Naval Amphibious Base Coronado Patch

Most of the bayside half of Naval Amphibious Base Coronado is San Diego Bay bottom, dredged up in the early 1940s and spread on the Silver Strand to make ground for a base the Navy needed fast. The Secretary of the Navy authorized an Amphibious Training Base in the San Diego area in June 1943, and it was commissioned in January 1944. In 1946 it took the name Naval Amphibious Base Coronado. The base sits on the narrow strip between San Diego Bay and the Pacific, with State Route 75 splitting it into a bayside and a surfside. Its streets carry the names of Pacific fights like Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Tulagi and Bougainville.

During World War II the base trained landing craft crews who went on to the South Pacific. The Naval Gunfire Liaison School and the Support Air Control School taught the hard part of an assault, tying troops on the beach to naval guns offshore and attack aircraft overhead. After the war came the Underwater Demolition Teams, then Navy SEALs, brown-water sailors bound for the rivers and NROTC midshipmen on summer training. Tenants today include Naval Special Warfare Command, Expeditionary Warfare Training Group Pacific, Assault Craft Unit One, Beachmaster Unit One, Amphibious Construction Battalion One and Special Boat Team 12. Training uses about 257 acres of ocean beach leased from the State of California, and the base is one of eight parts of Naval Base Coronado.

The patch measures 4.88 by 4.5 inches with a cut edge and an iron-on backing. A navy blue disc is ringed in gold rope, with a second rope ring inside it, and NAVAL AMPHIBIOUS BASE arcs across the top in gold with CORONADO along the bottom. A scroll band runs straight through the middle and past the edge of the circle, brown land on the left and open blue water under white clouds on the right. That strip is the amphibious job in one picture: sea on one end, shore on the other, and the crossing in between. At the center a gold keystone framed in rope carries seven navy stars and an eagle holding a green olive branch above a red and white striped shield.

Amphibious work is joint work, and Coronado is where a lot of sailors learned that first. Boat crews from the assault craft units, beachmasters who run the landing beach, and the Seabees of the amphibious construction battalion all train on the same sand. For frogmen and SEALs the Strand surf is the place they remember longest. Gator Navy sailors who never went near the special warfare side still know the base as home port for the people who put Marines ashore. Few Navy bases cover as many trades in one stretch of beach.

Put it in a shadow box with your amphibious ship or assault craft unit patches, or sew it on the vest you wear to a beach group reunion. It also makes a good gift for a son or daughter reporting to Coronado for their first set of orders. The Strand has been training sailors for the beach since 1944.