On the evening of March 27, 1964, soldiers assigned to Battery A of the 4th Battalion/43rd Air Defense Artillery (ADA) Regiment had just finished dinner. Members of the 6–Midnight crew were preparing for shift while off-duty soldiers were starting the nightly games of spades or finding other activities to avoid the 28-degree weather.
Duty logs indicate that planned activities were interrupted at 5:36 p.m., by seismic activity of magnitude 9.3 and that aftershocks lasted for at least five minutes. The event is now known as the Good Friday Earthquake of 1964, and 139 people died in the aftermath.
The biggest earthquake in North America coincided with the Cold War, when Anchorage and surrounding sites housed nuclear warheads. So rapid responses from military personnel were key in the moments after the shaking stopped…