Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

We are talking about two different installations. There was the Marine Corps Air Facility at Santa Ana, and there was the Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, which is close to Irvine. Both have been decommissioned. 

The physical distance between them was 7 miles, but that's as the crow flies. The driving distance between them was 9 or 10 miles.

El Toro was much bigger, consisting of 4682 acres. It was the home of Marine Corps aviation on the west coast. It had 4 runways that could handle the largest aircraft in the US military fleet. All post-WW2 Presidents flew in and out of El Toro, and it was a favorite of Richard Nixon since his home was in San Clemente. El Toro served as the primary base for Marine Corps west coast fighter squadrons, and many Marines who were sent to Vietnam were shipped out of El Toro. In a word, it was the primary Marine airport. Here is how it looked in 1993 before it was decommissioned in 1999.

The Marine Corp Air Facility Santa Ana was something else. It was originally called the Naval Lighter Than Air Station Santa Ana because they had airships there.  However, the blimp activity stopped in 1949, and it became a center for helicopter operations. But, it also became a center for the building and testing of radar installations, and that was the reason for sending Oswald there.

  

They had land there that they leased to farmers, and like El Toro, it closed in 1999.

Both Nelson Delgado and Mark Osbourne referred to being with Oswald at Marine Air Control Squadron 9 in Santa Ana. 

"MACS-9 was ordered to the West Coast and by September 1955 had settled at the Marine Corps Air Station Santa Ana."

That refers to the helicopter/radar facility at Santa Ana not the big Marine airport at El Toro. 

So, Delgado and Osbourne were with Oswald at the "Lighter Than Air" facility at Santa Ana not at El Toro. Yet, there are numerous references to Oswald being sent back to El Toro, where he was in 1957. Alan Graf told WC Attorney John Hart Ely that Lee Harvey Oswald was stationed with him at El Toro from December 1958 until March 1959.  

So, how could Oswald be with Delgado and Osbourne at Santa Ana at the same time he was with Graf at El Toro? 

He couldn't. There were two Oswalds. One was at Santa Ana, and the other was 7 miles away at El Toro.