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This is on the east coast but I'm from Michigan so I'll post it here; maybe fewer people have seen this here...
Battery of two 16 inch guns (that's the diameter of the barrel - same as on a battleship) pointed seaward to defend the United States during WWII. There was an incident of a U-Boat sinking a US Navy ship in the area of this battery, though I don't think the guns were ever actually fired in combat.
Guns are long gone now, but the large concrete structure that housed them remains...
Tough to capture the scale of the place, but this is the overhang that would have protected 1 of the 2 guns. Vegetation allowed to grow all over the roof of the concrete even back then, as camouflage:
What it looked like back when the guns were there:
View out to sea from on top of the battery. Most of what is in sight could have been reached by the guns if fired accurately:
Lots of dark side rooms, long dark tunnels, and what looked like the magazine:
   
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There are quite a few of these on the East Coast.
I know if 6 such casemates for 16" guns in NY. Some are easier to get to than others. Then there are a number of other casemates for mortars and smaller guns in the same general area.
There were at least 10 locations with concrete gun casemates around NYC. Most of them are easy to get to. I heard one location has had the casemates sealed up. Some you need a boat to get to.
In order to use your head, you have to go out of your mind. | |
That's really interesting, thanks for sharing Radio.
Obviously it makes sense, what with the war raging in Europe and U-Boats all over the Atlantic at any given time. This one that I posted is probably the northernmost of these types of casements, I would guess.
I think myself just being from the midwest, never really considered actual heavy defenses being built in the continental United States during this era. So this was thought provoking and interesting for me. But I have read creepy stories from German sailors describing seeing the lights of the big cities of the east coast at night, so again, makes total sense.
Where this fortification is, in the same bay and area, are basically era after era of forts stacked on top of each other, most of which are still intact to some degree. Some are on private property, some are open to the public, some you can only reach by boat, etc. Very cool. Maybe this is also common on the east coast, but to my Michigan brain, it was novel and I enjoyed it.
[last edit 8/28/2020 6:49 PM by jgomez12 - edited 1 times]
Best Regards | |
I used to explore these in Alaska, it's partly what got me into UE. There are a few up there that are totally off the public record. Locals know about them, but aside from a few obscure documents, they've been forgotten about. A couple still have the guns in place too!
Turn off the internet and go play outside.
http://spamusement...hp/comics/view/137 | |
Posted by Freak
I used to explore these in Alaska, it's partly what got me into UE. There are a few up there that are totally off the public record. Locals know about them, but aside from a few obscure documents, they've been forgotten about. A couple still have the guns in place too!
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Wow. seeing one of these with the guns in place definitely would have completed the experience! haha.
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Posted by jgomez12
Wow. seeing one of these with the guns in place definitely would have completed the experience! haha.
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AFAIK, you have to go to off-shore for that.
http://www.uer.ca/...ow.asp?locid=26376
http://www.uer.ca/...ow.asp?locid=31068
In order to use your head, you have to go out of your mind. | |
Remember that these were built in the era where if an enemy wanted to attack the USA, they would have had to get here via ships -- hence the coast/harbor defense gun sites. The big guns like the 16" could shoot 20+ miles out to sea (depending on the elevation of the gun site). The enemy ships couldn't shoot as far, but they had the advantage of movement -- being harder to hit, whereas the cost defense gun sites were at fixed locations. For that reason, they did work a lot on camouflage of the sites, and the locations/types of guns were considered secret.
The big coastal gun emplacement military reservations actually had botanical nurseries, where they would grow local plants to then be placed atop the earthen casemates (casemate is basically a military fortification of some sort, with protection on the top). Camouflage netting would cover the front of the gun emplacement, unless the gun was going to fire. The sites were operated by the Army (Coastal Artillery Corps), and they'd have both Army guys and the Navy look at the area from boats/ships & aircraft with eyes plus telescopes, binoculars, etc. trying to determine exactly where the camouflaged gun sites were. If they thought they saw the site, they'd describe what exactly it was that made them think the gun site what there -- a reflection off of a piece of metal or glass, light from a cigarette lighter as a guard lit a cigarette at night, vegetation that just didn't look right, etc. & that info was passed back to the site so they could improve their disguise. Of course when the sites fired their guns (as part of proof-testing or training), the location was rather obvious due to the plume of smoke and flash of light from the muzzle, so they actually didn't do practice firing often, & when they did, they didn't shoot a lot of the 2000+lb projectiles. Actually aiming at the target involved Base End Stations located away from the big guns. The guys at the Base End Stations (BES) would spot & ID a ship, ans if ID'ed as an enemy, they'd provide constant location updates via hardened underground cable telephone system to the gun site's plotting, spotting & radio (PSR) facility which was near the gun site. By taking all the azimuths passed from the BESs & since they were known distances away from the gun site, the targeting people at the PSR would use trigonometry to determine the enemy ship's position & heading, and calculate a firing solution for the gun. They even had to factor-in the Earth's rotation in their calculations, because if that enemy ship was 20 miles out to sea, that 2000+lb projectile may be in the air for almost a minute before it would hit the aim point, and during that 1 minute travel time, the Earth had rotated enough to where if that wasn't taken into account, the round would miss the ship.
AMAZING what they were able to do back then, though of course the big US Coast Defense guns were never really fired in-anger.
The lesson-learned after WW-II was that especially for the USA, naval warfare wasn't the big threat any more -- the new threat was strategic air power (long range bombers). So the US coast defense gun sites were shut down by the end of the 1940s, but anti-aircraft artillery and surface to air missile sites (Nike missiles) were built around major US military-industrial complexes.
The best resource for more info on coast defense artillery, etc. is:
https://cdsg.org/
/-/ooligan
There are no stupid questions, just stupid people. | |
Some of the ones in AK:
This one was always one of my favorites... kind of looks like a face.
Turn off the internet and go play outside.
http://spamusement...hp/comics/view/137 | |
Wow this is sooo cool. Wish I could have been there!
Best Regards | |
Posted by /-/ooligan
Remember that these were built in the era where if an enemy wanted to attack the USA, they would have had to get here via ships -- hence the coast/harbor defense gun sites. The big guns like the 16" could shoot 20+ miles out to sea (depending on the elevation of the gun site). The enemy ships couldn't shoot as far, but they had the advantage of movement -- being harder to hit, whereas the cost defense gun sites were at fixed locations. For that reason, they did work a lot on camouflage of the sites, and the locations/types of guns were considered secret.
The big coastal gun emplacement military reservations actually had botanical nurseries, where they would grow local plants to then be placed atop the earthen casemates (casemate is basically a military fortification of some sort, with protection on the top). Camouflage netting would cover the front of the gun emplacement, unless the gun was going to fire. The sites were operated by the Army (Coastal Artillery Corps), and they'd have both Army guys and the Navy look at the area from boats/ships & aircraft with eyes plus telescopes, binoculars, etc. trying to determine exactly where the camouflaged gun sites were. If they thought they saw the site, they'd describe what exactly it was that made them think the gun site what there -- a reflection off of a piece of metal or glass, light from a cigarette lighter as a guard lit a cigarette at night, vegetation that just didn't look right, etc. & that info was passed back to the site so they could improve their disguise. Of course when the sites fired their guns (as part of proof-testing or training), the location was rather obvious due to the plume of smoke and flash of light from the muzzle, so they actually didn't do practice firing often, & when they did, they didn't shoot a lot of the 2000+lb projectiles. Actually aiming at the target involved Base End Stations located away from the big guns. The guys at the Base End Stations (BES) would spot & ID a ship, ans if ID'ed as an enemy, they'd provide constant location updates via hardened underground cable telephone system to the gun site's plotting, spotting & radio (PSR) facility which was near the gun site. By taking all the azimuths passed from the BESs & since they were known distances away from the gun site, the targeting people at the PSR would use trigonometry to determine the enemy ship's position & heading, and calculate a firing solution for the gun. They even had to factor-in the Earth's rotation in their calculations, because if that enemy ship was 20 miles out to sea, that 2000+lb projectile may be in the air for almost a minute before it would hit the aim point, and during that 1 minute travel time, the Earth had rotated enough to where if that wasn't taken into account, the round would miss the ship.
AMAZING what they were able to do back then, though of course the big US Coast Defense guns were never really fired in-anger.
The lesson-learned after WW-II was that especially for the USA, naval warfare wasn't the big threat any more -- the new threat was strategic air power (long range bombers). So the US coast defense gun sites were shut down by the end of the 1940s, but anti-aircraft artillery and surface to air missile sites (Nike missiles) were built around major US military-industrial complexes.
The best resource for more info on coast defense artillery, etc. is:
https://cdsg.org/
/-/ooligan
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Thanks ooligan, this is awesome context and information. I have found not a whole lot of resources like the one you link to, so definitely will be spending some time on there.
Best Regards |
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