Deep Inside Forgotten WWII Bunkers

so I'm spending the day in a very interesting part of New Jersey this is Sandy Hook this huge Peninsula that has a lot of military history I mean it goes back way back into the 1800s possibly even earlier there's a lot of history here a lot of stuff you can come and see there's little tours and the Nike Base Cold War era Nike base is still here but if you know where to look and you can get into the woods sometimes you can come across these amazing relics like this these old batteries this one was decommissioned in I believe 1946 right after World War II and it just sits here now it's certainly not on any kind of Tourism map here it's it's basically ignored or forgotten but it is amazing look at these shell tracks here where they would carry the shells and the huge 12-inch gun was right here so I'm going to get inside these things and uh show you how awesome they are and give you a little bit of the history that I know of these uh these batteries that's weird stuff that all down there so there are two old batteries back in the woods here the one I'm in right now is battery Kingman it was originally constructed in 1917 with two 12-inch caliber guns that could fire thousand pound projectiles over 20 miles in any direction the military wanted good coastal defense that could outrange enemy battleships you can see from this picture that originally the guns were pretty much out in the open and then down the road during World War II there were additions made uh the gun emplacements were shielded with massive reinforced concrete housings which were designed to protect and hide the guns from enemy planes above these traverses connect those two guns they were built to house ammunition shell rooms plotting rooms latrines even a generator room so these are the overhead shell tracks this is how they would move the ammunition around on these uh it would have rollers basically and it would attach and just they would be able to roll the stuff almost like a roller coaster type of situation that is a heck of a door clearly it's been a lot of flooding over the years anything militarily basically started around 1859 construction began on a quote-unquote large fortification that was never completed though construction was suspended in 1870 and then dismantled whatever they had built in the 1950s by the US Army but in 1874 Sandy Hook had a Proving Ground built basically an area to test ammunition which I think is still here today some a lot of this stuff you can kind of tour in 1950 Fort Hancock was closed basically deemed obsolete for that time period but then almost immediately 1951 it reopened because of the cold war threat yeah yeah like this strange shutters I don't know if that was all made to be blast proof probably oh yeah nothing left of this thing wow wow what's up foreign [Applause] 's been destroyed all right so there's this weird passageway that I passed a couple times and I want to check it out because it doesn't seem to go anywhere that I've seen like these rooms here doesn't go into these rooms so I'm gonna check out where this goes uh it's pretty low it opens up again [Music] it comes out to here no idea what it is ah and why it would be this way oh man it's tight especially with the backpack on all right this is a whole other area here oh yeah it's a totally different suction I did not write that I promised okay [Applause] thank you all right so it was just like a weird passageway I have no idea why they would make that but uh it ends up in an area where we had been already so it was all that stretching and kneeling for nothing so this is battery Mills I think those kids didn't have flashlights that's why they only had their cell phones and they're afraid of the wobbler wobblers [Applause] yeah I'm really impressed by the size of these things look at these foreign this is cool though with the doors weird mechanisms one day these things were will be gone completely so this is basically exactly what the other one is yeah it's like some weird paint or something thank you I don't know what that is never cones yeah I mean there obviously was an attempt at some point to keep people out of here but so like I said there is a lot of history here and lots of it you can tour through like the the Cold War era Nike Base you can actually take a tour of the the housing The Garrison area and there's also a lot of these older bunkers and batteries but these in the tourism area they are very strict about not going inside them but there's a lot of this stuff now there is at least one battery that is kind of restored that actually even still has the original guns on top of so I'm going to take you over there and show you that and then I'm also going to show you a little bit of the Garrison the housing units and all the old historic buildings uh where all the soldiers lived these are all the original housing units for the Garrison and uh what's nice about them is they're all a lot of them are starting to get restored I thought there was some talk about them getting torn down maybe some of them but uh I believe some of them they are in a process of restoration which is fantastic because these are so amazing looking beautiful beautiful buildings yeah I hope they're gonna restore this what are these metal concrete metal she's a beaut look at this imagine living here this is really the center of the Garrison kind of like the center of the Town whatever you want to call it uh Firehouse probably stores the PX was probably here and uh offices things like that and the lighthouse which I believe is technically the oldest operating lighthouse in the country or something like that and walking through here this leads to The Proving Ground that I was talking about before so I'll show you that so it's not that interesting in here the walk-in is definitely the coolest looking part but this was built in 1874 I think they used this until 1919 or something it was basically a place to test ammunition blast proof uh kind of an area that they built that was all cement up there it's all overgrown now but I don't know what this is oh wow this goes all the way back huh way back there I'd love to get in there so this is clearly one of the more interesting beaches that are in this area just down this pathway here clothing's optional Beach but what I want to show you here is uh the Gunnison battery originally built in 1904 what's nice about this one is it's it's really uh been not restored but preserved and open to the public so you can really see what this looked like but look at this monster these are really there's two guns here this was the the original guns still on the uh barbette system here that thing is a beast and they were would shoot six inch 108 pound projectiles up to 10 miles away I mean the ultimate in coastal defense at least for the time you can actually see New York City out straight out that way the original battery that was built in 1904 here was a lot lower and that's why these stairs you can see these stairs they don't actually go anywhere this whole system was raised up and redone it had like a almost like a elevator system where the every time the gun would fire it would recoil down Behind These Walls and be reloaded yeah in fact the plaque here says the first layer with a shorter set of steps ends off to the left is the original gun platform from 1904. this platform once mounted large six-inch diameter guns that disappeared quote unquote behind a concrete parapet after firing each round the second layer that is eroding quicker than the older lower level was poured in 1943 to mount the barbec gun that remains today the steps ahead were built at the same time for access to this new platform interesting how it's even noted on the plaques here that the the concrete that was poured in 1943 is actually falling apart quite a bit it really has not stood the test of time whereas the older concrete the original that concrete is uh in much better condition even to this day must because they didn't use the Rosendale concrete like the last video that I made I'm just kidding I don't know what they used but that actually would be interesting to see if they used um Rosendale uh natural cement or if they use the Portland cement but you can see Again original and then that's the newer stuff and look how it's really deteriorating quite a bit so there you go a little history of Sandy Hook showing you some of the places some of the places that you don't really get to see too much interesting spot interesting history I think I'll go to hit the beach though you know when in Rome see in the next video

Channel: Mobile Instinct

Views: 86,883

Keywords: wwii history, sandy hook new jersey, mobile instinct abandoned, places to see in nj, urbex nj

Id: n1eVO-k4wBY

Length: 20min 6sec (1206 seconds)

Published: Mon May 01 2023