Camp Kearny Camp Kearny was a U . S . military base ( first Army , later Navy ) in San Diego , California , on the site of the current Marine Corps Air Station Miramar . It operated from 1917 to 1946 . History . Establishment and early years . The camp was established by the Army in 1917 on of land on a mesa north of San Diego . The area included the Miramar Ranch , which had originally been established by newspaperman E . W . Scripps and later sold to the Jessop family . It was Scripps who named the area Miramar , meaning " view of the sea " . The new base was named in honor of Brigadier General Stephen W . Kearny , a leader in the Mexican - American War who also served as a military governor of California . Camp Kearny was one of 32 new camps created by the Army in 1917 as a mobilization and training facility for troops on their way to battlegrounds of World War I . The first commander was Major James Stuart McKnight . Army aircraft occasionally landed on the parade ground , but an actual airfield was not established during World War I . After the war , the camp was used as a demobilization center and was closed in 1920 . It was largely abandoned after 1920 but was retained by the government for use as a military and civilian airfield . The U . S . Public Health Service used it for a time . In 1927 the Ryan Aircraft Company used the field to weight - test the plane The Spirit of St . Louis which they were then building for Charles A . Lindbergh . During 1929 - 1930 the facility was known as Airtech Field , operated by the San Diego Air Service Corp . United States Navy use . In 1932 the Navy installed a mooring mast for helium dirigibles on the base . The mast was used for visits by the Navy ' s two enormous airships , the USS " Akron " and USS " Macon " , each long . The " Akron " first visited Camp Kearny on May 11 , 1932 . That mooring ended in disaster when a gust of wind carried the airship upward , killing two ground handlers and injuring a third . However , the Navy continued to use the facility , and the " Macon " moored at Camp Kearny four times during 1934 . The airships were homeported at Moffett Field in Sunnyvale , California , whose civic leaders had won a vigorous public relations battle with San Diego in the late 1920s to become the host of the Navy ' s airfield for dirigibles . In 1940 the Navy began a series of projects to improve and expand Camp Kearny . By 1941 the base contained more than . On February 20 , 1943 , the area was commissioned as Naval Auxiliary Air Station Camp Kearny . ( By then the misspelling " Kearney " had become so common that the base was actually commissioned as " NAAS Camp Kearney " . ) It had three runways : a asphalt runway mainly used for aircraft parking , and two concrete runways . The primary mission of the base was training pilots in the use of PB4Y Liberators ( B - 24s ) , which were built by the nearby Consolidated Aircraft Company . United States Marine Corps use . In 1934 part of the base was leased to the Marine Corps to use for maneuvers and gunnery ranges . At the beginning of World War II the Marines took over the northern portion of Camp Kearny , which they christened Marine Corps Air Depot Camp Kearny . In 1943 the Marines changed their station name to Marine Corps Air Depot Miramar to avoid confusion with the Navy base . The Marine base was mainly used to process Marine squadrons en route to the South Pacific . At various times it was the headquarters of Marine Aircraft Group 11 , Marine Aircraft Group 12 , Marine Aircraft Group 13 , Marine Aircraft Group 14 , and Marine Aircraft Group 15 before they deployed to the Pacific . The Marines also developed a training base on the grounds of Camp Kearny called Camp Holcomb , named for Major - General Thomas Holcomb who was then commandant of the Marine Corps . By 1940 the number of volunteer recruits was overwhelming the local training base , Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego , so the Marines replaced Camp Holcomb with a much larger training base directly east of Camp Kearny which was called Camp Elliott , named for George F . Elliott , a former commandant of the Marine Corps . After the end of the war , the Navy used Camp Kearny for demobilization . On May 1 , 1946 , the Navy departed Camp Kearny , handing it over to the Marines , and the station became MCAS Miramar . In 1947 , the Marines moved to MCAS El Toro in Orange County , California , and Miramar was redesignated as a Naval Auxiliary Air Station , NAAS Miramar .