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had had an outdated map and thought they were attacking a submarine base. Tey had no idea of the massive guns that Fort Stevens had to defend itself.] With dozens of men stationed at


Stevens, as well as four 12-inch mortar guns and two six-inch guns, there was plenty of “defense” available that Sun- day night in June of 1942. Col. Carl S. Donney was the commander of the fort. Tough many of the younger men (such as Capt. Jack Wood of the 249th Coast Artillery Defense) who helped man the guns would always state, “Despite being completely surprised, we were ready to fire back within a couple minutes,” clearer heads at the top of the command chain pre- vailed. Te attack began roughly at 11:30 p.m., and Donney would NOT give the order to fire back into the pitch-black waters of the Pacific. He would have to answer the question of “Why not?” for decades. Some 30 years after June 21, 1942,


Donney’s tune had changed little from the reports he had filed in the sum- mer of 1942. “Estimates were that [the Japanese sub was] at least 500 to


Though the 2nd Air Force had many B-25 Mitchells sitting at Pendleton Army Air Field, east of the Japanese submarine attack site, B-25s were not known for anti-submarine warfare and thus none were dispatched to give chase on June 21–22, 1942. (Miskimins photo of a Commemorative Air Force B-25.)


1,000 yards beyond the range of our big guns. Why use searchlights and fire the guns and give them a big flash to use to pinpoint their target?” Several men at Fort Stevens that night ques- tion whether the I-25 really was out of range of their guns.


Tousands of other men in various Coast Artillery Defense units from the


Pacific to the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico felt the same way as many of the men at Fort Stevens. Te majority of military men who were being trained to man such coastal defense guns dur- ing the war felt that the men at Fort Stevens had blown their opportunity by not firing back. Since the seventeen Japanese shells had destroyed noth- ing other than some telephone lines and trees, Donney makes a heck of a good point that it was wiser to do nothing. (Te Hitchman family, how- ever, might beg to differ: A shell came within 40 feet of hitting a bedroom at their house where their three children sat huddled in fright by the explosive sound of the Japanese guns.) While the barracks and artillery


The now-abandoned Fort Stevens. Barracks and gun platforms have been silent for decades—the guns were also “silent” on the night of June 21, 1942. (P. Marbach photo c/o Smith-Western Inc.)


24 www.hqafsa.org


guns at Fort Stevens were indeed manned that June evening, keeping the skies above Fort Stevens and the town of Astoria safe during the war fell to the 2nd Air Force. To say they had a vast area to defend is an understate- ment. Tey were not only responsible for the coastline of Oregon and Wash- ington but also both of the Dakotas as well as Utah, Montana, Colorado, Idaho, Nebraska and Kansas. Obvi- ously, with this amount of territory, there were many air bases and airfields responsible for all these western states.


OUR HERITAGE


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