USS Coral Sea (CV-43)
USS Coral Sea, a Midway-class aircraft carrier, was the third ship of the United States Navy to be named for the Battle of the Coral Sea. She earned the affectionate nickname "Ageless Warrior" through her long career. Classified as an aircraft carrier with hull classification symbol CV-43, the contract to build the ship was awarded to Newport News Shipbuilding of Newport News, Virginia on 14 June 1943, she was reclassified as a "Large Aircraft Carrier" with hull classification symbol CVB-43 on 15 July 1943. Her keel was laid down on 10 July 1944 in Shipway 10, she was launched on 2 April 1946 sponsored by Mrs. Thomas C. Kinkaid and commissioned on 1 October 1947 with Captain A. P. Storrs III in command. Before 8 May 1945, the aircraft carrier CVB-42 had been known as USS Coral Sea. Coral Sea was one of the last U. S Navy carriers to be completed with a straight flight deck, with an angled flight deck added on during modernizations. All subsequent newly-built U. S Navy carriers have had the angled deck included as part of the ship's construction.
The ship promptly began a series of career milestones when, on 27 April 1948, two P2V-2 Neptunes, piloted by Commander Thomas D. Davies and Lieutenant Commander John P. Wheatley, made jet assisted takeoffs from the carrier as she steamed off Norfolk, Virginia; this was the first carrier launchings of planes of this weight. The Coral Sea sailed from Norfolk, Virginia on 7 June 1948 for a midshipmen cruise to the Mediterranean and Caribbean, returned to Norfolk, Virginia 11 August. After an overhaul period, Coral Sea was again operating off the Virginia Capes. On 7 March 1949, a P2V-3C Neptune, piloted by Captain John T. Hayward of VC-5, was launched from the carrier with a 10,000-lb load of dummy bombs; the aircraft flew across the continent, dropped its load on the West Coast, returned nonstop to land at the Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland. The mission proved the concept of carrier-based atomic bomb attacks. Following training in the Caribbean, Coral Sea sailed 3 May 1949 for her first tour of duty in the Mediterranean with the Sixth Fleet, returning 28 September.
On 21 April 1950, the first carrier takeoff of an AJ-1 Savage heavy attack bomber was made from Coral Sea by Captain John T. Hayward of VC-5; the remainder of the pilots of the squadron completed carrier qualifications on board Coral Sea in this aircraft on 31 August, marking the introduction of this long-range atomic-attack bomber to carrier operations. At this time, she returned to the Mediterranean for duty with the Sixth Fleet from 9 September 1950 to 1 February 1951. An overhaul and local operations upon her return, as well as training with Air Group 17, prepared her for a return to the Mediterranean once more on 20 March 1951; as flagship for Commander, Carrier Division 6, she took part in a NATO Exercise, Beehive I. She returned to Norfolk, Virginia 6 October for local and Caribbean operations, next sailing for the Mediterranean on 19 April 1952. While on service with the Sixth Fleet, she visited Yugoslavia in September and carried Marshal Josip Broz Tito on a one-day cruise to observe carrier operations.
The ship was reclassified as an "Attack Aircraft Carrier" with hull classification symbol CVA-43 on 1 October 1952 while still at sea and returned to Norfolk, Virginia for overhaul 12 October. Coral Sea trained pilots in carrier operations off of the Virginia Capes and Mayport, in April 1953 the ship embarked the Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives for a three-day cruise. On 26 April, she sailed for a tour of duty in the Mediterranean; this cruise was highlighted by a visit to Spain, participation in NATO Exercise Black Wave with Deputy Secretary of Defense R. M. Kyes on board as an observer. Returning to Norfolk, Virginia on 21 October, she carried out tests for the Bureau of Aeronautics and trained members of the Naval Reserve at Mayport and Guantanamo Bay. Coral Sea returned to the Mediterranean from 7 July to 20 December 1954, during this tour was visited by Spanish Generalissimo Francisco Franco as she lay off of Valencia. On her next tour of duty in the Mediterranean from 23 March to 29 September 1955, she called at Istanbul and participated in NATO exercises.
Sailing from Norfolk, Virginia 23 July 1956 for Mayport, Florida, to embark Carrier Air Group 10, Coral Sea continued on to the Mediterranean on her next tour. She participated in NATO exercises and received King Paul of Greece, his consort, Friederike Luise Thyra of Hanover on board as visitors in October. During the Suez Crisis, Coral Sea evacuated American citizens from the troubled area and stood by off of Egypt until November. Coral Sea returned to Norfolk, Virginia 11 February 1957, she visited Santos, Brazil. Coral Sea was decommissioned at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard on 24 May 1957 to receive a major conversion, which included an angled deck, relocation of her elevators to the deck edge, new steam catapults, an enclosed hurricane bow, hull blisters, removal of the armor belt and several anti-aircraft guns, other changes. Upon completion, she rejoined the fleet. During September 1960, she conducted training with her new air group along the West Coast sailed in September for a tour of duty with the Seventh Fleet in the Far East on her first WestPac.
Installation of the Pilot Landing Aid Television system was completed on Coral Sea on 14 December 1961. She was the first carrier to have this system installed for operations
Herman the German (crane vessel)
Titan, better known by its former nickname Herman the German, is a large floating crane serving in the Panama Canal Zone performing heavy lifts for lock maintenance. Prior to its move to Panama in 1996, the crane was based at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard from the end of World War II until the yard's closure in 1995, it was seized from the German Kriegsmarine following the end of World War II as part of war reparations. The crane was built by Demag Cranes AG as Schwimmkran nr. 1 in 1941 for the Kriegsmarine, where it had served in the Baltic Sea tending German U-boats. MMSI number: 374940000 The crane was one of four sister ships, two of which are still afloat and in service. Schwimmkran nr. 1 was built by Demag AG in Bremerhaven for the Kriegsmarine. It was captured along with a sister ship by British forces at Kiel. "Herman the German" was seized as a war prize following the end of World War II. "Herman" was dismantled and transported across the Atlantic through the Panama Canal to Long Beach, where it subsequently served at the Long Beach Navy Yard from 1946 to 1994.
YD-171 was reassembled on-site by ex-Kearsarge, a former battleship converted to a large floating crane. Following the closure of the shipyard, the crane was sold to the Panama Canal Commission and it was transported on the semi-submersible ship Sea Swan in 1996 to the Panama Canal Zone, where it serves as the floating crane Titan. Titan retired Ajax and Hercules that has served the Panama Canal since construction in 1914. Over the years, "Herman the German" performed numerous notable heavy lifts, including: Refitting of the battleships USS Missouri and New Jersey in the 1980s Lifting the Hughes H-4 from its original hangar in Long Beach when it was relocated to its geodesic dome from 1980 to 1982 for tourist display by the Wrather Corporation; the jib is equipped with a level luffing linkage which keeps the main hook at the same horizontal level through its operating radius. Titan is a large self-propelled crane vessel with the tip of its main boom standing at 374 feet above the typical water line and a lifting capacity of 385 short tons.
In 1957, it was claimed to be the largest floating crane in operation. Its rated capacity is 350 tonnes at up to 114 feet from the center of rotation. Of the four Schwimmkräne built by Demag, one was destroyed during World War II by bombs, the remaining three were seized by the Allies as war reparations. One went to the Americans, was transported to the Long Beach Naval Shipyard; the crane stationed at Hamburg served in the Blohm & Voss shipyards and was presumed to be damaged beyond repair during the July 1943 Operation Gomorrah bombing raids. It was raised after the war and rebuilt with a lower capacity serving Hamburger Hafen & Logistik AG as HHLA III; the crane seized by the British was stationed at Gdynia moved to Denmark in 1943–44 to raise Danish Navy ships scuttled during Operation Safari on August 29, 1943. It was subsequently moved back to Gdynia Kiel, where it was seized by the British Army at the conclusion of the war, it was sold to France, but it capsized and sank in the North Sea 60 kilometres off the coast of Denmark while under tow on 25 June 1951.
It was being towed without disassembling the heavy mast structures. A partially-assembled crane was sent to the Soviet Union, it had been ordered by the Soviet government when the governments of Germany and the Soviet Union were friendly, was sent to Leningrad, where the Demag technicians sent with the crane to help assemble it were recalled before it could be completed. The partially-assembled structure served as an artillery spotting tower, it was presumed lost after the war until it was spotted in 2015 working in the Admiralty Shipyard at Saint Petersburg. Centennial Moment: Herman the German on YouTube "One Crane Builds Another". Popular Mechanics. Vol. 90 no. 3. Popular Mechanics Company. September 1948. Pp. 96–97. Retrieved 18 November 2016. Winner, Don. "The Titan - Heavy Lift Floating Crane - Thanks to Adolf Hitler". Panama-Guide. Retrieved 18 November 2016. "Herman the German". Port of Long Beach Centennial Forum. Port of Long Beach. 28 April 2011. Retrieved 18 November 2016. Priolo, Gary P.. "Service Ship Photo Archive: YD-171".
NavSource. Retrieved 18 November 2016. Mayer, Dmitry. "Admiralty Shipyards, St. Petersburg". Flickr. Retrieved 19 November 2016; the Russian sister ship to Titan appears in the center of this picture. "demag - 100t SCHWIMMKRAN". World in Scale. 2016. Retrieved 19 November 2016. Howser, Huell. "World War Two: California's Gold, Episode 00409". Chapman University. Retrieved 8 December 2016
USS Hancock (CV-19)
USS Hancock was one of 24 Essex-class aircraft carriers built during World War II for the United States Navy. The ship was the fourth US Navy ship to bear the name, was named for John Hancock, president of the Second Continental Congress and first governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Hancock was commissioned in April 1944, served in several campaigns in the Pacific Theater of Operations, earning four battle stars. Decommissioned shortly after the end of the war, she was modernized and recommissioned in the early 1950s as an attack carrier. In her second career she operated in the Pacific, playing a prominent role in the Vietnam War, for which she earned a Navy Unit Commendation, she was the first US Navy carrier to have steam catapults installed. She was decommissioned in early 1976, sold for scrap that year; the ship was laid down as Ticonderoga on 26 January 1943 by Bethlehem Steel Co. Quincy, Massachusetts It was renamed Hancock 1 May 1943 in response to an offer from the John Hancock life insurance company to conduct a special bond drive to raise money for the ship if that name was used.
CV-14, laid down as Hancock and under construction at the same time in Newport News, took the name Ticonderoga instead. The company's bond drive raised enough money to both build the ship and operate it for the first year; the ship was launched 24 January 1944 by Mrs. Juanita Gabriel-Ramsey, the wife of Rear Admiral DeWitt Clinton Ramsey, Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics. Hancock was commissioned 15 April 1944, with Captain Fred C. Dickey in command. After fitting out in the Boston Navy Yard and shake-down training off Trinidad and Venezuela, Hancock returned to Boston for alterations on 9 July 1944, she departed Boston on 31 July en route to Pearl Harbor via the Panama Canal and San Diego, from there sailed on 24 September to join Admiral W. F. Halsey's 3rd Fleet at Ulithi on 5 October, she was assigned to Rear Admiral Gerald F. Bogan's Carrier Task Group 38.2. Hancock got underway the following afternoon for a rendezvous point 375 nmi west of the Marianas where units of Vice Admiral Mitscher's Fast Carrier Task Force 38 were assembling in preparation for the daring cruise to raid Japanese air and sea bases in the Ryūkyūs, the Philippines.
Thus enemy air power was paralyzed during General MacArthur's invasion of Leyte. When the armada arrived off the Ryukyu Islands on 10 October 1944, Hancock's planes rose off her deck to wreak destruction upon Okinawan airfields and shipping, her planes destroyed seven enemy aircraft on the ground and assisted in the destruction of a submarine tender, 12 torpedo boats, 2 midget submarines, four cargo ships, a number of sampans. Next on the agenda were Formosan air bases where on 12 October Hancock's pilots downed six enemy planes and destroyed nine more on the ground, she reported one cargo ship sunk, three destroyed, several others damaged. As they repelled an enemy air raid that evening, Hancock's gunners accounted for a Japanese plane and drove off countless others during seven hours of uninterrupted general quarters; the following morning her planes resumed their assault, knocking out ammunition dumps, hangars and industrial plants ashore and damaging an enemy transport. As Japanese planes again attacked the Americans during their second night off Formosa, Hancock's antiaircraft fire brought down another raider which crashed about 500 yd off her flight deck.
On the morning of the third day of operations against this enemy stronghold Hancock lashed out again at airfields and shipping before retiring to the southeast with her task force. As the American ships withdrew a heavy force of Japanese aircraft roared in for a parting crack. One dropped a bomb off Hancock's port bow a few seconds before being hit by the carrier's guns and crashing into the sea. Another bomb exploded harmlessly in the water; the surviving attackers turned tail, the task force was thereafter unmolested as they sailed toward the Philippines to support the landings at Leyte. On 18 October, she launched planes against airfields and shipping at Laoag and Camiguin Island in Northern Luzon, her planes struck the islands of Cebu, Panay and Masbate, pounding enemy airfields and shipping. The next day, she retired toward Ulithi with Vice Admiral John S. McCain, Sr.'s TG 38.1. She received orders on 23 October to turn back to the area off Samar to assist in the search for units of the Japanese fleet closing Leyte to challenge the American fleet, to destroy amphibious forces which were struggling to take the island from Japan.
Hancock did not reach Samar in time to assist the heroic escort carriers and destroyers of "Taffy 3" during the main action of the Battle off Samar, but her planes did manage to lash the fleeing Japanese Center Force as it passed through the San Bernardino Strait. Hancock rejoined Rear Admiral Bogan's Task Group with which she struck airfields and shipping in the vicinity of Manila on 29 October 1944. During operations through 19 November, her planes gave direct support to advancing Army troops and attacked Japanese shipping over a 350 mi area, she became flagship of the Fast Carrier Task Force on 17 November 1944 when Admiral McCain came on board. Unfavorable weather prevented operations until 25 November, when a kamikaze roared toward Hancock, diving out of the sun. Antiaircraft fire exploded the plane some 300 ft above the ship, but a section of its fuselage landed amidships, a part of the wing hit the flight deck and burst into flames. Prompt and skillful teamwork extinguished the blaze and prevented serious damage.
Hancock returned to Ulithi on
World War II
World War II known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries; the major participants threw their entire economic and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China, it included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, the only use of nuclear weapons in war. Japan, which aimed to dominate Asia and the Pacific, was at war with China by 1937, though neither side had declared war on the other. World War II is said to have begun on 1 September 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France and the United Kingdom.
From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Finland and the Baltic states. Following the onset of campaigns in North Africa and East Africa, the fall of France in mid 1940, the war continued between the European Axis powers and the British Empire. War in the Balkans, the aerial Battle of Britain, the Blitz, the long Battle of the Atlantic followed. On 22 June 1941, the European Axis powers launched an invasion of the Soviet Union, opening the largest land theatre of war in history; this Eastern Front trapped most crucially the German Wehrmacht, into a war of attrition. In December 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the United States as well as European colonies in the Pacific. Following an immediate U. S. declaration of war against Japan, supported by one from Great Britain, the European Axis powers declared war on the U.
S. in solidarity with their Japanese ally. Rapid Japanese conquests over much of the Western Pacific ensued, perceived by many in Asia as liberation from Western dominance and resulting in the support of several armies from defeated territories; the Axis advance in the Pacific halted in 1942. Key setbacks in 1943, which included a series of German defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy, Allied victories in the Pacific, cost the Axis its initiative and forced it into strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained its territorial losses and turned toward Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in Central China, South China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy and captured key Western Pacific islands; the war in Europe concluded with an invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the capture of Berlin by Soviet troops, the suicide of Adolf Hitler and the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945.
Following the Potsdam Declaration by the Allies on 26 July 1945 and the refusal of Japan to surrender under its terms, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August respectively. With an invasion of the Japanese archipelago imminent, the possibility of additional atomic bombings, the Soviet entry into the war against Japan and its invasion of Manchuria, Japan announced its intention to surrender on 15 August 1945, cementing total victory in Asia for the Allies. Tribunals were set up by fiat by the Allies and war crimes trials were conducted in the wake of the war both against the Germans and the Japanese. World War II changed the political social structure of the globe; the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The Soviet Union and United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the nearly half-century long Cold War. In the wake of European devastation, the influence of its great powers waned, triggering the decolonisation of Africa and Asia.
Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic expansion. Political integration in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities and create a common identity; the start of the war in Europe is held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred and the two wars merged in 1941; this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935; the British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the fo
San Diego
San Diego is a city in the U. S. state of California. It is in San Diego County, on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California 120 miles south of Los Angeles and adjacent to the border with Mexico. With an estimated population of 1,419,516 as of July 1, 2017, San Diego is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest in California, it is part of the San Diego–Tijuana conurbation, the second-largest transborder agglomeration between the U. S. and a bordering country after Detroit–Windsor, with a population of 4,922,723 people. The city is known for its mild year-round climate, natural deep-water harbor, extensive beaches, long association with the United States Navy, recent emergence as a healthcare and biotechnology development center. San Diego has been called "the birthplace of California". Home to the Kumeyaay people, it was the first site visited by Europeans on what is now the West Coast of the United States. Upon landing in San Diego Bay in 1542, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo claimed the area for Spain, forming the basis for the settlement of Alta California 200 years later.
The Presidio and Mission San Diego de Alcalá, founded in 1769, formed the first European settlement in what is now California. In 1821, San Diego became part of the newly independent Mexico, which reformed as the First Mexican Republic two years later. California became part of the United States in 1848 following the Mexican–American War and was admitted to the union as a state in 1850; the city is the seat of San Diego County and is the economic center of the region as well as the San Diego–Tijuana metropolitan area. San Diego's main economic engines are military and defense-related activities, international trade, manufacturing; the presence of the University of California, San Diego, with the affiliated UCSD Medical Center, has helped make the area a center of research in biotechnology. The original inhabitants of the region are now known as the San La Jolla people; the area of San Diego has been inhabited by the Kumeyaay people. The first European to visit the region was explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, sailing under the flag of Castile but born in Portugal.
Sailing his flagship San Salvador from Navidad, New Spain, Cabrillo claimed the bay for the Spanish Empire in 1542, named the site "San Miguel". In November 1602, Sebastián Vizcaíno was sent to map the California coast. Arriving on his flagship San Diego, Vizcaíno surveyed the harbor and what are now Mission Bay and Point Loma and named the area for the Catholic Saint Didacus, a Spaniard more known as San Diego de Alcalá. On November 12, 1602, the first Christian religious service of record in Alta California was conducted by Friar Antonio de la Ascensión, a member of Vizcaíno's expedition, to celebrate the feast day of San Diego. Permanent colonization of California and of San Diego began in 1769 with the arrival of four contingents of Spaniards from New Spain and the Baja California peninsula. Two seaborne parties reached San Diego Bay: the San Carlos, under Vicente Vila and including as notable members the engineer and cartographer Miguel Costansó and the soldier and future governor Pedro Fages, the San Antonio, under Juan Pérez.
An initial overland expedition to San Diego from the south was led by the soldier Fernando Rivera and included the Franciscan missionary and chronicler Juan Crespí, followed by a second party led by the designated governor Gaspar de Portolà and including the mission president Junípero Serra. In May 1769, Portolà established the Fort Presidio of San Diego on a hill near the San Diego River, it was the first settlement by Europeans in. In July of the same year, Mission San Diego de Alcalá was founded by Franciscan friars under Serra. By 1797, the mission boasted the largest native population in Alta California, with over 1,400 neophytes living in and around the mission proper. Mission San Diego was the southern anchor in Alta California of the historic mission trail El Camino Real. Both the Presidio and the Mission are National Historic Landmarks. In 1821, Mexico won its independence from Spain, San Diego became part of the Mexican territory of Alta California. In 1822, Mexico began its attempt to extend its authority over the coastal territory of Alta California.
The fort on Presidio Hill was abandoned, while the town of San Diego grew up on the level land below Presidio Hill. The Mission was secularized by the Mexican government in 1834, most of the Mission lands were granted to former soldiers; the 432 residents of the town petitioned the governor to form a pueblo, Juan María Osuna was elected the first alcalde, defeating Pío Pico in the vote. However, San Diego had been losing population throughout the 1830s and in 1838 the town lost its pueblo status because its size dropped to an estimated 100 to 150 residents. Beyond town Mexican land grants expanded the number of California ranchos that modestly added to the local economy. Americans gained increased awareness of California, its commercial possibilities, from the writings of two countrymen involved in the officially forbidden, to foreigners, but economically significant hide and tallow trade, where San Diego was a major port and the only one with an adequate harbor: William Shaler's "Journal of a Voyage Between China and the North-Western Coast of America, Made in 1804" and Richard Henry Dana's more substantial and convincing account, of his 1834–36 voyage, the classic Two Years Before the Mast.
In 1846, the United States went to war against Mexico and sent a naval and land expedition to conquer Alta California. At firs
Bayview–Hunters Point, San Francisco
Bayview–Hunters Point are two major neighborhoods–the Bayview and Hunters Point–in the southeastern corner of San Francisco, United States. The decommissioned Hunters Point Naval Shipyard is located within its boundaries and Candlestick Park, demolished in 2015, was on the southern edge. Due to the South East location, the two neighborhoods are merged. Bayview-Hunter's Point has been labeled as San Francisco's "Most Isolated Neighborhood." Redevelopment projects for the neighborhood became the dominant issue of the 1990s and 2000s. Efforts include the Bayview Redevelopment Plan for Area B, which includes 1300 acres of existing residential and industrial lands; this plan identifies seven economic activity nodes within the area. The former Navy Shipyard waterfront property is the target of redevelopment to include residential and recreational areas; the Bayview–Hunters Point districts are located in the southeastern part of San Francisco, strung along the main artery of Third Street from India Basin to Candlestick Point.
The boundaries are Cesar Chavez Boulevard to the north, U. S. Highway 101 to the west, Bayview Hill to the south, the San Francisco Bay to the east. Neighborhoods within the district include Hunters Point, India Basin, Silver Terrace, Bret Harte, Islais Creek Estuary and South Basin; the entire southern half of the neighborhood is the Candlestick Point State Recreation Area as well as the Candlestick Park Stadium, demolished in 2015. Composed of tidal wetlands with some small hills, the area was inhabited by the Ramaytush and Muwekma Ohlone people prior to the arrival of Spanish missionaries in the 1700s; the Ohlone inhabited the land for ten thousand years. The district consisted of what the Ohlone people called "shell mounds", which were sacred burial grounds; the land was colonized in 1775 by Juan Bautista Aguirre, a ship pilot for Captain Juan Manuel de Ayala who named it La Punta Concha. Explorers renamed it Beacon Point. For the next several decades it was used as pasture for cattle run by the Franciscan friars at Mission Dolores.
In 1839, the area was part of the 4,446-acre Rancho Rincon de las Salinas y Potrero Viejo Mexican land grant given to José Cornelio Bernal. Following the California Gold Rush, Bernal sold what became the Bayview–Hunters Point area for real estate development in 1849. Little actual development occurred but Bernal's agents were three brothers, John and Robert Hunter, who built their homes and dairy farm on the land and who gave rise to the name Hunters Point; the Bayview–Hunters Point district was labelled "Southern San Francisco" on some maps, not to be confused with the city of South San Francisco further to the south. After a San Francisco ordinance in 1868 banned the slaughter and processing of animals within the city proper, a group of butchers established a "butchers reservation" on 81-acre of tidal marshland in the Bayview district. Within ten years, 18 slaughterhouses were located in the area along with their associated production facilities for tanning, fertilizer and tallow; the "reservation" and the surrounding houses and businesses became known as Butchertown.
The butcher industry declined following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake until 1971 when the final slaughterhouse closed. From 1929 until 2006 the Bayview–Hunters Point district were home for the coal and oil-fired power plants which provided electricity to San Francisco. Smokestack effluvium and byproducts dumped in the vicinity have been cited for health and environmental problems in the neighborhood. In 1994, the San Francisco Energy Company proposed building another power plant in the neighborhood, but community activists protested and pushed to have the current facility shut down. In 2008, Pacific Gas and Electric Company demolished the Hunters Point Power Plant and began a two-year remediation project to restore the land for residential development. Shipbuilding became integral to Bayview–Hunters Point in 1867 with the construction there of the first permanent drydock on the Pacific coast; the Hunters Point Dry Docks were expanded by Union Iron Works and Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation and were capable of housing the largest ships that could pass through the locks of the Panama Canal.
World War I increased the contracts there for building Naval vessels and, in 1940, the United States Navy purchased a section of property to develop the San Francisco Naval Shipyard. Beginning in the 1920s, a strong presence of Maltese American immigrants, along with Italian Americans, began populating the Bayview, focused on the local Catholic St. Paul of the Shipwreck Church and the Maltese American Social Club, they were a presence until the 1960s when they began moving into the suburbs. The shipbuilding industry saw a large influx of blue collar workers into the neighborhood, many of them African Americans taking part in the Great Migration; this migration into Bayview increased after World War II due to racial segregation and eviction of African Americans from homes elsewhere in the city. Between 1940 and 1950, the population of Bayview saw a fourfold increase to 51,000 residents; until 1969, the Hunters Point shipyard was the site of the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory. The NRDL decontaminated ships exposed to atomic weapons testing and researched the effects of radiation on materials and living organisms.
This caused widespread radiological contamination and, in 1989, the base was declared a Superfund site requiring long-term clean-up. The Navy closed the shipyard and Naval
