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Resources > Collections > World War II in Miami: 1 2 3

Miami 1941-1945
From VIP Suites to GI Barracks

by Daniel Markus

In 1941 production of war material in the United States—partly for US preparedness and partly for Britain, her allies, and China—was having a beneficial effect on the national economy.

The Great Depression was coming to an end and President Franklin D. Roosevelt, recently inaugurated for an unprecedented third term, had promised to keep the country out of the fighting. With prosperity returning and with America “isolated” from foreign entanglements, Miamians expected to have a very profitable winter.

These hopes were shattered on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the United States entered the war.

Torpedoed ship

Torpedoed ships

On Feb. 19, 1942, a German U-boat sank the Pan Massachusetts 20 miles south of Cape Canaveral. Five days later the Republic met the same fate off West Palm Beach and on May 19, 1942, the Portero del Llano, attacked by a German submarine, burned and sank within sight of Miami Beach. Debris from those freighters and other unfortunate ships began washing up on the Gold Coast’s beaches.

The proximity of war’s violence plus blackout and rumors that personnel from German U-boats were frequenting Miami’s theaters ended South Florida’s 1941-1942 season.

Prospects for the next season were even worse. With canned goods, meats, cheese, sugar and shoes already rationed, the federal government added gasoline, oil and tires. Those restrictions would keep tourists from driving to Miami. Then the Office of Defense Transportation froze railroad schedules at their October 1942 levels, thus banning the normal seasonal increases to Florida.

Fortunately Miami was saved from financial ruin by the armed forces. They had developed several hypothetical war plans since the end of World War I and by 1941 one of them was already being put into action. Southern Florida was part of two military districts, the Eastern Defense Command and the Seventh Naval District, designed to plan and to coordinate the coastal defenses in the areas that they controlled. The Eastern Defense Command included every state bordering the Atlantic Ocean, plus Pennsylvania and Vermont. The Seventh Naval District controlled all of Florida except for the western panhandle between the Gulf of Mexico and Alabama, which was part of the Eight Naval District.

In February 1942 defense planners established the Gulf Sea Frontier, with its headquarters in Key West, to guard the waters around Florida. At that time the frontier only controlled six ships, 15 unarmed observation planes, 14 armed planes and three B-18 bombers. By June of that year, military leaders in Washington had greatly increased those numbers and had moved the headquarters of the Gulf Sea Frontier and the Seventh Naval District from Key West to Miami’s duPont building.

Sailors in Miami

Richmond Field

As the war against the U-boats intensified, more military bases sprang up in South Florida. The Navy took over Miami’s docks and established air stations at the Opa-locka Airport, Dinner Key, and the Merle L. Fogg Airport in Fort Lauderdale. The Navy also constructed a blimp base, Richmond Field, in southern Dade County. The Army Air Force set up bases at Morrison Field in West Palm Beach, Miami’s 36th St. Airport and Homestead Air Force Base.

Besides being bases for anti-submarine patrols, the Army’s airports were part of the Army’s Air Transport Command (ATC). The ATC was a complex system of airfields set up to supply theaters of war all over the world. The Miami Airport was the stateside terminus of the ATC’s Caribbean Division and the “Fireball Run,” which supplied the China-Burma-India theater. The ATC’s ferrying division, which flew planes from factories to war zones, was based at the Homestead Air Force Base. West Palm Beach was the control center of the command’s “Splinter Fleet”—boats, seaplanes, and coast watchers—which conducted air-sea rescues for flyers that ditched in the Caribbean.

The real salvation for Miami, however, was the establishment of military schools in the area. Rather than go to the trouble of building large new bases to train the men needed to fight the war, the Army and Navy came to southern Florida and took over the empty hotels for barracks, restaurants for mess halls, theaters for classrooms, and beaches and golf courses for training fields and obstacle courses.

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