Hi my beautiful Byron,

Thursday again. I found two lovely pictures from this week to share with you.
The winter light over the Pacific has been a picture. When the temperature drops in late afternoon, it looks like a mirror. This picture is San Clemente Island. (The bit in the middle.)  The US Navy own it and use it for their training exercises. Sometime we hear loud bangs from there. And I imagine they are testing some new bomb or some new type of sonic weapon.

The US Navy acquired the island in 1934. It is the Navy’s only remaining ship-to-shore live firing range, and is the center of the integrated air/land/sea San Clemente Island Range Complex. During World War II, the island was used as a training ground for amphibious landing craft. These small to mid-sized ships were crucial to the island hopping that would be required to attack the islands occupied by the Japanese in WW2. It is still an active sonar base (Radar to see all that goes on for many hundreds of miles around)  and has a $21 million simulated embassy for commando training.

There is a US Navy rocket-test facility on San Clemente. Some Polaris-program test rockets were launched from San Clemente between 1957 and 1960. The SEALAB III project took place off San Clemente in February 1969.

The US Navy uses the island as an auxiliary naval airfield, Naval Auxiliary Landing Field San Clemente Island. The main runway 23/05 is used for carrier training by the Navy. Other branches also use this airfield, including the United States Coast Guard. Pilots that use this airfield find it to be one of the most demanding airbases in the US, known for its high winds and dangerous terrain surrounding the runway

Catalina

………..The letter is no longer archived here. The entire content of Letters to Byron is a book, available in Paperback or Kindle.