Did L. Ron Hubbard battle Japanese subs off Astoria?

Did L. Ron Hubbard battle Japanese subs off Astoria?

Author: www.offbeatoregon.com (finn @ offbeatoregon.com) April 22, 2026 Duration: 10:08
Pulp writer and religious figure L. Ron Hubbard figures prominently in the most spectacular story of action against “Japanese submarines” in Oregon waters. It's called, with tongue firmly in cheek, the “Battle of Cape Lookout.” (Off Cannon Beach, Clatsop County; 1940s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1407a.sunken-submarine-rumors.html)

The Offbeat Oregon History Podcast is a daily service from the Offbeat Oregon History newspaper column. Each weekday morning, a strange-but-true story from Oregon's history from the archives of the column is uploaded. An exploding whale, a few shockingly scary cults, a 19th-century serial killer, several very naughty ladies, a handful of solid-brass con artists and some of the dumbest bad guys in the history of the universe. Source citations are included with the text version on the Web site at https://offbeatoregon.com.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 100

Offbeat Oregon History podcast
Podcast Episodes
Shanghaied in Astoria: A once-perilous port city [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 7:50
Desperate for men, shanghai artists once tried to kidnap the local Methodist minister. He turned out not to be as soft a target as they'd anticipated. (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1203d-astoria-o…
Secretary imposed martial law on rowdy town [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 9:45
Don't be fooled: Fern Hobbs was a secretary in the “Secretary of Defense” sense of the word. A practicing attorney, she was the highest-paid woman in public service. Copperfield's city fathers thought they could charm he…
Legislators shut down Salem with a raging party [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 10:43
The six-week-long drunken party was thrown by the notoriously rascally Jonathan Bourne Jr. to keep the state Legislature from convening, so it couldn't elect John H. Mitchell to the U.S. Senate. It worked — well, sort of…
Wolf Creek Tavern was a refuge for Hollywood stars [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 8:56
THERE WERE TIMES, during Hollywood’s golden age, when Clark Gable simply couldn’t be found anywhere. Studio executives would search frantically for the top-shelf star, needing to talk to him about a project and facing a…
Marie Aioe Dorion was a wilderness-survival ninja (Part 1 of 3) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 9:46
As the Native American bride of a French-Canadian interpreter, she joined the Astorian Party on its overland voyage to Oregon to set up a trading post on the Columbia River. Did she know what they were getting into? (Sna…
Legendary Civil War ship met a sad end in Coos Bay [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 7:50
During its glory days, the Gertrude was the fastest blockade runner in the Confederate fleet. But just 17 years later, it was just another dumpy old steamer on a lowly coastwise run, wrecked in what was probably an insur…
Dispute over 'McQuinn Strip' lasted more than a century (Part 2 of 2) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 8:21
The dispute over the McQuinn Strip was no simple neighborhood kerfuffle. The amount of land in dispute was roughly 80,000 acres — close to 10 percent of the whole Warm Springs Indian Reservation. And the dispute burned h…
Dispute over Indians’
land lasted for 101 years (Part 1 of 2) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 6:56
IF THERE IS an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest active land dispute, it has to belong to the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Indians in central Oregon. But maybe it wouldn’t count for the r…