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VIEWS
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WW2 comes to
Casco
Bay
The United States
entered the war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,
December 7, 1941.
The next day,
the old coast defense guns at Fort Williams in Cape Elizabeth, Casco
Bay, Maine
were test
fired.
The concussion of the firing blew the doors out of four recently constructed
garages
near the battery. The Coast Artillery quickly moved out its mobile
artillery to
Biddeford
Pool and Popham Beach to temporarily extend the defenses of
the harbor. By
April 1942,
the US Navy installed anti-submarine nets and highly secret
anti-submarine indicator
loops at
all the entrances to the harbor (the indicator loop technology was
developed by
the
Royal Navy in WWI and modified by the USN in the 1930s to suit
local
needs). The Coast
Artillery
planted mine fields in the main channels into Portland
Harbor.
Coast Guard patroled
the
waterfront,
and troops were sent to Maine to guard vital highway
and railroad bridges,
such
as the Grand Trunk Railroad bridge at Yarmouth
Junction. The Navy was a popular
branch
of the service in Maine, and a mass enlistment in Navy took place
in Portland June
7, 1942. (from
Anti-Submarine History).
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