Retired Col. Charlie Quilter, a decorated Marine fighter pilot who served in Vietnam, Bosnia, Desert Shield, Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom, was deeply saddened Tuesday, Nov. 7, as he watched video of a World War II-era hangar on the former Tustin Marine Corps Air Station go up in flames.
“Oh geez, it’s awful, that’s unbelievable,” he said while on the phone watching part of history collapse. “Generations of Marine helicopter pilots trained and deployed from there.”
Read more: Fire destroys massive, historic north hangar at shuttered Tustin airfield
The north hangar, which with its twin to the south on the property was built in 1942, will have to be demolished, authorities said Tuesday even as flames continued to burn through the giant structure. The two mostly wooden hangars – 17 stories tall, 1,000 feet long and 300 feet wide – were quickly built at the base to house 12 blimps to patrol the West Coast against Japanese submarines. Their use evolved as military needs changed in the following decades but have been vacant for over 20 years.
Quilter’s father, Maj. Gen. Charles Quilter, was the commanding general of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing from 1966 to ’68 at the Tustin station and the younger Quilter said he still remembers being around the hangars as a kid in the 1950s.
“Orange County was extremely rural, none of the development you see now,” he said. “It was just wall-to-wall citrus and rural roads. All of a sudden, these things loomed out of the rural setting. These two structures just dominated the skyline.”
“You realize it is one of these structures that get built in times of national emergency, and now it’s gone,” Quilter, a military historian, added. “And with it, for the Marine Corps, the largest piece of Marine aviation history that survives. At least one survives to be the monument of historical memory.”
But Quilter, a longtime Laguna Beach resident, also noted the loss for the greater Orange County community, calling the hangars one of its “anchoring features” and recalling what they meant to pilots flying into John Wayne Airport.
“I’d fly by them as an airline pilot; they were a huge presence and part of the identity of Orange County,” he said.
The base was used for blimps until 1949, when it was decommissioned. It reopened in 1951 for the Korean War and was used by helicopters and, by 1990, had become the hub for Marine Corps helicopter aviation on the Pacific Coast.
William Titterud was a Marine helicopter pilot who trained at the base in the 1970s. Like many pilots, he returned to Tustin after deploying to Southeast Asia and Vietnam.
“The Marine Corps birthday is coming up on Nov. 10th and some of us will get together and will no doubt talk about our years at MCAS Tustin,” he said. “It’s a sad time for those of us, pilots and maintainers alike, to see such an iconic and historic structure go down like this – a funeral pyre in the end.”
The base was closed in July 1999. About 1,366 acres of its approximate 1,600 acres were conveyed to the city of Tustin by the Navy and are being developed with homes, shopping and entertainment centers, public institutions and new parks. But the Department of the Navy still owns the hangars, which are listed on the Register of National Historic Places.
In 2013 a portion of the north hangar’s roof collapsed and the Navy spent about $3.2 million to stabilize the structure.
The city of Tustin has an operational agreement with the Navy and has used the south hangar for some events in recent years, it had remained in better shape than the north hangar. The hangars have also been seen in movies and commercials.
Retired Marine Col. Bill Hammerle, commanding officer of the air station from 1993 to 1996, was responsible for closing the base and turning its acres over to the city. During his tour of duty there, Hammerle said the hangars were not much of a concern and squadrons used a part for their offices. There were issues where planks of wood needed to be replaced and some bolts tightened down, but overall, there wasn’t much to worry about, he said.
“The reality is that if the base had never closed, the hangars would have come down,” he said. “We needed new spaces for the MV-22s (Osprey aircraft).”
But when the base was closed, there was an interest by all involved – the Navy, the state and the city of Tustin – to keep the hangars up because they were on the national registry, Hammerle said.
“The city has been great in dealing with their hangar,” he said, adding that the north hangar clearly appeared to be in “disrepair.”
“There were holes in the side and in the roof,” he said. “You wouldn’t have expected it to burn, but it was suffering from neglect. Anybody who saw it, saw it was in disrepair. It’s tragic it deteriorated like it did, but I don’t know what kind of life it had anymore. The lesson learned is we need to look at the other one. They’re identical twins.”
Throughout the day Tuesday, people gathered around the hangar to watch as the fire burned. Passerby on nearby roads and even the 55 Freeway craned their necks to see the destruction.
“There were 100 people on the surrounding streets with their cars,” said Mark Eliot, a longtime Tustin resident and retired Tustin Unified School District employee, who ran out to see firefighters battling the blaze early Tuesday morning. “People were out on Tustin Ranch Road; people were driving from other cities. It was just a sad and an unbelievable sight.”
Eliot said he attended the ceremony held in one of the hangars for the base closure and has been to them for other events over the years. He also met with military families when the base was in service, informing them about the Tustin schools. And, he recalled the recent race the Tustin Chamber of Commerce put on that went around and through one of the hangars.
“It’s been part of my life for my entire career,” he said. “It was like saying goodbye to an old friend. You heard the sound of the roof collapsing and firefighters couldn’t go inside it to save it and risk their lives.”
