Marine Corps Air Station Miramar California Patch

Before the Marines took it over, Miramar was Fightertown USA, home of the Navy Fighter Weapons School that everybody called TOPGUN. The school was established there in 1969 and moved to NAS Fallon, Nevada, in 1996. A 1993 base realignment decision had already called for transferring NAS Miramar to the Marine Corps. Today it is Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, home of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, the aviation combat element of I Marine Expeditionary Force. The ground under San Diego's north county has been a military post since Camp Kearny opened in 1917.

Marine aviation fills the Miramar flight line now. The station has been home to F/A-18C/D Hornets, F-35B and F-35C Lightning IIs, KC-130 tankers, CH-53E Super Stallions and MV-22B Ospreys. Under the Navy it had been the West Coast fighter base, with F-4 Phantom II and F-14 Tomcat squadrons and E-2 Hawkeyes on the ramp. The airfield itself was named Mitscher Field in 1955, for Adm. Marc Mitscher. Marines had used the site before, too, when it was designated MCAS Miramar in 1946, before it became NAS Miramar in 1952.

This patch measures 5 inches wide by 4.5 inches tall, with a merrowed edge and an iron-on backing. It is an inverted triangle with a red border, split blue on the left and green on the right. MCAS MIRAMAR is lettered in black on a white scroll at the top. A gold lightning bolt cuts across behind a red diamond and the eagle, globe and anchor, with a small aircraft riding the globe. Below it a helicopter and a white jet climb out of the green, rotary wing and fixed wing together, the way the station flies them.

Miramar carries two reputations at once. Navy fighter crews remember it as the place where TOPGUN turned fleet pilots into instructors and sent them back to their squadrons. Marines know it as the West Coast home of 3rd MAW, where squadrons train, deploy with Marine Expeditionary Units and come home to the same hangars. Few air stations have changed hands between services and kept that much aviation history in one place. Whichever uniform a man wore there, the flight line is the same one.

Sew it on a flight jacket or a squadron reunion vest, or frame it in a shadow box with your 3rd MAW and squadron patches. It makes a good gift for a Marine or sailor who served at Miramar, under either flag on the front gate. San Diego aviation history in one patch.