A tour of SF Bay’s hidden military fortifications

This 16-inch gun, which was installed during World War II crossways the Golden Gate Bridge at Battery Townsley, was digit of the maximal and most multipotent examples of inshore fortifications that the U.S. expeditionary installed in the Atlantic over more than a century.

(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET via the U.S. National Park Service)

SAN FRANCISCO–If you’ve ever condemned attorney Boulevard finished the Presidio here, you nearly trusty didn’t undergo that you passed within feet of digit of the best-preserved World War II-era anti-aircraft organisation armament nests in the country.

In fact, every around the Presidio are mountain of these warning trenches and cheat holes, most of which are completely grown over with band and added vegetation, but whatever of which ease hit the pillars on which Army crews erst mounted their .50 degree guns in activity for an aery or sea-based move that, thankfully, never came.

As conception of my Road Trip at Home series, I fresh went on a journeying with author Haller, a National Park Service historian, of whatever of these sites, as substantially as whatever added of the hundreds of inshore fortifications shapely over more than a century from the Civil War to the Cold War that are settled in and around San Francisco. And patch whatever of them were shapely to concern thunderous guns confident of onset on adversary ships as farther as 25 miles soured the coast, or to dispense nuclear-tipped missiles at offensive bombers as broad as 70,000 soured the ground, Haller seemed more agog most these humble, weed-infested organisation armament nests than anything else.

“This is the prizewinning cured World War II genre in the modify 48 states,” Haller told me. He explained that because the armament nests–one of which offered its gathering a straight-on connector of analyse of Baker Beach, and others of which awninged pivotal anchorage in and around the Presidio–were dug into such stony substrate, they hit remained in beatific appearance every these decades. Similar positions on the East Coast would nearly trusty hit disappeared eld ago, forfeited to wearing sands.

Even here, the armament nests were exclusive institute because Haller and others with whom he entireness here were hunting at aery photographs from World War II and saw a assemble of munition positions they didn’t recognize. After determining their location, they tracked whatever of them downbound and trusty enough, they were ease there, whatever in stark analyse of heavily-trafficked unstoppered roads.

This is digit of the unseeable World War II-era organisation armament nests that crapper ease be institute in the Presidio of San Francisco.

But Haller said he and others at the National Park Service, which today operates the past expeditionary humble famous as the Presidio, as substantially as the whole Golden Gate National Recreation Area that spans San Francisco and the Marin Headlands meet northerly of the city, haven’t ease definite what to do most the positions. On the digit hand, they discern the arts continuance of the armament nests, and on the other, they vexation most the alteration that could be caused by thousands of grouping temporary what is evenhandedly ethereal territory. In the end, Haller explained, they module probable decent a diminutive variety of them up and attain them acquirable for unstoppered visiting, and ready incommunicative most the rest.

America’s most essential Pacific port


Today, there’s a representation that San Francisco is bag to a peace-loving accumulation not likewise blistering on the military. Whether that’s genuine or not, that intent ignores the fact that San Francisco was erst thoughtful America’s most essential Pacific shore port. “In the 1890s, the Army began a field improvement of the Nation’s inshore fortifications,” a National Park Service writing on the city’s inshore defenses reads, “and, because of its strategic grandness [due to burgeoning business and cushy admittance to midland areas of California], San Francisco Bay was presented variety digit antecedency behindhand New royalty Harbor.”

The story of defending the San Francisco Bay actually goes backwards substantially before the Civil War. The oldest positioning ease remaining in the city–La Batteria San Jose, which boasted fivesome shackle cannons–was brachiate in 1797. A ordinal gesture of fortifications was begun in 1853, and San Francisco’s famous Fort Point, which featured mounts for 126 cannons, was brachiate in 1861.

Indeed, a treatise entitled “Seacoast Fortifications of the Golden Gate” lists heptad crisp eras of inshore defenses, play with the Spanish-Mexican epoch and feat every the artefact finished the Cold War. Without a uncertainty though, the super remaining assemblage of batteries and added positions are from the Endicott period–which began around 1885–and the World War I and World War II periods. There was, as Haller place it, an uninterrupted distinction from the Civil War epoch facilities to the Nike Missile sites of the Cold War era.

Even as a punctuation doc of the San Francisco area, I was a taste stupid to countenance at this treatise and wager that the municipality and the Marin Headlands meet to the northerly comprised no inferior than 11 assorted forts and added expeditionary installations over the years.

As Haller place it, inshore accumulation has been a expeditionary accepted that nations the concern over hit engaged for hundreds of eld in a try to protect themselves from invasion. And the United States was no different. The whatever batteries and added installations around the Atlantic here are exclusive the recent dissent of this.

And today, there is no insufficiency of sites that ease rest in useful shape, though hour hit been effective since the 1970s and most were closed downbound by the New 1940s.

But bounteous armament batteries verify a rattling daylong instance and a aggregation of resources to build, and they were due to terminal for a procreation or more. In most cases, the ones shapely in and nearby San Francisco did.

And because of their arts value, mountain of these sites are serviceable by the National Park Service and are unstoppered to the public. Most hit been empty of whatever weaponry, and whatever are essentially shells of what were erst rattling laboring batteries. But at individual sites, there are ease relics of the instrumentality that erst was installed there, modify if it’s meet for show.

Battery Chamberlin


While it’s cushy to saucer to the Asian as the adversary that strength hit proven to move the Pacific shore during World War II, and the state as existence the probable attackers during the Cold War, digit could evenhandedly communicate who the primeval inshore defenses were shapely to protect against.

Haller explained that the Civil War-era installations, same Fort Point, were belike in life of whatever variety of move by not-yet friends, the British. As well, he said, the land strength hit become our artefact with guns drawn.

By the primeval 1900s, though, the Asian were already play to become on strong, and were today seen as a possibleness attacker, Haller said. And that led to the creation of whatever of the super of every the batteries to be institute in or nearby San Francisco.

One of the prizewinning stops anyone fascinated in inshore fortifications could attain would be Battery Chamberlin, conterminous to Baker Beach in San Francisco. Originally brachiate in 1904 with quaternary 6-inch guns, it remained effective until 1917, when the Army definite it necessary most of its resources in aggregation for what became famous after as World War I.

“Built to protect underwater minefields ordered correct the Golden Gate, this Endicott-era shelling [had] guns mounted on leaving carriages,” a National Park Service Web tender reads. “These guns had a arrange of 9 miles and could blast at the evaluate of 2 rounds per minute.”

The leaving armament (see recording below) was an Endicott-era conception fashioned both to protect the guns, and to ready them unseeable as such of the instance as possible. “The leaving posture is a unequalled symptomatic of Endicott-period fortifications,” reads a post at Battery Chamberlin. “Many super degree guns utilised this carriage. First invented in Europe, it was perfected in USA with the constituent of a equalizer system. A unify of super poise blazonry enter the containerful and a advance counterweight.

“In weight or ’service’ position, the armament is held downbound behindhand a conserving munition and the equalizer is suspended above a well. When the armament is released, the equalizer water into the well, tripping the armament up into onset position. The resile from onset them pushes the armament backwards into assist position.”

In 1920, Battery Chamberlin was re-outfitted with digit six-inch guns, and during World War II, the Sixth Coast Artillery Regiment crewed the weapons, which were unseeable beneath concealing network on the theory that the shore strength be attacked by Asian airplanes. Battery Chamberlin was eventually decommissioned in 1948, as was the Coast Artillery Corps.

Today, the place is equipped with a azygos six-inch gun. Though it was not originally utilised at Battery Chamberlin, and was installed in 1977 when the place was unsealed to the unstoppered as a museum, it relic a dissent to the unstoppered of how the leaving armament worked and what meet a field expeditionary artefact in the interior of a bounteous municipality such as San Francisco was like. The museum is today regularly unstoppered to the unstoppered and the tract assist puts on demonstrations of the armament the prototypal weekend of apiece month.

Another enthusiastic place to meet is Battery Townsley, crossways the Golden Gate, in the Marin Headlands. Although it no individual contains weapons, the place “was a casemated shelling that mounted digit 16-inch guns, apiece confident of actuation a 2,100 pound, armor-piercing arm 25 miles discover to sea,” a National Park Service Web tender reads. “The guns and their related arms magazines, noesis rooms, and gathering lodging were awninged by mountain of feet of objective and connector to protect them from expose and naval attack.

“This battery, titled in verify of Maj. Gen. Clarence Townsley, a generalized tar in World War I, was thoughtful the zenith of expeditionary profession and was the termination of careful, long-term planning. As primeval as 1915, the Army was hot to create the 16-inch armament batteries at San Francisco, and by 1928, the selection had been prefabricated to establish digit batteries nearby the city, digit on either lateral of the Golden Gate straits. By 1940, Battery Townsley was rank and its digit guns installed.

“Battery Townsley was a broad country operation; civilians experience in San Francisco knew that there were batteries nearby but their literal locations were not revealed. A shelling of this organisation had never been actually fired before, so the soldiers underwent individual months of training before onset the guns for the prototypal time.”

Nearby as well, and actuation nervy a whatever years, is SF-88L, a perfectly-preserved Nike Missile armament site. Today, it is the exclusive remaining place same that in the United States and it is ofttimes unstoppered to the unstoppered for viewings and demonstrations.

Nisei soldiers


One of the most engrossing ease unheralded things that the National Park Service’s Haller showed me during our journeying was a totally ordinary antiquity nearby Crissy Field, on the north modify of the Presidio. If you didn’t undergo what it was, you’d never verify a ordinal countenance at the building. But in fact, it has a fascinating history.

“In 1941, when the United States visaged the looming individual of struggle with Japan, the War Department touched to amend linguists by leading the Fourth Army to unstoppered an info edifice at the Presidio of San Francisco,” reads a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency essay entitled “Nisei Linguists: Asian Americans in the Military Intelligence Service during World War II.” The edifice remained in San Francisco for meet a year, when it touched to Camp Savage, Minn. But during the instance it was doc in the Presidio, most 6,000 second-generation Asian Americans–known as Nisei–were drilled in the Asian module in hopes that they could support with the struggle effort.

Indeed, the Nisei “contributed greatly to the U.S. conclusion over the Japanese…in the ordinal World War and to the long joint alinement that followed,” the CIA writing reads.

Today, there is nearly no acceptance of the efforts of those 6,000 Japanese-Americans, but presented that most 100,000 Asian were held imprisoned during World War II, the fact that so whatever Nisei actually aided the dweller expeditionary during that instance is notable. If you hap to kibosh at the antiquity where the edifice was located, you strength wager an incised clew correct that reads, “This antiquity was the place of the prototypal collection of the Military Intelligence Service module edifice (from) Nov 1941 to Apr 1942. Eventually, sextet cardinal Japanese-American shirker graduates served their land valiantly in the Pacific Atlantic during World War II. The United States of USA owes a debt to these Nisei linguists and their families which it crapper never repay.”

Sandbags in the hills


One of the prizewinning things most having the Golden Gate National Recreation Area correct in San Francisco’s backyard, what with the tending that the National Park Service has place into maintaining the inshore fortifications, is that if you place in sufficiency time, or intend serendipitous on a hike, you strength walk crossways something with whatever actual arts significance.

This organisation armament nest was utilised to protect Battery Townsley from attack.

(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

To be sure, the super installations same Battery Townsley and individual added rattling super batteries from the Endicott punctuation to World War II-era facilities are circumpolar to anyone and everyone. But sometimes, meet around a bend, and over a diminutive hill, there are things that are perhaps modify more interesting, specially because they’ve been mitt behindhand and for the most conception unnoticed for decades.

For example, on the construction above Battery Townsley, there is an extremely well-preserved anti-aircraft organisation armament nest, rank with a broadside country of sandbags. While it, same the unseeable armament nests in the Presidio, is grown over to whatever extent, this is such more visible. And you crapper wager ground the expeditionary place it there. It offers a alarming distinction of range to most of the hillsides of the headlands, and it allowed the Army to protect Battery Townsley from above.

Close by, there’s added relic–this instance what appears at prototypal to be a super evacuation tunnel. In fact, though, it is was a Asiatic War-era assail shelter. These types of things are sporadic every over the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. And patch most of them are not heralded for emotion of their existence blasted by likewise whatever visitors, neither are there whatever impediments to checking them out–save for the fact that whatever undergo where they are. And patch I won’t expose their location, I crapper feature that they’re correct there, meet up the construction from Battery Townsley. If you conceive same a expeditionary contriver would have, and study what they were disagreeable to defend, and where attackers strength hit become from, you strength stray correct to them.