14-inch guns fired near Oceanside
Posted By: Scott Harrison
Posted On: 12:10 a.m. | March 21, 2014
June 12, 1936: United States Coast Defense 14-inch railway gun is fired during practice session near Oceanside.
Los Angeles Times staff correspondent Mark Finley reported in the June 13, 1936 edition:
OCEANSIDE, June 12. (Exclusive)–With throaty bellows of defiance, the twin fourteen-inch railroad rifles of the United States Army Coast Defense roared for the first time in eight years twelve miles north of here today.
They spat out shells weighing three-quarters of a ton. Minutes later, twenty-two miles and more to sea, towering waterspouts marked the landing places of the great projectiles, crammed with high explosives.
Thousands of feet in the air a tiny scout plane marked the splashes in relation to an imaginary enemy dreadnaught and reported their exact location by radio.
A quarter of a mile from the great guns experts in mathematics hastily corrected calculations in a railway plotting room, then telephoned new orders to the gunners. The great barrels of the 365-ton rifle was elevated and they spoke again in a billow of smoke and a torrent of flame…
The rifles hadn't been fired for eight years because of the cost of shells and damage to windows in their previous location at Los Angeles Harbor.
A week ago they were taken to their new location, twelve miles north of here, a railway stop named Don, which is a bean field…
There between the highway and the ocean they were anchored to the rails with out riggings on either side, and prepared for the terrific explosion and recoil. A quarter-ton of powder is used to send the shells on their way. Some 2000 persons gathered in the vicinity this afternoon, army and navy men and civil.
Included in the group were Col. C. L. Sampson, of the Ninth Corps Area General Staff at San Francisco, and Capt. W. L. Friedell, commander of the USS Colorado.
Other thousands gathered at strategic points along the coast where they could see the great shells splash into the water…
All three of these photos were taken by former staff photographer J. H. McCrory. The top photo accompanied Finley's report in the June 13, 1936, Los Angeles Times.