Ammunition Blast Demolishes Ships and Shore Structures
About 300 Lives Lost in Greatest Explosion of War
FIVE Coast Guardsmen, members of the crew of a fire barge which was standing by, were among the 320-odd military personnel and civilians killed when two ammunition ships exploded with quakelike intensity at 10:19 p.m. the night of July 17 at a pier at the Naval Ammunition Depot at Port Chicago, Contra Costa County, 38 miles northeast of San Francisco.
In addition to those killed, hundreds of military personnel and civilians were injured. Most of the civilians hurt were cut by flying glass and debris in the towns of Port Chicago, Pittsburg, Concord, Avon and other nearby populated places.
The blast, which rocked the area for miles in every direction, was so intense as the hundreds of tons of munitions let go that it registered as a “small earthquake” on the University of California seismograph, according to Professor Byerly, university seismologist. He said it registered on the machine for three minutes.
Fireboaf Demolished
The Coast Guard’s Fire Battalion barge, part of the command of Lt. (j.g.) O. S. Peterson, was blown to bits as it stood by the 10.000-ton S.S. Quinault Victory, delivered for service only a week before, which was loading. Nearby was the S.S. E. A. Bryan, an older ship, which had completed loading. Torn and twisted fused metal plates from the two ships, valued at $4,300,000, were hurled miles in every direction. Some pieces, looking like huge pieces of shrapnel, imbedded themselves in sidewalks and streets, houses and barns for miles around, yet they killed none of the civilian population.
In the stream several other ships were damaged, including a Coast Guard patrol ship and a Red Line tanker.
Fate, which snuffed out the lives of an estimated 250 Negro enlisted Navy men, nine white officers, 70 U. S. Maritime Commission seamen, five Coast Guardsmen and three civilian railroad workers, was kind, too.
A number of men missed death or injury because they were on leave or liberty. Two, hours later would have found many more men back aboard their ships, in their barracks.
But the greatest kindness of all was the lack of fire despite hundreds of live wires that were torn down by the explosion and broken gas mains whose fumes could have fed ravaging flames that would have added to the estimated damage of more than $5,000,000 done to surrounding towns. Water mains were twisted and broken in Port Chicago but quick action by gas and electric company employes, firemen, police, sheriff’s deputies and civilian defense workers precluded damage from fire.
Emergency civilian defense machinery was put in motion and fire and other crews moved into the area along with the hundreds of ambulances with crews of doctors and nurses that came from ten nearby counties.
Nearly all nearby towns that could spare a rig or two sent water wagons to the depot: all who had lighting equipment to spare rolled it in for the entire area was plunged into darkness by the explosion which ripped power lines.
The only fire in the entire area started among debris at the depot. The fire was eating toward damaged steel boxcars, ripped open as though with a giant can opener, loaded with blockbusters when four Negro sailors moved in with extinguishers and, without regard for personal safety, quelled the flames.
The enlisted personnel at the depot, working at loading the ships, were Negroes. More than 20 of their buddies at Mare Island answered a call for volunteers when word of the disaster was flashed.
Exact cause of the explosion, one of the most disastrous in the history of the nation and California’s worst, probably never will be known, said Captain N. H. Goss, U.S.N., commanding officer of the Naval Ammunition Depot at Mare Island. “We have no basis for giving any cause of the explosion as there are no close survivors to give evidence of what happened,” he said.
However, the Navy Department or dered a thorough investigation and a board of inquiry met less than twelve hours atter the explosion took place.
The blast shot a white flame into the sky. Flames seemed to leap a mile into the air. A naval aviator, flying 8000 feet above Port Chicago at the time of the blast, reported to his communications center by radio that the flames of the detonation roared above his altitude and he climbed to 10,000 feet to escape the flames and debris. The glare was seen at Santa Cruz, 100 miles down the coast. Persons miles away saw the white flash followed hv red incandescent streaks many seconds before they felt the blast.
An ammunition train, twelve cars loaded with aerial bombs, was within sixty feet of one pier which was demolished yet not one of the bombs exploded. Other cars loaded with explosives were torn and ripped open despite the fact they were protected by huge revetments.
The Red Cross sent supplies of all sorts. Twelve disaster relief trucks were sent, from San Francisco as was Searchlight Engine 1 of the city’s fire departmint. The Salvation Army aided in feeding the homeless as did the Red Cross and other agencies. Even 80,000 feet of lumber was sent into the area by the Red Cross to be used for emergency repairs.
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While a twenty-man bureau opened in Martinez, county seat, by the Fire Companies Adjustment Bureau, Inc., representing San Francisco insurance companies. was making an investigation into all phases of civilian insurance recovery, the War Damage Corporation in Washington prepared to study its liability, and civilian protection and war problems committees of the state war council met in Sacramento at Governor Warren’s call to determine what aid could be given blasted communities.
Communications Kept Open
The damaged towns were guarded by police and deputy sheriffs augmented by two companies of military police and communications were kept open through use of the two-way radio operated by Sheriff James N. Long of Contra Costa County and his men.
Radio stations in the area cooperated by broadcasting pleas for assistance. Despite the death and destruction wrought by the blast, chaos was averted through hard work and hundreds of individual cases of heroism among both military and civilian personnel. The Navy was able to declare the situation well in hand less than four hours after the explosion.
California Highway Police established road blocks about the entire area and cleared the way for the hundreds of ambulances, emergency cars, trucks and station wagons.
Newsmen were permitted to visit the wrecked depot where about 1400 men and officers were stationed. Huge wooden barracks were torn asunder, the recreation hall was smashed and other installations badly damaged.
One member of the crew of volunteers who returned from the scene of carnage where be helped gather up the dead shrugged his shoulders and remarked, ‘‘There wasn’t much for us to do.”
At the present time fewer than twentyfive bodies, most of them unidentifiable, have been recovered.
