The Air Station was established in 1942 by the United States Navy as a lighter-than-air base, officially known as
Naval Air Station Santa Ana. As of July 1947, the facility, under command of Capt. Benjamin May, had personnel consisting of 100 officers, 500 enlisted men and 180 civilian employees. NAS Santa Ana was decommissioned in 1949. In 1951, the facility was reactivated as
Marine Corps Air Facility Santa Ana to support the
Korean War. It was the country's first air facility developed solely for helicopter operations. It was named "Marine Corps Air Station, Santa Ana" in 1966 and renamed
Marine Corps Air Station Tustin in 1979. During the
Vietnam War, the base was a center for on-going testing of radar installations (including the Sperry TPS-34) which were erected, tested, disassembled and shipped to
South Vietnam. It also was a training facility for helicopter pilots. By the early 1990s, MCAS Tustin was a major center for Marine Corps helicopter aviation and radar on the Pacific Coast. Its primary purpose was to provide support services and material for the
3rd Marine Aircraft Wing and for other units utilizing the base. About 4,500 residents once lived on the base, and the base employed nearly 5,000 military personnel and civilians. In addition to providing military support, MCAS Tustin leased to farmers for commercial crop development. For many years, agricultural lands surrounded the facility. However beginning in the 1980s residential and light industrial/manufacturing areas developed adjacent to the station. In 1991 and again in 1993, under the authority of the
Base Realignment and Closure Act of 1990, it was announced that MCAS Tustin would be closed. Operational closure of the base occurred in July 1999. Of the approximately , some (now known collectively as "
Tustin Legacy") have been conveyed to the City of Tustin, private developers and public institutions for a combination of residential, commercial, educational, and public recreational and open-space uses. The remaining will be conveyed to other federal agencies, the City of Tustin, and public institutions for the same uses once environmental clean-up operations have been concluded. The site of the base is now the home of the academy of the
Orange County Sheriff's Department. Much of the former base has become residential housing. The base was featured in
Visiting... with Huell Howser Episode 1509. ==Blimp hangars==