Fort Stevens

The United States had been involved in World War II for only a little more than eight months, and the threat of Japanese activity along the West Coast was anything but imaginary.

Japanese submarines had been operating there for some time and had attacked Allied shipping, Shell D. Elwood oil field near Santa Barbara, and fired on Fort Stevens in Oregon.

There was a possibility that an enemy submarine might approach a major port like San Francisco, so the US Navy employed every advantage it could to patrol for them.

In considering this, blimps might not be the first aircraft to come to mind, but in the search for submarines, they held distinct advantages.

Japanese submarines had already shelled the Oregon coast.

A Japanese submarine had fired on Fort Stevens in June of '42, making it the only military installation on the continental United States to receive enemy fire since the War of 1812.

The Navy needed eyes, not just surface patrol, eyes in the air, platforms that could loiter for hours over convoys, spot a submarine periscope, and either attack or vector in surface ships before a freighter went to the bottom.

Enter the blimp.

I...

There's the option of going back to Astoria, parking there, and camping at Fort Stevens, or I could just go home.

I mean, just, it's been a pretty full weekend already.

The show last night and this being a pretty full day here.