Qualla: Marine Corps Auxiliary Landing Field Bogue

Marine Corps Auxiliary Landing Field Bogue: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sgt. McCutchin, USMC, Public domain. On a dark night over the central North Carolina coast, somewhere between Swansboro and Emerald Isle, an AV-8B Harrier flies a precise box pattern with its nose lights tilted slightly down. The pilot is rehearsing a landing on a ship that is not there. Down on the ground, the painted outline of an amphibious assault ship's deck waits on the asphalt of Bogue Field, and the pilot will set down inside its lines as if the steel were really beneath the rubber. That is the entire point of MCALF Bogue: to teach pilots how to land on a moving deck by practicing on a fixed one, again and again, until the muscle memory is ironclad.

Image: Sgt. McCutchin, USMC | Public domain

Marine Corps Auxiliary Landing Field Bogue: Bought for War

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sgt. McCutchin, USMC, Public domain. The United States Navy bought 573 acres of land on Bogue Sound in 1942 and laid three runways of 4,000 feet each. The new field was meant to support Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point a few miles north in Havelock, giving its squadrons a satellite where dive-bomber crews could...

Image: Sgt. McCutchin, USMC | Public domain

Marine Corps Auxiliary Landing Field Bogue: A Brief Quiet

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marines from Arlington, VA, United States, Public domain. MAG-33 left for Texas in 1944. MAG-93 stood up at Oak Grove the same year. By then the Marine Corps was transitioning from the Dauntless to the more powerful SB2C Helldiver, and the rhythm of training shifted. A J2F Duck amphibian had been assigned to Bogue for rescuing downed fl...

Image: Marines from Arlington, VA, United States | Public domain

Marine Corps Auxiliary Landing Field Bogue: The Harrier Years

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sgt. McCutchin, USMC, Public domain. Sometime between 1965 and 1976 the Marine Corps reopened Bogue as a satellite airfield for the Vietnam-era demands of MCAS New River and Cherry Point. By the late 1970s the AV-8A Harrier was operating off Bogue's runway, the same short field that gave the strange jump-jet just en...

Image: Sgt. McCutchin, USMC | Public domain

Marine Corps Auxiliary Landing Field Bogue: Noise and Neighbors

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sgt. McCutchin, USMC, Public domain. Bogue sits inside Carteret County, surrounded by the resort and retirement communities of Emerald Isle, Swansboro, Cape Carteret, and Morehead City. Harrier engines are extraordinarily loud, particularly during the vertical and short takeoff and landing operations that define the...

Image: Sgt. McCutchin, USMC | Public domain