My mom had a friend who owned a house at the Jersey shore. In the spring and summer of '42, when she'd walk on the beach at night, she'd occasionally see a flash and then hear a rumble in the disatance. Turned out it was the U-boats blowing up the oil tankers coming out of Marcus Hook.
Out side of Savannah GA we had Ft. Screven on Tybee. I believe it was a Spanish American coastal fort. Have family photos of the military training there and carrying Springfield Trapdoor’s today much of the bunker has been turned into costal apartments..
Pennsylvania has significant abandoned military ammunition depots. The railroad planned community known as concrete city failed , possibly due to the 1918 Chinese bird flu ( Spanish flu ) . If you can find these locations they are open to explore , unlike nj.
And no concrete city was abandoned because the rail line for the coalery that owned it went under. Not only that the homes became riddled with mold in the muggy summers. But the local fire dept tried to dynamite a few of the buildings to no avail lol I once fell through a giant hole in one of the 2nd floor rooms drunk as a skunk in my younger days lol
We have abandoned bunkers like this all over Rhode Island. They were awesome to run around these bunkers as a child with underground tunnels that seemed endless. Nowadays they closed up any openings and put railings up everywhere which is understandable due to how dangerous it was!
@@funker419 I grew up in Narragansett and Jamestown and Dutch Island has that cool lighthouse but I’ve never made it over to the tiny island. I was talking more about Ft. Wetherill and the bunkers in Pt Judith
Yeah 40 years ago kids were allowed to risk their lives having an adventure. Now you can't be outside supervision for more than 2 minutes. How many of y'all got on your bikes with buddies and armed with less than 2$ disappeared for 12 hours at a time?
We used to be able to walk around the top of the bunker in the 60s and 70s. There was a ramp and there was a fence around the top with those coin operated telescopes. They eventually closed it off. It's all in the ocean now. Thanks for the history lesson!
It’s not in the ocean. I live in nearby Avalon and visit this all the time. If to be described, if anything, I would say they’ve built up the dunes. In fact, he shows literal modern photos of it.
These were in place as the military had beach patrols during WWII. They were looking out for German Uboats. I would love to visit this and, get pictures of the inside.
In a similar spirit to this, I would like to recommend Fort Wetherill in Jamestown, Rhode Island. As of today it sits a set of abandoned costal defense batteries on the cliffs, facing to the south. Last I knew, you could still get inside a good portion of the fort. Given that there are basically always at least 2 ways to get around in any given area. The main area of the fort, and corridors around 2 feet wide that run around all the bunkers. There are also air gaps of maybe 18" above some of the rooms in the fort. afaik the last time it was used was immediately following WW2. Where it was used to house German POWs. The guns were long gone by then. After that, the Army (I think) pushed a bunch of soil up against the inside walls of the batteries. Blocking off the main ways to get into a bunch of it, but still accessible with a little exploration (and some wellingtons, it gets wet in some of those side corridors).
As somebody who lives in New Jersey, I remember seeing the bunkers in person and well as soon as you talking about the bunkers, well, I'm happy to hear some New Jersey facts
I looked down on the bunker from the Cape May Lighthouse when I visited there a few years back. The docent told me that for a while it was a great place for wild parties.
There’s also an abandoned World War 1 bunker in the woods right by Exit 0 in Cape May if you know where to look, and an abandoned World War 1 watch tower right near this bunker!
Ryan, I really appreciate this video. I know I'd asked about this a while ago, like the Tuckerton Wireless. You do a great job with these. I just tuned 49,I've lived in south Jersey almost my whole life. I know plenty of weird and obscure places. Have you done a video on Batsto Village yet? They made munitions for the Revolutionary war, and Joseph Wharton had a mansion there. Wharton State Forest bears his name. Another thing a lot of us especially from Ocean County have had questions about is the Pinewald Hotel in Bayville. Al Capone supposedly had ties to it but I've never been able to find evidence supporting or refuting that claim. There are allegedly underwater tunnels on the property. My dad was born there in 1947 when it was Pinewald Hospital. I love the Jersey history videos!
A Japanese submarine did shell a coastal artillery position in Oregon. We tried to demolish batteries in Hawaii but gave up after breaking windows all over town and causing very limited damage to the battery. Now it's a museum.
On the Delaware side, is a matching bunker. It is harder to find as it is still deeply embedded into the dunes at what used to be Fort Miles. While the Nj bunker shows off everything due to erosion, the Delaware one shows you how hard they were to see and hit.
Good afternoon from Cape Cod 🦈 me and a friend got lost in the tunnels at fort Adams in Rhode Island, it's one of many coastal defense in Rhode Island. Well worth checking out. Keep up the great work and the awesome content 👍✌️🇺🇲
An "It's History" upload is one of the best parts of my day! Thanks again Ryan for yet another wonderful piece! The hard work you put into each story truly shows! I'd love for you to do a piece or two from something in my state of South Carolina if you're interested please. We have a very rich and interesting history from our mountains to the coast! Again, thank you so very much! 💙🙏🏼
This bunker is small compared to the much larger bunker complexes of Sandy Hook and Highlands on the south shore of the Raritan Bay, across from NYC. The Navy and Coast Guard still maintain bases nearby
There are a couple of smaller gun placements in Westport MA on Gooseberry neck. Went out there once and climbed them. I don't think that was very safe as I was under the influence at the time. But, nobody died.
Register of Historic Places, really? Did any historic events happen there? It sounds more like it costs too much to remove and it'll just wait until it's swallowed by the sea.
Yeah, on the beach of my hometown Napier, New Zealand there is smaller concrete gun bunkers spread along the beach. Still there to this day. Was same reason, thought the Japanese were gonna invade.
Now seems like a good time to explore the battle of the Atlantic and more specifically the battles that took place right off of the east coast of the United States. Fort Hancock at Sandy Hook New Jersey, Fort Wadsworth on Staten island and others were constructed to protect the shipping lanes and the entrance to the New York city harbor.
It's funny to think that in the following years the fear of aerial bombardment became the new focus of defense and Nike Missile sites would spring up near many of these former coastal defense sites. Project Nike and the surface-to-air missile batteries that were formed from the development of the missile have an interesting history during the start of the Cold War, and may of those site are abandoned and littered across the coast as well.
i wonder if you visited the bunker across the river of sandy hook ? on the other side of twin lights . there is a massive coastal gun that has been left for display. now its a park the view is spectacular.If you look carefully at the sea charts you will see the number of u boats sunk along the coast there are books also published showing there locations.
There is an awesome D shaped bunker off Mississippi right in the gulf. They had massive cannons that would fire and skip the cannon balls off the water into the hauls of a boat. You need a ferry ride to it but it’s very cool to explore. There’s one right at the end of the Philadelphia airport too.
You must be referring to Fort Massachusetts (interesting name for a fort off the Mississippi coast. ) Construction started shortly before the civil war. Of course, when the south seceded, the unfinished fort came under confederate control. It saw one engagement when it exchange gunfire with a union warship, with little damage and few casualties on either side.
Sandy Hook had them also, there were lots of fun to explore as kids in the seventies in the late eighties we got busted reminiscing and nearly got a tickets
I got in there before with my brother there is a secret area where a wall is smashed i climbed up the wall and got in there was graffiti everywhere and we even found a bloody mattress
As a New Jersey resident in Burlington County..I hadn't known there's a bunker.. Cape Mays residents rather you concentrate on the towns beaches / boardwalk/ shopping district as well Victorian residential neighborhoods.. Thank you This Is History appreciate the New Jersey History 👍🏼
I'm amazed these bunkers are so old! I half expected WWII! Especially after Pearl in '41! If only the government took such an interest in protecting our borders today!
There are old coastal fortifications like this in many places along the East coast, for example around Portsmouth, NH on both the NH and ME side of the mouth of the Piscataqua River, where they used to protect the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.
I live in South Jersey. As a child my friends and I used to ride bikes down to Sunset Beach on vacation and explore this thing. It was creepy! There’s also an abandoned World War 1 watch tower right inland. Also you should note that they’ve since repaired the beach around the bunker so that the pilings are no longer visible (you can actually see this in Tom Scott’s video about beach repair), and they’ve sealed the bunker up with concrete to stop people like me from exploring it.
Hi Ryan hope all is well with you and your family, this was again a great subject matter, but here is a thought, with the way the World is now we may just need all of these BUNKERS on the East coast and West coast, maybe for shelters or some other reason...
The casemates for the guns on Galveston Island in Texas are now part of the OMNI hotel on the beach. Unfortunately management will not conduct tours nor even allow exploration :(
you used to be able to stand on top of this, and the view were really nice. in 1972 and 73, the gun emplacements were still there. also where the parking lot is now, used to be the old foundations of the buildings that were there. used to store ammunition for gun emplacements.
I keep turning off the largely incoherent captions obut they continue. Other than youtoob's stupid nonfunctionlity, it also shows that you took doesn't care turd one about their functionslity of the site. But let anyone violate one of their TOS and watch out, because they flawlessly find the post and discipline you. If only there was an alternative. But I digress. Is anyone else experiencing this idiotic bullsh|t?
As a child growing up in NJ, the beach was always a few inches to several feet deep of garbage, and the rivers could catch fire. Now all the garbage goes to Pennsylvania and it's better. We used to ride our bikes on the Raritan River because it was so full of garbage the river became a road. It's different now.
You remind of the kids in the 80's during yearbook days at school who would open up someones yearbook and write "I'm happy to be the first to sign your crack" in the crease of one of the pages. Good job... nerd...
And here we have 100,s of thousands, perhaps millions of military age men from hostile countries rolling in unchecked. Thanks Joe, Kamala, and Alejandro.
you are teaching , and yo self do not know reality, just repeating . example New Jersey is in the USA , no America a continent named by the Kingdom of Spain , stop erroneously conditioning the people. saludos
