coast defense

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Fort Ruckman

Fort Ruckman, built in 1904-1907, covered an area of about 45 acres at the tip of Bass Point, on the southwest side of the Nahant peninsula. In WW2, it housed the Group Command post for the northern district of the harbor defenses of Boston and also had two 12" guns set in east-facing casemates of heavily reinforced concrete. These emplacements replaced the open mounts that had been installed in the 1920s.

These guns were Model 1917 barbette carriage mounted, later covered with casemates just before WW2. Each gun had a total weight of 151 tons and could fire a shell a distance of about 29,300 yards (about 16.6 miles). This would enable the guns, for example, to cover an arc extending from Gloucester in the north to North Scituate in the south. The centers of the two gun positions are roughly 425 ft. apart.

Today, most of the area within the fort's WW2 boundaries has been converted into residential real estate, recreation, or park land for the Town of Nahant. The extensive concrete galleries between the north and south firing positions which housed ammunition storage, crew quarters, and other activities have been buried under 20 or so feet of earth during the casemate construction process. These subterranian galleries are still accessible and are used by the town for storage.

On the surface of the buried galleries are a series of large and smaller concrete chimneys that ventilate the galleries below. A geodetic marker, MY0039--RUCKMAN, was emplaced in 1943, likely as a point of reference for aiming the 12" guns. The author recovered this marker in December, 2009.

About 800 ft. NNW of the northernmost gun position of Battery Gardner lay the center of a 3-gun battery of antiaircraft guns known as Location 130-2C, or the Boston Harbor No.4 AAA Battery. The three guns were surface-mounted, standard barbette carriage 3" guns, Model 1917-A2. The gun centers formed a rouhly equilateral triangle 150 ft. on a side. The gun positions were constructed in 1934, but were not armed until 1942. Final construction on the battery commenced on May 5, 1942, and was completed in less than a month. Today, the battery positions appear (from Google maps) to have been destroyed, but the center point of the battery would fall roughly at the left field foul pole of the first baseball field southeast of the corner of Castle and Flash Roads.

 

Ft. Ruckman Images

  • 12-in-M1917-pic
    This is the type of gun (and mount) emplaced at Battery Gardner. Image courtesy of Coast Defense Study Group, 2010.
  • 12-inch-in-casemate
    Battery Gardner consisted of two guns mounted in this fashion. Image courtesy of Coast Defense Study Group
  • MY0039-Ruckman-Disk (PG 2009)
    This geodetic marker was set in 1943 on top of Battery Gardner, probably as a means of locating the guns for fire control purposes.