Pasadena Independent (May 3, 1946)
Marines join bloody battle as Alcatraz prisoners riot
Armed convicts seize cell-block; guards held as hostages; 1 slain
SAN FRANCISCO, May 2 (UP) – Rebellious convicts on Alcatraz Island Federal Penitentiary seized an arsenal of guns tonight in a desperate, bloody break for freedom and fought a savage battle from a cell-block barricade with counter-attacking guards and U.S. Marines in full battle dress. A least four guards were wounded and one killed. They were felled by sharp-shooting convicts as they advanced courageously to the very walls of the rebel stronghold on the eastern shoreline of “the rock” – the nation’s toughest prison.
The insurrectionists gained possession of a prison gun gallery. Armed with a machine gun and small arms, they returned shot for shot in blazing combat on the blacked-out isle a mile and a half east of the San Francisco shoreline.
The battle was still raging at 9 p.m., seven hours after it broke out with spectacular violence early in the afternoon. A detachment of more than 20 Marines, many of them veterans of jungle fighting against Japanese, landed on the island. But the situation, according to Warden James A. Johnston, remained out of hand.
The desperate inmates, headed by a ringleader with a machine gun, imprisoned most of the prison’s officers. Since the officers became virtual hostages, the fighting guards and military authorities reluctant to open an all-out offensive against the rebels.
Casualties were arriving at San Francisco waterfront early in the evening. Launch crewmen reported all of the embattled convicts had obtained guns. Other non-combatant inmates were herded into separate yard.
Capt. James Logan, at Highway Patrol headquarters on the Golden Gate bridge, said that a prisoner named “Coy” overpowered a guard, took is machine gun, pressed an electric button that opened up all the cell doors, and invited the prisoners to join him in the break.
Twelve inmates immediately rushed out and grabbed several other guards, stole their guns and scattered throughout the cell-block. It was not known how many others of the 300 convicts later joined the revolt.
The rattle of machine-gun fire, interspersed with rifle shots, blasted from the convicts’ stronghold. Daring prison guards, crawling along a catwalk and over walls surrounding the cell-block, fired through the bars at the rebels inside. They attacked at close range with sawed off shotguns, gas-bomb guns, rifles and pistols.
Leathernecks land
A detachment of 20 Marines, many of them veterans of fighting against Japanese snipers, landed on Alcatraz Island at 6:18 p.m. They went ashore on the northern side of the isle from the boat PC-799, under command of Warrant Officer C. Al Buckner.
The Leathernecks were equipped with small arms, tear gas bombs and smoke grenades.
At 8 p.m., six hours after the battle started, Warden James A. Johnston issued his third telegraphic bulletin to the United Press – long after darkness had blacked out the waterlocked island.
Johnston telegraphed: “We have moved prisoners from the work area and shops to the yard. Armed Marines are guarding them. Our officers are now trying to man a gun gallery where the armed prisoners have possession. Two officers were wounded in the attempt, shot by prisoners. Their names are Harry Cochrane and Fred J. Richberger. Officer Cochrane is badly wounded in the left upper arm near the shoulder, Officer Richberger in the calf of the leg.”
Two wounded Alcatraz guards were landed at Fort McDowell pier on the San Francisco waterfront at 7:30 p.m. One man was a stretcher case, with a gunshot flesh wound in his shoulder. The second casualty was limping with a flesh wound in his left leg. Another wounded man, an ambulance case, was landed at the Aquatic Park pier.
All prisoners armed
A crew member of the prison launch said: “All the convicts in the cell-block appear to be armed.”
United Press correspondent James Sheehy watched the battle from the police boat D. A. White, 100 yards off the island.
“We watched black-coated guards slink along a catwalk and fire pistols, reaching far over their heads. They held up their guns as high as they could to fire between the bars of the windows, into the main cell-block,” Sheehy reported.
“Frequently we heard the muffled report of rifle and machine-gun fire coming from the cellblock… We heard literally hundreds of shots. A guard clinging close to the building fired a projectile between the bars, but it struck one of the heavy bars and blazed back over his head, like a fiery tracer bullet, setting fire to pretty pink ice plants outside.”
Warden James A. Johnston announced the insurrection in a brief telegram received by the United Press at 3:23 p.m. PST. At 5:55 p.m., he advised the United Press that the situation for the officers was “difficult and perilous.” It was not known immediately how the convicts obtained the weapons.
One of the first of the wounded guards, named Cochran, reported as he was brought ashore at San Francisco that there were other wounded on the island, but “none that we can get at.” He inferred some were injured in block-off, besieged area under the range of convict fire. A doctor was reported trapped in a cell block.
Fearful wives and children of prison officials crowded around waterfront piers. Boys and girls cried: “I want my daddy!”
Two Navy destroyer-escorts, five Coast Guard cutters and patrol boats, two naval patrol boats and police launches cruised with guns alerted around the formidable “escape-proof” island.
Warden Johnston’s bulletin to the United Press, his first since he disclosed the rebellion:
“Have no additional information any more accurate or detailed than I have already given you. Our situation is difficult and precarious.
“Our officers are all being used in every place that we can man. The armed prisoner or prisoners are still eluding us so that at the moment we cannot control them. The Navy, Coast Guard and San Francisco police department are standing by to help when we find we can use them to advantage.”
In response to appeals from the island, an emergency corps of doctors – including three U.S. Marine Corps physicians – put out to the island with nurses.
Prison guards fired into the convicts’ barricade with rifles, shotguns and gas shells. San Francisco policemen radioed back from a launch off the island that prison officers were firing through the cell block windows on the east, or Oakland, side of the island.
United Press correspondent William Best, from his observation position atop Russian Hill overlooking the island, said he saw flames and smoke pour from windows at one end of the cell-block. Later the fire – whatever the cause – died down.
The Marine Exchange reported some unidentified “burning material” was thrown out of the cell-block, setting some shrubbery afire. Policemen guarding the waterfront said the fire probably was started by gas bombs.
Unofficial reports from the island said none of the convicts had been able to get away from the island and make good an escape. Prison officials expressed confidence that none of the conspirators would reach the San Francisco mainland.
The convicts had been able to capture most of the prison’s officials and hold them as hostages. For this reason, it was believed military and prison authorities were reluctant to open a full-scale offensive against the barricaded inmates.
At 6:15 p.m., observers said there was a fusillade of about 18 to 25 gunshot explosions, apparently from an automatic weapon of heavy caliber, at a window of the cell-block.
Planes in action
Warden Johnston, who initially announced the riot at his storied “Rock” at 3:23 p.m., called for help from the San Francisco police department. Chief of Police Charles Dullea answered by sending a launch, laden with his best marksmen who were equipped with a virtual arsenal.
A Coast Guard PB-Y patrol plane, performing virtually a wartime job, circled over the island to guide the besieging warcraft and to observe progress of the battle below.
The Navy dispatched two of its destroyer-escorts into the battle. The trim little warcraft moved across the bay and into the line of vessels cruising about the waterlocked penitentiary.
At 4:15 p.m., almost an hour after the armed revolt was first reported to the mainland in a tersely-worded official telegram, Warden Johnston telephoned to Police Chief Charles Dullea that the rioters were “cornered but not subdued.” Observers on San Francisco Bay reported the sound of shooting on the island.
First unofficial reports said at least two guards were wounded by machine gun fire, and that it was believed some of the convicts had been hit.
Johnston, in his first announcement of the battle, mentioned only one convict, who was armed with a machine gun. Later he informed police more than one convict was involved.
Guard around island
A cordon of boats, bristling with machine guns and manned by war-wise crewmen, was thrown around the island by 3:30 p.m. – seven minutes after Johnston first flashed word of the battle.
In a telegram to the mainland from the bleak island penitentiary in San Francisco Bay, Johnston said:
“Serious trouble.
“Convict has machine gun in cell house. Have issued riot call.
“Placed armed guards at strategic locations.
“Most of our officers are imprisoned in cell house.
“Cannot tell extent of injuries suffered by our officers or amount of damage done.
“Will give you more information later in the day when we get control.”
(Signed)
(J. A. JOHNSTON, WARDEN)
Five minutes after the United Press received this telegram, it was impossible to get a call through to the prison’s administrative headquarters.
Alcatraz, situated a mile and a half northeast of San Francisco’s waterfront marine district and almost directly east of the Golden Gate, houses some of the nation’s most dangerous criminals.
It is known as “escape-proof,” although two men once disappeared into the fog from the island and were never seen again.
The main cell block of Alcatraz from where convicts apparently were enforcing a state of armed siege, is on the north-central portion of the island facing toward the Oakland-Berkeley shore.
There are about 300 prisoners on Alcatraz, including kidnappers, bank and post office robbers and murderers.
The administration and warden’s office lies at the south end of the cell block.
The only two convicts who succeeded in escaping from Alcatraz were Ralph Roe and Theodore Cole, who escaped in December 1937, during a heavy fog which cut visibility to a few yards.
The two Oklahoma “badmen” sawed through the steel bars of a workshop window, jimmied the lock on a high mesh wire gate and jumped off a 20-foot cliff into the water. Cole was serving 50 years for kidnapping and Roe 99 years for bank robberies.