Early Marine Corps marksmanship training

[brent65]

Don't forget the range on San Clemente Island. I last saw the remains in 1984 and it dated back to WW2 and Korea I think...what a desolate place... Located offshore from Pendleton...

San Clemente is still very much in use, trained there a few times in the 90's and early 2000's

[browningautorifle]

San Clemente is still very much in use

We went out there to do an amphib op with Amtracks back in '84...and landed in a dense fogbank that would stop you cold. I believe they still use it. Just desolate.

[earlwb]

I qualified as a Sharpshooter using a M14 in boot camp. Later somehow I got cheated out of being a Expert at the alternate rifle range near San Mateo, I shot a 247 using a M16 but some mix up had me as a Sharpshooter again. I even had witnesses but after the card was signed by the range officer it is too bad. After that I qualified as a Expert then on using the M16's. Later I qualified as a Expert using the M1911 pistols too.

I do not remember the USMC doing anything with San Clemente island when I was there. We could have though, I remember us getting inside Amtracks, going out to sea and boarding an amphibious ship and then sailing around for a couple of days and then making a landing somewhere (I thought Camp Pendleton but maybe not) then after some running around doing stuff, getting back on the Amtracks and getting on board the ship again. Then heading back to Camp Pendleton where we made the final landing and back to base. We also got on helicopters and went to the helicopter carrier ship and did some landings from it too. it might have been the USS Tripoli at the time. But when I was at Camp Pendleton, we used to ride around in the Amtracks a lot. At that time they used the Amtracks like jeeps, They took the Amtracks everywhere, including all those places jeeps could not go. We used to stage a lot of amphibious training operations there. I went through boot camp at San Diego, Edson range for rifle qualification, then off to ITR at San Onofre at Camp Pendleton, then to TwentyNinePalms for advanced training and then back to San Mateo inside Camp Pendleton. From there I wound up going all over, I went to Quantico in Virginia, then overseas to Okinawa where I went on a float of course. Then it was back to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

[RT Ellis]

Camp Elliott, part of which is now incorporated into Miramar MCAS, was used extensively for Marine recruit training and had ranges, so Elliott, Matthews, and Camp Pendleton were all used for weapons training and qualification. That the Marines were housed in tents doesn't help much as all the Marine Corps bases including MCRD San Diego, had tent encampments