When Admiral 'Bull' Halsey made a triumphant return under the Golden Gate Bridge after World War II, it was perhaps the most climactic Fleet Week in history. But John Ramos tells the Bay Area is steeped in military history.
SAN FRANCISCO -- When Admiral"Bull" Halsey made a triumphant return under the Golden Gate Bridge after World War II, it was perhaps the most climactic Fleet Week in history. But the history of the military in the Bay Area started long before that, when the Spanish accidently wandered into the bay and instantly realized its value.
"You put cannons on both sides of the entrance so any bad guys that tried to sail in, they'd be caught in a crossfire. You control the entrance to the Golden Gate, you control the whole harbor," said Martini. "The Bay was well guarded by all of this heavy artillery," says Dr. Robert Cherny, Professor Emeritus of History at San Francisco State University,"but much of it became obsolete fairly quickly."
"This was the beginning of the Navy's history in the Bay Area," says Dennis Kelly, VP of the Mare Island Historic Park Foundation,"and it continued all the way through until the Navy departed in the late 1990s."