Dutch Harbor

U.S. Army

Dutch Harbor (166.54W 53.895N), located on Unalaska Island, was the largest settlement of the Aleutian island chain. Its small civilian population was primarily Aleuts with an admixture of Russians. The port had only primitive facilities in late 1941, though by early 1942 there were at least four 187,500 gallon (709,800 liter) fuel storage tanks, and fuel storage capacity had grown to 7.3 million gallons (27.5 million liters) by May 1943. Unalaska had so little level land that construction of an airstrip was considered impractical. Instead, construction had begun on nearby Umnak Island, which had some flat terrain but no decent anchorage. Supplies had to be transported by lighter from a nearby cove on Unalaska.

Dutch Harbor was bombed on 2 June 1942 by Japanese carrier aircraft to cover the invasion of the western Aleutians. Damage was modest (as shown in the accompanying photograph) and did not put the base out of operation. The Japanese believed that an entire division was based here and were surprised to find that the garrison was not more than 5000 men. Consideration was briefly given to invading Dutch Harbor instead of the western Aleutians, but the defeat at Midway and the presence of the fighter base on Umnak caused Hosagaya to abandon the idea.

Weeks later, a Japanese Zero damaged during the raid was recovered almost intact on a nearby island, which allowed American aeronautical experts to thoroughly analyze the design, devise appropriate tactics for Allied fighters to counter the Zero, and refine some features of the Hellcat, which was then in the prototype stage.

References

Garfield (1965)

Morison (1951)

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