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Naval History and Heritage Command #NH 81893
San Francisco
(122.399W
37.801N) was the most important city on the West Coast in 1941, with a population of about 600,000 persons. The
area was first explored by
Westerners in 1542 and
mapped in 1775, when de Alaya first sailed into San Francisco Bay. The
Spanish
established the Presidio
in 1776 but settlements in the area remained
small until after the Mexican
War. The gold rush of
1849
swelled the
population, and the transcontinental railroad established San Francisco
as the
most important city on the West Coast. Industrial facilities included a
small Bethlehem Steel mill; Bethlehem Steel's Union Iron shipyard (122.384W 37.761N), which was devoted mostly to Navy construction and repair; and the Western Pipe and Steel yard, which could lay down two C1 transports at a time at its side launching way.
At the time war broke out, there were approximately
five freighters and six transports available in the
harbor, and there were numerous
military and industrial facilities in the Bay area. The port became the
Port of Embarkation for men and supplies to the Pacific, exclusive of Alaska and the China-Burma-India theater.
Climate Information:
Elevation 52'
Temperatures: Jan 55/45, Apr 62/49, Jul 65/53, Oct 68/54, record 101/27
Rainfall: Jan 11/4.7, Apr 6/1.5, Jul 0/0, Oct 4/1.0 == 22.1" per annum
References
Leighton and
Coakley (1955)
Pearce
and Smith (1990)
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