Qualla: Marine Corps Air Station New River

Marine Corps Air Station New River: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1941 the Marine Corps paid $64,502 for twenty-nine parcels of land along the New River in eastern North Carolina. It was tobacco country, flat and sandy and almost insultingly ordinary. Captain Barnett Robinson of Marine Glider Group 71 walked the fields and decided they would do. Eighty-five years later, the same patch of dirt is the busiest tilt-rotor base in the United States Marine Corps, the East Coast home of the V-22 Osprey and the new CH-53K King Stallion. The tobacco is long gone.

Marine Corps Air Station New River: From Tobacco to Mitchells

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

VMSB-331 flew in from MCAS Cherry Point on 9 March 1943, the first squadron to call the new field home. On 1 June, headquarters split the squadron in half to create VMSB-332, and within months both were shuffled off to Bogue Field. By mid-1943 Marine bombing squadrons VMB-433, VM...

Marine Corps Air Station New River: McCutcheon Field

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

After the war the base went into caretaker status as an outlying field of Cherry Point. It did not stay quiet long. In 1951 it reactivated as Marine Corps Air Facility Peterfield Point, then a year later was rechristened Marine Corps Air Facility New River. In July 1954 Marine Ai...

Marine Corps Air Station New River: Home of the Osprey

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

MCAS New River was the first Marine Corps base to receive the MV-22B Osprey, the tilt-rotor that takes off like a helicopter and cruises like a turboprop. Seven Osprey squadrons now call the field home: VMM-162, VMM-261, VMM-263, VMM-266, VMM-365, the training squadron VMMT-204, ...

Marine Corps Air Station New River: The Sound of Marines Going

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Walk through nearby Jacksonville on a weekday and you will hear them eventually. A low rotor beat first, then a flat thrum as an Osprey transitions from helicopter mode to airplane mode, then the higher whine of a Viper trailing a Venom on a training run. Families on the base kno...