Here's one for the Art'y fellows

[Gen Lew Wallace]

Greetings,

Mrs. and I finally made a stop at Fort Monroe on our last trip to Colonial Williamsburg.  As you may or may not be aware; over the last couple years they have been making the transition from active duty Army post to national historic landmark.  If you have a passport book to the park service, you can now get it stamped; which I did.  You can walk a really neat section of the casemate and get a real sense of what it was like.  I had to duck quite often because of the low overhead.

[St. George]

I used to write Doctrine there, at TRADOC.

A beautiful fort, with a lot of history - the 'disappearing guns' were an interesting part of the coastal defenses.

Scouts Out!

[Pitspitr]

the 'disappearing guns' were an interesting part of the coastal defenses.

Col. Were these the WWI/WWII disappearing guns (like are on display at Fort Casey State Park, Whidbey Island WA) or are they an earlier model?

The ones on display at Ft. Casey had seen action in the Philippines during WWII and from the looks of them hadn't "disappeared" well enough.

[St. George]

Yes - they had 'em on Catalina Island, as well.

My Dad had an Infantry platoon stationed there in the early days of WWII - acting as security for the Signal Corps radar towers.

Apparently, only one of the towers was functional, and the Signal Corps guys swore him to secrecy, because it was great duty.

One of his soldiers put a few rounds through the bow of Errol Flynn's yacht one morning as it was creeping out to sea - having snuck into port with an underage starlet some time before.

He'd had to charter a small plane to her her back to the mainland, and came back for the yacht later...

One afternoon, he noticed a lot of activity at one of the Coast Artillery gun positions, and below.

They were readying one of the 16" guns for a firing exercise - something that hadn't happened since WWI.

Below the gun position were a newly-built theater, barracks and miscellaneous smaller buildings, and they were busy taking out all of the window glass 'just in case'.

Dad was fascinated, so he found a good place to view the proceedings on the Gun-Target Line, and watched the little caterpillar tractor come out with the projectile and the bags of powder.

All of the blue-dungareed Coast Artillery enlisted guys seemed busy enough, and then suddenly cleared off - leaving their Officer with a long lanyard being hooked onto the piece, before walking off behind a blast wall.

The report was ENORMOUS - likely startling all of the gun crew, who had never fired one of the things - and there the projectile went - soaring off into the clouds, through an amazing smoke ring - looking like a really large trashcan, and picking up speed.

Dad looked down the hill, and saw a soldier exiting the theater 'just' as it collapsed behind him, as others were bailing out of the barracks.

They never fired another round...

The ones at Fort Casey were battered by Jap airpower - something that no one had envisioned when these coastal defenses were first built.

[Gen Lew Wallace]

Greetings,

There is a really neat interactive display of the different guns on Ft. Monroe and also nearby Ft. Wool; as well as the tip of Delmarva where there were different size guns placed for the defense of the Chesapeake.  According to the map some of the guns could fire out a few miles into the Atlantic.

There is also archive footage of the disappearing guns being fired during WWI.  Fascinating stuff.

[Pitspitr]

- and there the projectile went - ... - looking like a really large trashcan,

Yeah they had one on display at Fort Casey and as I remember it (I was probably about 10) the thing was bigger than me and weighed considerably more. Someplace I have a picture of me standing beside it.

The ones at Fort Casey were battered by Jap airpower.

And from the looks small arms fire too. They amazed me with the size of some of the craters in the barrel and the holes in the framework (carriage?) I'd love to go back there someday.

[Blair]

I lived in the Philippines, Islands (PI) for two years during 1959 and 1961. (Clark Air Field/Air Base)
The War had been over for only about 15 years by that time.
The amount of "stuff" we found, very dangerous and highly explosive stuff was phenomenal!
EOD, UDT and Graves Identification personnel were kept very busy, by Kids like myself, findings in the bush and jungle.
I should consider myself lucky I did not get blown up by some of our finds. (Some of the kids I knew then, did!)

On second thought... Never mind.
You all have a great deal of fun with this posting.
My best,
 Blair

[Drydock]

[Grapeshot]

Greetings,

There is a really neat interactive display of the different guns on Ft. Monroe and also nearby Ft. Wool; as well as the tip of Delmarva where there were different size guns placed for the defense of the Chesapeake.  According to the map some of the guns could fire out a few miles into the Atlantic.

There is also archive footage of the disappearing guns being fired during WWI.  Fascinating stuff.

There is a 16 inch Coast Artillery Gun on Display at Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD.  It had been in one of the C/A forts between wars and ended up in the restricted area to conduct ammo and projectile testing.  In 1988 it was moved, with some great difficulty, from behind "the fence" to the Ordnance Museum's property.  MG Ball and Congresswoman Helen Bently were there to dedicate it as the newest addition to the US Army's Ordnance Museum in 1989.

[Guns Garrett]

Yeah they had one on display at Fort Casey and as I remember it (I was probably about 10) the thing was bigger than me and weighed considerably more. Someplace I have a picture of me standing beside it.

I have a few pictures of me standing on top of it, also with my head inside the breech...

I lived on Whidbey off/on for six years ( twice: 76-79, 93-96).  Lovely park and camping area.  Whidbey had several "forts"- Fort Ebey was a few miles north of Casey, completely unrestored, simply a gun emplacement and bunker.  Across the Sound was Forts Townsend, Flagler, and Worden, part of the "Triangle of Fire" protecting Puget Sound.  A couple of other emplacements were located on little bitty islands in the area as well.  Here's a brief "tour":
http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=7524

[harleydavis]

Here is another for the Artillery lads. This is an all orginal 1863 3" Ordnance Rifle, second pic is of the gun in action with blanks, we also fire it live as well. The New Ulm Battery has 2 of these rifles with matching limbers, cassion & limber as well as orginal 6Lb bronze w/limber & cassion. It is definitely a rush standing next to one of these peices of history as they go off.
We use horses for parades these days, in the past, we used to pull the guns into the field with horses. The expense of traveling with horses very far makes the difficult.