Defenders of the West: Naval Airstation Tillamook And The Unknown Battles of World War 2 Off America's West Coast

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About Defenders Of The West: Naval Airstation Tillamook

The depth charges tumbled from their rack on the underside of the U.S. Navy blimp. Great geysers of foam leaped into the air and the sea below boiled with the explosions. Orange diesel oil bubbled to the surface. Had the Japanese submarine been destroyed or did it still lurk beneath the waves, hunting for unsuspecting merchantmen or American warships to sink along the west coast of the United States? In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, fear swept the west coast from California to Washington State. Where would the Japanese strike next? Faced with war in the Pacific and in Europe, the United States moved swiftly to press every conceivable weapon and tool into service, including blimps designed to scout for, and attack, enemy submarines. Men rushed to fill the military’s swelling ranks. Factories and shipyards turned out fighting machines, tailor-made submarine killers based on a simple, old-fashioned design, held the line until the nation was ready to take the offensive.When Japanese submarines launched a few, scattered attacks on shipping along the Pacific Coast, the United States Navy moved quickly to establish new naval air stations to support squadrons of anti-submarine blimps. In the face of material shortages, abominable weather and low morale Squadron ZP-33 of Naval Air Station Tillamook flew from the rain-lashed forests of coastal Oregon to guard the strategically valuable waterways of Puget Sound and the Columbia River. Guarding these important waterways and the convoys that plied the sea-lanes was vital to turning the momentum of the World War to America’s favor. Beyond deadly accidents, daring search and rescue operations and research and development utilizing some of the government’s newest equipment, the blimps of Tillamook Oregon participated in several engagements with Japanese submarines. Though for home-front morale purposes the government denied the presences of any enemy combatants, strong evidence indicates that one or more sunken J