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Tag: Naval Ammunitions Depot

  • March 7th in Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1965, The Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram reported that a familiar Naval Weapons Station landmark on the corner of Pacific Coast Highway and Bay Boulevard (Seal Beach Boulevard today) would soon be gone.

    The landmark was the stack of anti-submarine buoys stored on the base since World War II. The buoys had once been an effective barrier for enemy submarine gaining entry into California harbors. Modern submarine technology no longer needed such close proximity for attacks, and the buoys were ultimately declared obsolete.

    For the better part of two decades, the buoys sparked fears that they would explode a scant few feet from Pacific Coast Highway traffic and opposition from developers and realtors who felt those fears hurt Seal Beach property values. But these were buoys, not weapons or munition, and the only thing explosive about them was the interest of photographers itching to use the buoys in cleverly composed images for newspapers and local publicity.

    In early 1965, the Department of Defense announced that the obsolete buoys would be auctioned off with the expectation that the winning bidders would have the buoys cleared from the Naval Weapons Station by late May. This expectation was partially fulfilled. 17,000 buoys were sold and carted off mostly to be used for scrap metal, and 5,000 remained in symmetrical stack formation to continue intriguing and vexing residents and motorists well into the seventies.

    I have a line out to the the weapons station to find out when the remaining buoys were finally removed. I’ll update this post if I get an answer.

    Can’t quite picture where the buoys were located? Click here to view a 2010 post that pinpoints the location.

    – 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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  • February 8th in Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1947, the Navy announced that Captain R. J. Townsend, commandant of the Navy’s amphibious base in Little Creek, VA, would be transferred to Seal Beach to serve as the ammunition depot’s new commandant.

    – Michael Dobkins

    Have you enjoyed this and other This Date in Seal Beach History posts?

    If so, please consider making a small donation of a dollar or more to help defray the online subscriptions and other research costs that make this blog possible.

    Donations can be made securely with most major credit cards directly through PayPal. Just click on paypal.me/MichaelDobkins to go to PayPal. Thank you.

    This Date in Seal Beach History also has an online store hosted at Cafepress where you can order shirts, tote bags, stationery, and other gift items imprinted with vintage Seal Beach images. Visit the online store by clicking here.