Navy League – SoCal Bill McDonald

Marines 250

Back in mid-October, there was notice of a big celebration at Camp Pendleton to salute the 250th anniversary of the founding of the US Marine Corps. A live amphibious exercise, static displays, thousands of Marines, VIPs, etc. I had been invited years ago to observe an amphibious exercise there and it was impressive, but I thought the logistics for attending this one would be a problem.

Then I received an invitation to attend. With a pass and a procedure, which I thought would make things easier. Yeah, right.

The event was scheduled for 1200-1500 (noon-3 pm) October 18. The day before, I heard on the news almost weird information that the 5 freeway section that ran through Camp Pendleton might be closed during the amphibious exercise. It was related to a dustup between California governor Gavin Newsom and the Trump administration about the scheduling and manner of this event.

I was expected at the BC gamewatch that morning in downtown San Diego. I figured on attending that for about an hour and then head up north to Camp Pendleton. On my way south to San Diego on the 15 freeway, I saw road condition signs lit up with something like “Fed Gov Closure Fwy 5 11-3.” Wha??

On my way north at about 1000, I realized traffic was heavy because of people trying to get north on the 5 before it closed. This was the scene about 10 miles south of Oceanside and the southern edge of Camp Pendleton. The sign on right says “FED GOV. N 5 FWY CLOSURE AT SR 76 11-3 P” and, ominously, “LIVE WEAPONS OVER FREEWAY.”

I realized I was not going to get to Camp Pendleton on time by staying on the freeway. Getting off the freeway, I also realized a lot of other people were on its exits and entrances, creating traffic jams throughout. By getting past the jams and taking another entrance to the base, I was able finally to get on base and reach the commissary at about noon.

My shuttle to the event was leaving from the commissary and I thought I might have gotten on the last one, since the event was supposed to start at noon and the invitation asked that we get there early. In the first indication the event overall was less than militarily precise, it became clear the event would not start at noon.

The invitation had said that attendees would “see” a sea-to-shore amphibious exercise. But we were not brought to the beach where I had seen such an exercise earlier. We were brought to Del Mar Beach, a recreational area, and we would see the exercise on a video screen set up in a “stadium” on the sand.

I had a good seat though. John Hernandez, a fellow Navy League officer and recently-elected junior vice commander of the California VFW, was a “special guest” for the event and had saved me a seat in the third row at the center of the event stage.

View from my seat during speech by Commandant of the Marine Corps.

Some of the crowd in the stadium. I don’t think I’ve ever been around so many Marines at one time. And there were thousands outside the stadium as well.

When the amphibious exercise finally got underway, around 1300, the narrator provided more bombast than information. At one point, with several artillery pieces on screen, the narrator said, “. . . and the roar of artillery began. THUNDER from the skies!” One howitzer fired. And then . . . nothing for several minutes. Then change of scene and topic.

Only later did we learn that the first projectile fired, over the now closed 5 freeway and aimed at an inland impact area, detonated prematurely. At least one piece of shrapnel hit and damaged a California Highway Patrol car parked on the freeway, part of the detail providing security for Vice President JD Vance. No one was injured, but the “thunder from the sky” stayed quiet thereafter.

Both the Marines and the Trump administration gave sometimes conflicting information about the decision to fire live artillery shells over the roadway. One report said the only previous time it had occurred was more than 70 years earlier, before the freeway had become an interstate highway.

Back in the stadium, the crowd was entertained by flyovers of some of the aircraft involved in the exercise. Here is a compilation of those (42 secs). At the beginning, the first jets were lower and faster, and louder, than the rest so they go by in a flash. That’s followed by them in “slow motion,” which does little to slow them.

Following the flyovers, the speeches renewed. When the emcee said the event was going to go on for “the next few hours,” I deferred. I was leaving when Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth began to speak. I heard him say that, while he didn’t think he should say so, “You Marines are my favorite.” I bet that’s not the first time he’s said that to one service or the other.

Apparently, all this was for a special video broadcast on November 9, the day before the actual Marine anniversary. It also took place on the same day as the nationwide “No Kings” rallies opposing the Trump administration. What a coincidence.

For a less bombastic view of an amphibious exercise, this is a video (7:03) from the aforementioned exercise I attended on the actual beach at Camp Pendleton in 2017.

Awash

Last week, I joined fellow Navy League members, some Navy Junior ROTC cadets, a member of the Naval Sea Cadet Corps, and guests on visits to Navy facilities in Coronado.

Our first visit was to Beachmasters Unit ONE on the Naval Amphibious Base, Coronado. I pointed out to the Commanding Officer of that unit that I had served on that base 1970-71, which was likely before he was born. He was open-mouthed when I showed him pictures of the base at the time.

Anyway, after getting a briefing, viewing their vehicles, and handling some of their weapons, we all headed down the Silver Strand to a beach and took a ride. We went out to sea . . . briefly . . . on a LARC (Light, Amphibious, Resupply, Cargo) vessel. As the second wave broke, it washed over the port front quarter of the vessel, over me sitting there, and over my video camera. The camera kinda shorted out shortly thereafter. I used my iPhone during the rest of the day. I still don’t know if the camera, since dried out, will work again. I had detached the battery and misplaced it.

I was able to retrieve the SD card and to download the video files off it, however. I may have lost a video camera, but I got the shot!

In the afternoon, we went on a tour of the USNS Brashear (T-AKE-7), a dry cargo ship, manned by civilians, but doing work for the Navy. Huge ship. According to the Health app on my iPhone, I climbed 14 stories that day and I believe nearly all of them were aboard the Brashear.

You can see highlights on the video below. The young woman in the intro freeze-frame was the Naval Sea Cadet on the tour, a high school senior and a member of the unit supported by our Navy League Council. The Naval Sea Cadet Corps and school-based Navy and Marine Corps Junior ROTC programs are quite popular in Southern California.

USMC amphibious demo

Yesterday, Flag Day, I was privileged to be among those attending a training evolution and demonstration of the Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF) concept. It took place on “the beach” at Camp Pendleton.

The event was part of Camp Pendleton’s celebration this year of its 75th anniversary and members of the community were invited to watch and learn more about the Marines and the base. I was there as a member of the local council of the Navy League, along with members of other councils.

In simple terms, MAGTF involves Navy and Marine forces — air, ground, and sea — in a coordinated amphibious operation. Navy ships bring materiel and personnel to the area, land Marines and their equipment and supplies, supported by Navy and Marine aircraft.

The event was much less whiz-bang than similar demonstrations at the annual airshow (a video of that portion of the 2014 airshow is at the end of this post), but the scale and kinds of equipment were quite different. The Camp Pendleton evolution involved Navy ships, amphibious craft, and an actual amphibious landing on an awesome stretch of sand and waves.

Here’s a video (7:00) of highlights.

The presentation also included briefings on the base itself. Camp Pendleton covers more than 125,000 acres, or just over 195 square miles. Its coastline (17.5 miles) is about the same length as New Hampshire’s. The base goes 10+ miles inland. Because of its size and location, Camp Pendleton is the only military facility in the US that allows for large-scale operations combining air, sea, and ground forces. Jet aircraft, for example, are nearly unrestricted in their operations over this area.

There are about 40,000 active duty Marines, and some Navy sailors, at Camp Pendleton on any given day. Combining family members and civilian employees, the base population on a workday is about 80,000. (Also using the base commissary, exchange, etc., are many of the approximately 80,000 retired military who live within a 50-mile radius. Including me.)

There are signs on I-5, which goes north-south up the coastline here, that say “Camp Pendleton — Preserving California’s precious resources.” That, of course, is not the purpose of Camp Pendleton, but it is the result in many cases. Without Camp Pendleton, there would be little open space between LA and San Diego. As one approaches the end of Camp Pendleton in either direction on I-5, the visual demarcation between it and San Clemente to the north or Oceanside to the south is dramatic and striking.

Just looking at the beach in the video, you can see that, with the exception of amphibious vehicles :), it’s pretty pristine. No condos lining the bluffs, etc. Camp Pendleton’s mix of beaches, bluffs, mesas, canyons, and mountains, along with the only free-flowing river in Southern California (Santa Margarita), allows one to see what this region would look like, absent several million people.

That ecosystem includes more than 1,000 species of plants, fish, and animals. Eighteen of those species are endangered and there are several that exist only on the base. The colonel who headed up the event said the road we used to walk to the observation bluff could not be improved, because it would disturb the habitat of the Pacific pocket mouse, which is endangered. Indeed, the Marines were not allowed to remove a large piece of twisted metal from the area because the mice had made it part of their habitat.

Below is the video of the MAGTF display at the 2014 airshow at Marines Corps Air Station, Miramar. (Years ago, when it was a Naval Air Station, it was the location for Top Gun, the aviation training program as well as the movie.) Action starts at the 1:09 mark.

Out to sea

For the first time in 45 years, I went out to sea on a Navy ship. This occasion was much different from my earlier “excursions.” For one thing, it was voluntary. 🙂

I had the privilege last Thursday (December 29) to participate in a “family and friends cruise” on the USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70). This was an occasion for crew members to host family and friends onboard for a day, a week prior to the ship, air wing, and strike group deploying for several months.

The Vinson’s home port is San Diego . . . more correctly Naval Air Station, North Island, across the bay from the city and adjacent to Coronado. We arrived at the ship a little after 5 am, got underway around 8 am, and returned at about 4:30 pm. The ship went out 15-20 miles and spent a couple of hours on helicopter and F/A-18 demonstrations by their air component, Carrier Air Wing TWO.

The evolutions included helicopters hovering above the deck and troops rappeling to the surface, a supersonic flyby, arrested landing, and catapulted takeoff. I spent the remainder of the time checking out some static displays and being mesmerized by the Pacific moving by. Most of the others on the cruise spent time with their loved ones, just soaking up the moments together.

Here’s a video (just under 13 minutes) from the cruise. I had never seen San Diego from the ocean before. (I had sailed into San Diego once following a brief exercise at sea in 1971 with Naval Special Warfare Group, Pacific, but it had been at night and I had been asleep.) In addition to helicopters, jets, etc., the video has some great views of San Diego, Point Loma, Coronado, and the Pacific. We lucked out with great weather — sunny, in the 70s.

Hope you enjoy! (If you click on “USS Carl Vinson cruise” in upper left corner, you’ll view it on YouTube.)

Day at Camp Pendleton

Back in August, I was invited, because of my role in the Navy League, to participate in a “J Wayne Day” at Camp Pendleton. Marine units will occasionally invite spouses and family members of Marines to experience a little bit of what their Marine does, in a pretty safe, sanitized way. They used to be called “John Wayne Days,” befitting for how the Hollywood actor “was” a Marine. Today, with many more women marines, with male spouses or otherwise, it’s now a more neutral “J Wayne Day.”

This is a slightly more personal video than what I have on our Navy League site, with a few photos of me added.

It is a bit of behind-the-scenes at Camp Pendleton, which houses 40,000+ Marines and their families. Hope you find it of interest. Seven minutes long.