ORANGE COUNTY VOICES : Preparing for Battle Above Bolsa Chica : History: Few remember the scurry of preparations for a top-secret defense system that was never completed on the bluff above the wetlands.

Date palms sway in the afternoon breeze on the bluff above the Bolsa Chica wetlands as a group of bird-watchers scan the horizon for incoming snowy plovers and clapper rails.

Fifty years ago this month, people were keeping an even closer watch here as work began on a top-secret military project, now almost totally forgotten.

“It would have been one of the more powerful defensive sites of World War II,” said Tom Thomas of the Fort MacArthur Military Museum in San Pedro. Thomas reels off the specifications of the twin 16-inch guns that were planned for the underground bunker complex. With their ability to hurl 2,700-pound shells a distance of 28 miles, they would have posed a considerable obstacle for anyone planning to invade Southern California.

By early 1944, the threat of a Japanese invasion seemed remote, and work on Battery 128 was curtailed after almost three-quarters of a million dollars had been spent on the project.

There had been some tense moments during the early months of the war, however.

Immediately after Pearl Harbor, anxiety was high enough to prompt the Army to begin work on an extensive system of observation towers, anti-aircraft guns, radar arrays and artillery positions to protect the harbors of Long Beach and San Pedro.

Two 155-millimeter guns were rushed to the blufftop at Bolsa Chica, and two more to the hill above 53rd Street in Newport Beach. The Huntington Beach Pier bristled with machine guns, and residents were under orders to extinguish all lights when the air raid warning rang out.

On Feb. 25, 1942, coast dwellers’ worst fears seemed to be coming true--the dreaded five-blast signal sounded at 2:23 a.m. For the next several hours, searchlights and bursting shells made the skies look like pictures from Baghdad during the Persian Gulf War.

The morning headlines of the Los Angeles Times screamed “L.A. AREA RAIDED,” although the clear light of day showed it had been a false alarm. Huntington Beach newspaperman George Farquar later said he thought the chaos had begun when a nervous gunner at Bolsa Chica opened fire on a flight of unidentified planes.

More than 300 people were injured when anti-aircraft shells fell back to earth, and the night was immortalized in Steven Spielberg’s comedy of errors movie, “1941.”

If residents and coast defenders were jittery, they had good reason. Only weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, submarine 1-19 of the Imperial Japanese Navy surfaced off Long Beach, and, in plain sight of dozens of witnesses, sent a torpedo into the freighter Absaroka. The merchant ship managed to limp into harbor with heavy damage.

In the months to come, other ships would be sunk by Japanese submarines off the West Coast. And on Feb. 23, only two nights before the “Great Los Angeles Air Raid,” a submarine shelled a Santa Barbara oil refinery, causing light damage but fraying nerves even further.

This prompted concern for the safety of Bolsa Chica’s large oil field, called the world’s richest by then-Mayor M.M. (Mac) McCallen, who also was commander of Huntington Beach’s own Company E of the California State Guard. The city passed an Anti-Sabotage Ordinance and rounded up the area’s Japanese-American farmers, despite their pledge of loyalty printed in the local paper.

These days it’s hard to imagine the bluff armed for war, although the long, low outline of Battery 128 is still conspicuous behind a row of eucalyptus trees. Near the front of the bluff, just north of a viewing area, two large concrete doughnuts, or Panama mounts, remain where the 155-millimeter guns were rushed in during December, 1941.

The story of those anxious months is told at the Fort MacArthur Military Museum in San Pedro, which preserves the memory of the harbor defenses of Los Angeles with a large and colorful exhibit.

Of course, battles still rage over Bolsa Chica. The remains of Battery 128 rest on land slated for the development of 4,884 homes by the Koll Company, a proposal locked in conflict with the Huntington Beach City Council and several environmental groups.

Present-day politics will decide the fate of the bluff above the Bolsa Chica wetlands, site of the 1943 secret coastal defense project that never was completed.