disappearinggun

Fort Wadsworth, Richmond County, New York. On Staten Island.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Wadsworth This photo was printed in The Sunday Oregonian, March 25, 1917, SECTION FIVE, Image 67 with the caption: "Big guns at Fort Wadsworth guard the entrance to the harbor of New York" oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn83045782/1917-03-25/ed-1/se...

Thanks to both of you for this information. We'll add some of it to the record the next time we update.

This is a curious scene as disappearing guns of this type were probably considered obsolete by 1917, and the wood platform at the breech would prevent it from working, as the gun would rock backward and down when fired. Compare to a similar battery being fired at nearby Fort Hamilton some years earlier (PPOC: www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ggb2004001933/ and www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ggb2004001939/ )

Worth comparing with this photograph: www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2477622073/in/s... Are they the same gun?

More information about the Sandy Hook proving ground: www.archaeology.org/0407/abstracts/jersey.html

Very interesting. Thanks rockcreek. A search on the LOC's website amongst the Bain collection for the keywords "Sandy Hook, gun, artillery" brings up quite a few examples of photographs taken there of various shore guns (along with many other examples of firearms) which have not yet made it to the flickr set.

Would have loved to seen this place in it's heyday.

Hi, I'm an admin for a group called Vintage New Jersey, and we'd love to have this added to the group!

Wow

It appears to be a 10" coastal defense gun on a "disappearing" mounting, where the gun would fire from the raised (above a parapet) position, then the recoil would swing the gun back and down, where it would be invisible to the enemy.

Thanks! We'll change the information in the source data and reload the description.

I'm not so sure it's a 10-inch gun now that I've seen this photograph: www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2496403839 which has as the caption, "Aiming 14" gun -- Sandy Hook" Looks like a very similar gun to the one pictured here - and I think that the Sandy Hook emplacement would have been the closest to New York, and hence most newsworthy to the Bain service. However I'm not sure that Sandy Hook had a gun as big as a 14-incher. We'll have to do some more research.

Aha, you could be right. Also, 12' was a common size of gun on the disappearing mounts. In my print coastal defense references, there are many similar pics of 12" disappearing guns from the Endicott period. We need a real artillery geek to weigh in!