In 1928 the federal government bought 640 acres outside Yuma at the recommendation of Colonel Benjamin F. Fly, and temporary dirt runways served military and civil aircraft alike. The Second World War turned the field into Yuma Army Air Field: construction began on 1 June 1942 and the base was activated on 15 December 1942. From January 1943 the 307th Single Engine Flying Training Group taught pilots on AT-6 Texans; in 1944 it switched to multi-engine training on the Martin B-26 Marauder, and a flexible gunnery school opened in November 1943.

Flight training ended on 23 April 1945, gunnery training on 31 May, and the base closed on 1 November 1945. It was reactivated by Air Defense Command on 1 January 1954. The 4750th Training Wing (Air Defense) flew F-86D Sabres, F-94C Starfires, T-33s and B-45 target tugs, and the base hosted annual Air Force gunnery meets from 1954 to 1956. It became Yuma Air Force Base on 24 August 1954 and Vincent Air Force Base on 13 October 1956, after Brigadier General Clinton D. Vincent, who had died in 1955.

The Air Force years left a radar legacy too. From 1956 to 1963 the 864th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron ran a radar site on the base, designated SM-162, with AN/MPS-7 and AN/MPS-14 sets. The Navy was already using the field before the handover: its Fleet Air Gunnery Unit Pacific moved in from Naval Air Station El Centro before July 1958 and staged annual Naval Air Weapons Meets in the desert, a first taste of the role Yuma still plays as a range base for every kind of naval aviation.

The Air Force gave the base to the Navy on 1 January 1959 and the 4750th was inactivated on 15 June; the Marine Corps took it over that year, and the Fleet Air Gunnery Unit Pacific had already moved in from El Centro before July 1958. The station was redesignated Marine Corps Air Station Yuma (Vincent Field) on 20 July 1962.

Through the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s VMFAT-101 trained Marine, Navy and allied F-4 Phantom crews here before moving to El Toro. From the 1980s Yuma became the principal base of the AV-8B Harrier II under Marine Aircraft Group 13; VMA-211, the squadron that defended Wake Island in December 1941, arrived on 10 December 1987. On 14 September 2012 the squadron lost six Harriers destroyed and two badly damaged in the Taliban attack on Camp Bastion in Afghanistan, and its commander, Lt Col. Christopher K. Raible, was one of two Marines killed.

The Marine Corps designated Yuma as the initial operating base for the F-35B, the short take-off and vertical-landing version of the Lightning II. The first jet arrived on 16 November 2012, and on 20 November VMFA-121 was redesignated and accepted its first three. It was the first operational F-35 squadron in any US service. VMFA-121 left Yuma on 9 January 2017 and arrived at Iwakuni in Japan on 18 January, the first F-35B squadron permanently based abroad.

VMA-211 followed: its last Harrier flight was on 6 May 2016, it received its first two F-35Bs on 9 May and it became VMFA-211 on 30 June 2016. On 27 September 2018 one of its jets, flying from USS Essex, struck a Taliban position in Afghanistan, the first combat use of any American F-35. Today Wikipedia lists four F-35B squadrons at Yuma: VMFA-211, VMFA-214, VMFA-122 and VMFA-225.

What makes Yuma different from the other Marine air stations is who trains there. MAWTS-1 runs the Weapons and Tactics Instructor course for every Marine tactical aviation community, and the base’s ranges, the Chocolate Mountain Aerial Gunnery Range and the Barry M. Goldwater Range with an auxiliary field operated by the station, give it room to fly large exercises with live weapons.

VMX-1 tests the F-35B, MV-22, CH-53, AH-1Z, UH-1Y and RQ-21B for the operating forces, and the reserve squadron VMFT-401 flies F-5N Tiger IIs as adversaries for US and allied crews. The base covers about 3,000 acres of flat desert and is listed as a Superfund site because of contaminated soil and groundwater.