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Tag: Naval Ammunition and Net Depot

  • October 19th in Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1949, Seal Beach residents woke to discover that during the night frigid fifty miles per hour winds and rough waves had torn the Super Express fishing boat from its moorings at Seal Beach pier and smashed the boat upon the Seal Beach Naval Ammunition Depot breakwater, leaving a gaping hole in the hull.

    As dramatic as this event was to the normally sedate Seal Beach, it was just one of many similar incidents spread across Southern California. Flights at LAX airport had been grounded. Boats had been beached at Santa Monica and Redondo Beach. The Monstad Pier in Redondo Beach had a section torn apart by waves. Several inches of sand had blown on to Pacific Coast Highway, stranding automobiles and buses. Trees were toppled, and some communities went without electricity for a few hours. Daylight brought calmer weather, and repairs and clean-up efforts began.

    In Seal Beach, the Super Express was beached, and the hole was repaired with a temporary canvas patch to make the vessel seaworthy enough to be towed to the San Pedro Boat Works. The canvas patch prove too temporary for the entire trip and peeled, and the boat sank in what must have been shallow water. It was re-floated, re-patched, and towed to safely to San Pedro for more substantial repairs.

    – Michael Dobkins

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  • August 19th in Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1956, The Los Angeles Times reported on the recent expansion of Seal Beach’s borders.

    Seal Beach had increased from a one square mile beachside city to nine times that size by annexing some private property and what was then known as the Naval Ammunition and Net Depot. The annexation had been completed weeks earlier, and Seal Beach had a certificate from Secretary of State to prove it. This also meant that if the tri-city area of Midway City, Barber City, and Westminster incorporated as one city, Seal Beach’s extension three miles east would result in Bolsa Chica Road becoming the new border between the two cities.

    The expansion was not without opposition. According to City Engineer Hal Marron, “private property-owning interests” objected to the expansion and had won a writ of mandate in Superior Court. The city’s appeal against the writ was pending.

    And that’s where matters stood on August 19th, 1956. So much unsettled, and yet there was enough optimism to stage a photo op with models Bernice Hugn and Marilyn Brechtel installing a new city limits sign at Westminster Avenue and Bolsa Chica Road.

    Aug_19_1956_City_Limits_expansion_photoLater, Midway City decided to remain unincorporated, but Barber City folded into Westminster. And that court appeal? Sixty years later, Bolsa Chica Road is the eastern border of the city, so Seal Beach must have prevailed.

    – Michael Dobkins

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  • June 16th in Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1954, five civilian employees of the Seal Beach Naval Ammunition and Net Depot escaped serious injury or worse when a five-inch shell exploded in a defusing shop on the installation.

    Four of the men were defusing ordnance using a system of mirrors to watch the work from behind a concrete blast wall. J. L. Turner and L. McKellom were working a levered remote defusing machine at one end of the shop when the shell E. E. Haury and W. F. Nevis were working on with a similar machine at the other end exploded.

    The blast shattered the viewing mirrors and all the windows, and damaged the defusing machine. One corrugated asbestos walls was almost completely ripped while the other three had sections of siding torn from the steel framework of the 75 by 40 foot building.

    But the workers and T. C. Martin, lead ordnance man in charge of the shop were okay. Commander Richard Jewell, base commander attributed this to safety regulations and training set into place by his predecessor, Admiral J. R. McKinney shortly before he retired. He also gave credit to equipment and buildings specially designed for the dangerous work done on the base.

    Nevis and Haury, both former Navy gunnery chiefs, echoed Jewell’s sentiments while examining the two chunks of shrapnel that were all that was left of the exploded shell.

    “Good thing we were following safety regulations,” said Haury.

    “Thank god for that concrete bulkhead. All I got out of it was a plugged up ear,” Nevis observed.

    The damage was estimated at $10,000.

    – Michael Dobkins

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  • May 14th in Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1951, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Seal Weapons Depot was busier than any time since World War II.

    According to Captain Russell G. Sturges, commanding officer, the Korean War had spurred activity at the 5,000 acre facility, and personnel had expanded from a stand-by staff of 50 to 800 civilians, 50 Marines, and 20 Naval Officers. Contractors were busy repairing and rebuilding railroad lines, docks, fences, and depot buildings.

    Before any ship entered the Long Beach Naval Shipyard for repairs or refitting, its ordinance would be unloaded at sea and taken to the Seal Beach depot for inspection and storage under the supervision of chief quartermaster, Udor Labossier. Additional work done at the depot included repair of large steel anti-submarine nets, processing spent shell casings for either reuse or to be sold as scrap metals, and leased farming of 2,000 acres of the base to provide revenues and act as an aid to fire prevention.

    This was a dramatic change from the previous year. In 1950, the depot had been all but deactivated. Navy use of Anaheim Landing was so slow that The city of Seal Beach had been negotiating  a 20 year lease for Anaheim Bay for aquatic and recreational use when the Korean conflict heated up. This would have severely curtailed any further development of the depot, and the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station would not probably not exist in its present form (or might have been closed by now). Anaheim Landing would not have been available (or suitable) for loading Saturn rockets for sea transport in the sixties, and Seal Beach would have missed out on being part of the history of NASA’s Apollo program.

    – Michael Dobkins

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  • March 21st in Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1944, The U.S. Navy formally established an ordnance depot at Anaheim Landing.

    The Orange County war housing commission chairman, Philip Norton (who also had a real estate office at 710 Ocean Ave), announced the seizure of thirty-five thousand acres of beach and tidelands in January of 1944 for the construction of the twenty million dollar ordnance depot. Real estate would be purchased, bridges would be demolished, Anaheim Bay would be dredged to a depth of fifteen feet, and the Pacific Electric line that crossed Anaheim Bay into Surfside would be rerouted.

    The decision meant approximately 2,000 people living in Anaheim Landing would need to vacate by March 21st. The housing commission helped residents relocate, and many Anaheim Landing homes were moved to lots in Westminster and Seal Beach. The popular Glide ‘Er Inn would move a few blocks east to 14th Street. The Seal Beach Airport would be permanently abandoned.

    The speed and urgency applied to the project is understandable considering that the United States military was engaged in a worldwide conflict. Today the outcome of World War II seems inevitable, but in 1944 the future was uncertain, and wartime efforts required full commitment. For most of 1944, the Navy would be transforming what had been a casual small boat harbor into an efficient first class naval installation.

    And Anaheim Landing’s time as a civilian port and recreational attraction came to an ended. The seventy-five year history of what is now known as the Seal Beach Weapons Station was just beginning.

    – Michael Dobkins

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  • March 18th in Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1956 at 2 p.m., on the spot where Bay Boulevard met Electric Avenue, a dedication ceremony was held for a monument designating Anaheim Landing as a historical landmark. The marker read:

    ANAHEIM LANDING After the establishment of the Mother Colony at Anaheim in 1857, a wharf and warehouse were constructed at the mouth of Anaheim Creek to serve the Santa Ana Valley. Treacherous entrance conditions caused several disasters, but steamers loaded with wine, wool and other cargo continued to dock here regularly. Use of the seaport began to decline in 1875 with the incursion of the Southern Pacific Railroad into the area. By 1890, the landing was no longer in operation.

    (This was not the first Anaheim Landing. The landing was originally established in 1864 on Alamitos Bay, a more ideal port for shipping, but when an 1867 flood filled the bay with silt and severely limited ocean access, the landing was relocated to what is now known as Anaheim Bay. Local historian Larry Strawther has established that the original landing was approximately where the Island Village tract is today.)

    Eleven years earlier almost to the day of the dedication ceremony, Anaheim Landing’s days as a civilian shipping port, a recreational destination, and residential neighborhood ended when the U.S. Navy took possession of Anaheim Bay and Anaheim Landing to install a weapons depot. On the other side of the fence behind the marker, munitions were loaded and unloaded to and from Navy ships serving in the Pacific Ocean.

    On the civilian side of the fence, a crowd celebrated Anaheim Landing’s past. Perhaps some in that crowd had been Anaheim Landing residents and felt wistful recalling earlier days of swimming, boating, and fishing in the bay before the Navy removed their homes and cottages and dredged it.

    Installing the marker had been a community affair. The project was instigated by the Senior and Junior Women’s Clubs of Seal Beach. Mrs. Bernice V. Smith and Mrs. Sven Lindstrom researched the historical data. Buell Brown designed the seven-foot high monument. Frank Curtis poured the foundation. The local Girl Scout and Cub Scout troops and Veterans organizations gathered the stones that were used in the monument, and surplus stones formed a crescent shaped rock garden on either side of the monument.

    The theme for the ceremony was “Preserve the Past for the Future.” Scout troops presented mixed colors, Mrs. Noel Chadwick gave the devotional, and the Woman’s Club chorus sang a musical piece under the direction of Mrs. Clyde Spencer.

    Officiating the ceremony were Willis Warner, chairman of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, Lee Winterton and William Gallienne of the Associated Chambers of Commerce, Admiral John McKinney, William Hynds of the recreation development committee, M.K. Hillyard of the marker committee, and Mrs. Albert Sylvia of the Woman’s Club of Seal Beach, and Mrs. Larry Howard of the Junior Woman’s Club of Seal Beach.

    It must have been fine and proud Saturday event for all parties involved.

    The Anaheim Landing monument still stands today, but somewhat diminished. Bay Boulevard is now Seal Beach Boulevard, the monument was moved to make room for a public works lot, and the rock garden is gone, replaced by a couple of bushes and a bus stop.

    – Michael Dobkins

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  • March 13th in Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1957, Los Angles auctioneer Ted Gustafson was in Seal Beach to sell the 9-unit motel at 257 Bay Boulevard (Seal Beach Boulevard today) to the highest bidder.

    Not described in the Los Angeles Times ad was how the south building of the motel had been built at an angle to the boulevard to accommodate the adjacent Pacific Electric right of way.  When the U.S. Navy took possession of Anaheim Landing in 1944, the red car tracks were rerouted from Electric Avenue at Fifteenth Street to meet Pacific Coast Highway past Bay Boulevard. By 1957, the Pacific Electric red cars were no longer running on the track, but the supply trains used the track as a spur for loading well into the sixties.

    There are no details to share of how the auction went, but someone must have won because the motel is still there, converted into apartments under the cozy and inviting name of Snug Harbor.

    – Michael Dobkins

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  • March 5th in Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1948, the Long Beach Independent ran this photo from the “Seal Beach navy and ammunition depot” with the explanation that it was not a missile. It was actually a 4000 gallon cylindrical tank that had been mocked up with a faux missile head and used the rear of a caboose for a tail. The tank had been installed on a flatbed railroad car to be pulled by a diesel locomotive along the 55 miles of track in the depot, spraying waste petroleum to kill weeds on and along the tracks.

    There had been a contest on the base to name the tank, and Peggy Rickard, secretary to ordnance officer Lt. J.H. Kelly, submitted the winning name. And thus the tank was dubbed “Miss Hush.”

    There was a later Long Beach Independent story on Miss Hush in May 1957. This time Miss Hush was referred to as a “W-Bomb.” She was still being used on the railroad, but was now used as a water tank held in reserve to prevent intentionally set weed-burning fires from spreading beyond the tracks. Curiously, no one in 1957 remembered the origin of Miss Hush, but the favored theory was that she was built for display during World War II.

    As a side note to this story, it should be mentioned “Miss Hush” was a 1947 pop culture reference that will be lost on modern readers.

    Long before it was a television game show, Truth or Consequences was a popular radio show during the forties. One of its more successful contests was the 1945-46 Mr. Hush campaign. A secret celebrity would whisper clues to his identity in doggerel. It was five weeks before a contestant correctly identified Mr. Hush as Jack Dempsey. A follow-up contest ran from January to March in 1947 with new prizes added each week Mrs. Hush was not named. Finally former silent film star Clara Bow was finally identified as Mrs. Hush.

    The final hush contest ran in the last two months of 1947 and ended with Miss Hush being revealed as dancer Martha Graham. It seems a safe guess that Peggy Rickard was remembering the recent Miss Hush campaign when she submitted her name for the contest at the base.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnXn1KSoc7Y]

    – Michael Dobkins

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