Beachys Made Waves on Water and Land

During the surprise attack on the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Japanese naval forces used several small two-man submarines to wreak havoc on the ships berthed there.

However, few people knew at the time that the idea for a mini-sub was created by a San Fernando Valley inventor who had submitted the design to the U.S. Navy in March 1938.

Walter F. Beachy of Canoga Park proposed mass production of a 50-foot-long by 10-foot-wide “sardine sub,” powered by twin gasoline or diesel engines. Each sub would have one or two normal-sized torpedo tubes. Beachy said the vessels would cost the Navy only about $12,000 each and could be built by automobile manufacturers.

Although the Navy originally scoffed at Beachy’s invention, the Japanese did not and ultimately developed Beachy’s design for their own purposes.

Beachy’s wife, Kathleen, became famous in the Valley in her own right when she attempted in 1962 to rezone part of her 77-acre estate at the junction of Oxnard Street and Shoup Avenue in Woodland Hills to what ultimately became a controversial 760-unit condominium complex in 1989.

In 1964, Beachy sold 40 acres of her property to purchase 11 acres in nearby Calabasas. The site that Beachy bought contained a house belonging to Miguel Leonis, a Basque immigrant who founded a stagecoach stop along El Camino Real that eventually became part of the city of Calabasas.

Supermarket developers had planned to destroy the Leonis adobe, but Beachy purchased the site for $275,000 and turned it over to the nonprofit Leonis Adobe Assn.

Walter Beachy died in March 1968 and Kathleen in October 1974.