File:Hitchcock Gun 1.jpg

Summary edit

Photo, taken in 2009, looks east. The gun position for Gun #1 (the easternmost) of Battery Hitchcock in Fort Strong is in the foreground . Initially, this battery contained three 10-inch guns (1888 M1) on disappearing carriages, but Gun #3 (the westernmost) was later removed and shipped away. The disappearing carriages required a pit into which a counterweight could descend when the gun was raised to firing position. This pit for Hitchcock Gun #1 is shown at center (surrounded by the circle of mounting bolts for the carriage). The gun fired towards the left of the picture (northerly).

The raised semicircular platform around the gun enabled the loaders and rammers to operate more easily at the level of the breech, when the gun was lowered after having been fired. Powder and projectiles were delivered to the gun platforms by chain-driven hoists located beneath the small peaked roofs at center rear (the ones visible here served the adjacent Battery Ward). Small, three-wheeled carts were then used to move the shells and powder along the gun platforms to the breeches of the guns.

The elevated "blockhouse" at rear is the Battery Commander's position for the adjacent Battery Ward, which mounted two similar 10-inch guns. These are the easternmost two emplacements in the long row of gun positions on the northern heights of the fort. The land on the horizon in front of the blockhouse slit (across the Nantasket Roads channel into Quincy and Boston Harbor) is Hull, with the Telegraph Hill Tower at Ft. Ripley barely visible at its highest point.

This channel was heavily mined, with the mines originally controlled from Ft. Strong (control was later shifted to Ft. Warren during WW2). The 3-inch guns of Batteries Stevens and Smyth on the southeast side of the fort guarded these minefields. During WW2, this channel could still reach Boston Harbor, since the causeway between the mainland and Long Island had not yet been built, so submarine booms and nets were strung here.

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