photo sharing and upload picture albums photo forums search pictures popular photos photography help login
Jim's Visions | all galleries >> Galleries >> Moving Around > First Barnsdall-Rio Grand Oil Company Gas Station
previous | next
19-AUG-2014

First Barnsdall-Rio Grand Oil Company Gas Station

Goleta, California

Ellwood Mesa

This was a large oilfield area of Santa Barbara County and was the location of only a couple locations in the United States shelled by the Japanese from one of their submarines. Their intent was to set the massive oilfield ablaze.

BTW, there was a coastal Oregon area near Brookings that was fire bombed by a small airplane launched from a submarine. Neither attack was successful...the oil fields did not burn nor did the forests of Oregon burn. It is always wet and damp in the coastal Oregon forests.

See Below:

The Bombing of Ellwood Oil Field
After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, a small contingent of Japanese submarines was dispatched east to patrol the California coastline. On February 23, 1942, the Japanese submarine I-17 slinked into a channel near Ellwood Oil Field, a large oil well and storage facility outside of Santa Barbara. After surfacing, the submarine lobbed 16 shells at Ellwood Beach from its lone deck gun before submerging and fleeing to the open ocean.

The brief shelling only caused minor damage to the oil field—a pump house and a single oil derrick were destroyed—but its implications were severe. The bombardment at Ellwood was the first shelling of the mainland United States during World War II, and it sparked an invasion panic among an American populace not used dealing with war on the home front. A day later, reports of enemy aircraft led to the so-called “Battle of Los Angeles,” in which American artillery was discharged over Los Angeles for several hours due to the mistaken belief that the Japanese were invading.



The only attack on a mainland American military site during World War II occurred on June 21, 1942, on the Oregon coastline. After trailing American fishing vessels to bypass minefields, the Japanese submarine I-25 made its way to the mouth of the Columbia River. It surfaced near Fort Stevens, an antiquated Army base that dated back to the Civil War. Just before midnight, I-25 used its 140-millimeter deck gun to fire 17 shells at the fort. Believing that the muzzle flashes of the fort’s guns would only serve to more clearly reveal their position, the commander of Fort Stevens ordered his men not to return fire. The plan worked, and the bombardment was almost totally unsuccessful—a nearby baseball field bore the brunt of the damage.

I-25 would later make history again when it executed the first-ever bombing of the continental United States by an enemy aircraft. In what became known as the Lookout Air Raids, I-25 returned to the Oregon coast in September 1942 and launched a Yokosuka E14Y floatplane. After flying to a wooded area near Brookings, Oregon, the floatplane dropped a pair of incendiary bombs in the hope of starting a forest fire. Thanks to light winds and a quick response from fire patrols, the bombing failed to have its desired effect, as did a second bombing over Brookings later that month. The pilot of the Japanese floatplane, Nobuo Fujita, would later make several goodwill visits to Brookings during the 1960s, and was even proclaimed an honorary citizen of the town upon his death in 1997.

FujiFilm FinePix X100
1/800s f/10.0 at 23.0mm iso200 full exif

other sizes: small medium large original auto
comment | share
Ted Aanensen21-Aug-2014 23:14
Not that long ago, but sounds like ancient history, how easy to forget , thanks Jim, fascinating history lesson with art!!
Milan Vogrin21-Aug-2014 21:34
Very nice!