Marine Corps Air Station El Toro (IATA: NZJ, ICAO: KNZJ, FAA LID: NZJ) was a United States Marine Corps Air Station located near Irvine, California.
Before it was decommissioned in 1999, it was the 4,682 acres (19 km2) home of Marine Corps aviation on the West Coast. Designated as a Master Jet Station, its four runways (two of 8,000 feet (2,400 m) and two of 10,000 feet (3,000 m)) could handle the largest aircraft in the U.S. military inventory. While it was active, all U.S. Presidents in the post-WWII era landed in Air Force One at this airfield. The El Toro "Flying Bull" patch was designed by Walt Disney Studios in 1944. It survived virtually unchanged until the close of the Air Station.
The land area originally taken by the air station is planned to be converted into a large recreational center, the Orange County Great Park.
The site is currently used as a filming location for the History Channel show Top Gear.
Read more about Marine Corps Air Station El Toro: History, Base Conversion Controversy, Environmental Remediation, Sale of El Toro, Notable Events, In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words marine, corps, air and/or station:
“People run away from the name subsidy. It is a subsidy. I am not afraid to call it so. It is paid for the purpose of giving a merchant marine to the whole country so that the trade of the whole country will be benefitted thereby, and the men running the ships will of course make a reasonable profit.... Unless we have a merchant marine, our navy if called upon for offensive or defensive work is going to be most defective.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“The Washington press corps thinks that Julie Nixon Eisenhower is the only member of the Nixon Administration who has any credibility—and, as one journalist put it, this is not to say that anyone believes what she is saying but simply that people believe she believes what she is saying ... it is almost as if she is the only woman in America over the age of twenty who still thinks her father is exactly what she thought he was when she was six.”
—Nora Ephron (b. 1941)
“Oh none too soon through the air white and dry
Will the clear announcer’s voice
Beat like a dove, and you and I
From the heart’s anarch and responsible town
Return by subway-mouth to life again,
Bearing the morning papers,”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)
“...I believe it is now the duty of the slaves of the South to rebuke their masters for their robbery, oppression and crime.... No station or character can destroy individual responsibility, in the matter of reproving sin.”
—Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)