for a final look. My own goodbye to a place that's been important to me as a newspaper reporter, and a citizen of Orange County. A green federal sign on the Santa Ana Freeway, still notes its Command Museum.

Now gone. A squadron of World War II planes in a front field made its entrance distinctive. Now all gone. In previous visits, I had to show I.D., car registration, and even proof of car insurance. That routine's now gone.

This time the gate guard waved me in with barely a nod. I stood near its vast tarmac, saw the weeds now growing in the cracks, and thought back 111 11111 mmmi a i. i 1 i when leaving his San Juan Capistrano home for long periods. But he and his wife of 53 years, Martha, will make their way to El Toro on Friday for the closing ceremonies. "It's sort of like your alma mater," Ciampa says.

"It's like an alma mater where the courses were so tough that many of your friends didn't pass, and their bones are still spread out there." vivifying chapter and move on. Fortunately, others have the foresight to know such significant passages should not be forgotten. If you never made it to El Toro's Command Museum, you missed an enriching experience. But you haven't yet missed it completely. The museum is moving 25 trailers worth to the Miramar Marine Corps Air Station in San Diego County, a 75-minute drive just off Interstate 805.

It will be renamed the Flying Leathernecks Aviation Museum. But the heart of its material will reflect El Toro's history. El Toro's planes are being reassembled there. Tom O'Hara, a 35-year Marine veteran who was curator at El Toro, will be curator at Miramar. Architectural plans show more museum space there, with wider grounds and larger hangars for the plane displays.

It will be worth a Sunday afternoon drive. El Toro as a property will remain alive in some fashion; you well know the brouhaha over what its future should be. But whatever it is to becbme, we shall never forget what it once was. A grand scale response to war that grew from a bean field and stayed intact to become a dependable horizon. The camouflage green of their uniforms became a routine sight on local roadways.

We sensed from their demeanor that, in times of conflict, they'd be ready when called. How you feel about the military doesn't matter. Or whether you agree with the base's long-planned closing. Not even your views on the future of its grounds international airport, yes or no? It's not important whether you ever visited there many here never have or if you depended on the base for your livelihood. El Toro is significant to us all.

More than just a vital column in our county's history, it became a part of our fabric. El Toro was hardly a busy neighbor with no time for the rest of us. It opened up its vintage planes to our schoolchildren. Its spacious Officers Club hosted legions of dinners for Scouts, the Pioneer Council and groups with special causes. Its research library became a critical source of Marine information for journalists, veterans and historians.

And its annual air show that was the biggest spectacle in town, anyone who'd been there can tell you. But the past year, El Toro has been swiftly closing shop, the permanent end to arrive ceremoniously Friday. A small city at its peak 15,000 at a time, 50,000 a year as Marines moved in and out El Toro this month has been a shell of itself, a few scattered hundred helping with the shutdown. to the moving sight of jets streaking in at lightning speed, one after another, as pilots prepared for war in the Persian Gulf. At the parade grounds, now empty, I remembered the colorful drama of a change-of-command ceremony I'd witnessed there.

At the Command Museum's old grounds, the only planes left were an observation piper cub, its wings already loosened, and a C-14 transport plane, wingless with its belly on the ground. Both awaited a transfer truck. I recalled those very same planes once on splendid display, surrounded by large groups of school classes. To the children, the docents who told the planes' stories may have seemed slow-talking men in old bodies. To most of us, they were warriors, ex-pilots who braved enemy firepower to carry out duty.

They worked for the museum, without pay, to help preserve the memory of what they and others had done. Revisiting the empty hallways of the closed Command Museum, I thought of the Veterans Day I had spent there, listening to World War II vets from all branches retell their times of combat. They had come to El Toro, most said, just to soak up the atmosphere on that important holiday. Despite this nostalgic stroll of memories, I have to confess being among those'who applauded the decision in Washington to reduce our number of military bases. I DON BARTLETTI Los Angeles Times E.

Roger Ciampa, 78, revisits vintage hangar with model of Corsair bomber he flew in Korean War. neighbor. I left that day thinking a paraphrase of the words of the writer John Gregory Dunne, on the parting of a dear friend: Regards, El Toro. Regards, regards, with love and affection. Blimp Pilot Remembers Tustin Base's Heyday I is was a war spent floating off the Southern I California coast, watching and waiting for an In El Toro's Shadow, Tustin Managed to Shine ominous blip on the radar screen that, thankfully, never came.

As World War II raged an ocean away, Willard Brown was one of about 50 blimp pilots stationed' at the former Santa Ana Naval Air Station, now named the Tustin Marine Corps Air Facility. Armed with powerful machine guns and underwater explosives, their mission was to patrol the coast in search of enemy submarines. Today, those blimps are historical afterthoughts, long-since retired and seen only in old snapshots or film footage. Brown, 80, of Palm Springs, was studying for a pilot's license in Santa Barbara when WWII broke out. 'We joined up very much so as to be patriotic," he says.

There weren't enough planes to go around, so Brown elected instead to try his hand at blimps, and joined the Navy's Lighter-Than-Air ranks. He was one of 12 ensigns who arrived at Tustin in 1942, the first squadron stationed there. It would be months before one of the base's famous hangars were completed, so pilots took turns watching the blimps overnight to ensure that they were not torn from their outdoor moorings. The blimps were retired from military service during the 1950s. Some were sold for advertising, others destroyed.

A few were preserved as artifacts. Piloting blimps was not without peril. During Tustin's history, one blimp crashed on Santa Catalina Island. Another exploded while landing. Blimp pilots take pride in their wartime role, even though no submarine was ever detected off the West Coast.

Brown points out that no ship protected by a blimp was ever sunk, either. "The fear was we would lose ships, and we -would lose men," Brown says. "We were out there to keep them from that. We did that." tfl irk' bos- -s-'Re i Siv mi te Wf, i feu-J. called Santa Ana Naval Air Station Lighter-Than-Air, began April 1, 1942, a full four months ahead of El Toro.

Tustin's cavernous blimp hangars were finally completed in October 1943. The hangars were so large they have been known to support their own weather patterns, including fog. They could house six blimps at a time. A wartime shortage of steel forced workers to build the hangars out of wood, paving the way for their eventual designation among the world's largest wood-framed structures. In 1949, with the war over, the facility was retired, only to be pressed into service two years later by the Korean War.

By this time, blimps had been phased out of active military use and the base became a training facility for the Marines. It was renamed the Santa Ana Marine Corps Air Facility. The rugged, mountainous area to the east and the close proximity to the Pacific Ocean and Camp Pendleton made Tustin an ideal helicopter training site. The base jumped to the fore during the Vietnam War, when Tustin-trained helicopter squadrons revolutionized the battlefield environment, according to Tom O'Hara, El Toro's museum curator and a former serviceman at both bases. "They rewrote the book on how you employ grunts in the battlefield, as well as logistics, medical evacuations and resupply," he said.

Suddenly, Marines could land not only on the beach but also behind enemy lines and attack in two directions. Troops in need of artillery could make a radio call and 10 minutes later, after bombers cleared a landing area, a helicopter would Please see TUSTIN, V7 By MICHAEL LUO TIMES STAFF WRITER The Tustin Marine Corps Air Facility has sometimes been overshadowed by its military counterpart just seven miles to the south. But it has never been second best to El Toro. Tustin predates El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. The base played key roles during World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars.

And in every conflict and peacekeeping mission during the past 50 years, where there were servicemen and servicewomen from El Toro, there were those from Tustin too. Tustin's place in Marine Corps and Orange County lore is, in short, secure. In fact, its world-renowned blimp hangars, or at least one of them, may one day be the only remaining link to the relatively nondescript tracts of land that went on to become one of the centerpieces of U.S. military operations in the world. On Friday, at a single ceremony to be held at El Toro, the two bases will be officially decommissioned in a service expected to attract some of the military's highest-ranking officials, and thousands of enlisted men and women and civilians.

A similar service was held at Tustin in September 1997, when the base's colors were retired as Tustin was downgraded from an air station to an air facility. It received little fanfare a sign of how Tustin has sometimes been overlooked. But Tustin's long history is every bit as rich as El Toro's. The "end of an era," is the way Master Sgt. Mervyn Best describes Tustin's closing.

As the highest ranking noncommissioned officer remaining at the base, Best is taking Tustin through its last days. Ask him what he thinks about the i KAREN TAPIA Los Angeles Times The future of Tustin's historic South hangar is uncertain. Despite the cost of expensive maintenance, many want it preserved along with the North hangar. subtle rivalry and you won't get a modest answer. "This is a better base," said Best, as he drove around recently, checking to make sure items were not left behind.

"It's smaller. There's more of a community." Indeed, Tustin's smaller numbers have long provided Marines stationed there with a feeling of intimacy that escapes large bases like El Toro and Camp Pendleton. Tustin's history dates back to 1942. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, naval officers arrived in Orange County in a panic. The need was for a place to house a dirigible fleet: Helium-filled blimps that were the only means by which the Navy could send observers out to sea in poor weather and low visibility to patrol against Japanese submarines.

They settled on nearly 4,000 acres that would become the heart of the El Toro and Tustin bases. But Tustin was the priority: "During the war, Tustin was actually the more important facility," said Maj. Jeff Matthews, who has put together an early history of the base. "There was a definite threat of Japanese submarines." Construction on the Tustin site, then I Memory stories by EXICHAEL LUO LOS AMiLI.LS TIMES.