Continuing on with our vacation we visited the Eastern Shore of Virginia National Wildlife Refuge located on the southern tip of the Eastern Shore.
The structure shown in this photograph is one of two 16” gun emplacements here. The big guns were placed here during WWII to deter enemy submarines and ships from entering the Chesapeake Bay. At this point the Chesapeake is only seventeen miles wide. With an effective range of over twenty-five miles firing a projectile weighing a ton or more the guns could cover this area with lethal fire.
First named Fort Winslow in 1941 it was renamed to Fort Custis and then to Fort John Custis all within thirteen months. In 1949 it became the Cape Charles Air Force Station which closed in 1980 and became a national wildlife refuge in 1984.
Today wildlife is abundant in this now peaceful place.
7 comments:
Interesting place. Good history lesson.
How fascinating!
Love the history lesson and the way you tell it.
Interesting history. Thanks for sharing.
It always amazes me how many of these gun things are located all over the place. We have so many here and I know there are several in San Francisco area as well.. Thanks for the history surrounding this image. :)
Great capture and a very interesting story. I can just imagine the days when those sixteen inch guns were test firing!
I bet it would have been hard to hit a sub with one of them though.
Mike
Seems like there's a lot of military history around the bay and the ocean shore - my most recent blog reflects another facet of the same period of history. I read where the Germans had created an undersea mine field around the entrance to Delaware Bay. I had no idea they were that active this close to the mainland US!
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