Qualla: Naval Amphibious Base Coronado

Naval Amphibious Base Coronado: Introduction

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RightCowLeftCoast, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Silver Strand is the slender sandspit connecting Coronado Island to the mainland, four miles long and barely wide enough in places for a road and a beach. In 1944, the Navy built an amphibious training base there — a flat expanse of drills, warehouses, and training areas oriented toward the Pacific surf, where conditions suitable for amphibious landings could be found year-round. Naval Amphibious Base Coronado has been the center of American amphibious warfare training ever since, and since the 1960s the home of the Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training program that produces the Navy's special operations forces. The base is also the unwitting architect of one of the more remarkable accidental controversies in American military architecture.

Image: RightCowLeftCoast | CC BY-SA 3.0

Naval Amphibious Base Coronado: The Amphibious Mission

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andre Bulber, CC BY 2.0. The base was commissioned on November 1, 1944, with the explicit purpose of training sailors and Marines for amphibious operations — the complex, casualty-intensive business of landing military forces on hostile shores. The timing reflected the lesson of the Pacific War: amphibio...

Image: Andre Bulber | CC BY 2.0

Naval Amphibious Base Coronado: BUD/S and the SEALs

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit National Museum of the U.S. Navy, Public domain. Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training — BUD/S — is conducted at NAB Coronado and is among the most demanding military training programs in the world. The six-month course begins with a Basic Conditioning Phase that includes Hell Week, a five-and-a-half-day continuous evolutio...

Image: National Museum of the U.S. Navy | Public domain

Naval Amphibious Base Coronado: The Barracks Problem

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit National Museum of the U.S. Navy, Public domain. In 2007, a photograph taken via Google Earth showed that a complex of barracks buildings at NAB Coronado, when viewed from altitude, forms the shape of a swastika. The Navy had not noticed — or if it had, had not acted — because the shape is invisible from the ground. Once the im...

Image: National Museum of the U.S. Navy | Public domain

Naval Amphibious Base Coronado: The Silver Strand

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Visitor7, CC BY-SA 3.0. NAB Coronado occupies most of the Silver Strand's military real estate, sharing the narrow sandspit with Silver Strand State Beach on the Pacific side and military facilities on the bay side. The strand itself — technically a tombolo, a sandspit connecting an island to the mainla...

Image: Visitor7 | CC BY-SA 3.0