Oahu's 8-inch Naval Turret Batteries 1942-1949 - Personal Page of ...

February 2008 The Coast Defense Journal Page 33
engineer. Construction began in May 1942 and was generally completed by August.
Projectile rooms in the magazines built at Opaeula included a handling table some six feet wide
and three feet high that extended almost the full length of the room, which was some 30 feet long with
a 7-foot ceiling.(55) The other three batteries received similar projectile-handling tables.
FC switchboard room inside Plotting Room No. 2 at Battery Opaeula (Riggs). Author, 2002
Two separate underground plotting rooms were built at the Opaeula site, both some 200 feet to
the rear of Turret No. 2, about 100 feet apart in the adjoining Opaeula Gulch. Access to the plotting
rooms was via a concrete staircase and walkway that led down the back slope of the gulch. The plotting
room closest to the turret mounts serviced the battery from about halfway down the staircase on the
left. The protected entrance to the lowest plotting room was some 70 feet farther down the walkway on
the right. It was originally planned as a CP for the Saratoga Gun Group, which was at Battery Brodie.
An additional room in the structure housed the battery fire control switchboard.(56) Both plotting
rooms were equipped with emergency escape housings at one end, capped with pyramid roofs.
Battery command functions were housed in a single-story reinforced-concrete structure similar to
Battery Brodie’s original BCS prior to the addition of its radar operating room. The BCS was equipped
with an octagonal concrete instrument pier on the floor that mounted the Mk XVIII naval optical gun
director with attached Mk III Ford rangekeeper. A room beneath the BCS, accessed through a manhole
with a metal ladder, originally housed the Mk XX naval gun computer. The room was gasproofed and
equipped with Chemical Warfare System (CWS) gasproofing centrifugal blower and canister hooked
up to an air duct. Ventilation was provided by a large T-shaped concrete pipe vent at ground level at
the left rear of the BCS.
A fire control station (FCS) atop a steel tower was erected behind the turret mounts at the battery.
The station was equipped with a DPF instrument and was listed by the HSAC as a single station. The
FCS is faintly visible in a photograph of one of the battery’s 8-inch mounts, the observation station
above the tree line. The fire control tower was declared surplus and removed sometime after July 5,
1945.(57)