Tag Archives: Battery Cooper

No. 30, is that you?

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At the turn of the 20th Century, the U.S. Army fielded an impressive array of “disappearing” guns along the American seacoast and few remain. In all, the Army would order some 75 “super heavy” 12-inch disappearing guns, 128 slightly smaller 10-inch guns on similar mounts, 64 8-inch disappearing guns, and the most common type: 152 assorted 6-inch models.

Of the Army’s mixed bag of 419 disappearing guns in various sizes, just four survive in the U.S. today still mounted on disappearing carriages. Two 10-inch guns are currently located at Battery Worth at Fort Casey on Whidbey Island, Washington, and a pair of remaining 6-inch “sister” guns are installed at two locations 2,200 miles apart– one at Battery Chamberlin on the Presidio in San Francisco and the other at Battery Cooper on Fort Pickens near Pensacola, Florida.

I recently visited with the latter and delved into its strange history.

I present to you, a 6-inch rapid-fire rifled gun, Model of 1905, Serial No. 30, on Disappearing Carriage, Model of 1903, located at Battery Cooper near Fort Pickens on Santa Rosa Island in West Florida, just a few miles off Pensacola Beach. Once common, it is one of just two still in existence in the country in its original format.

More in my column at Guns.com.

Who wants some postcards?

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I like estate sales and enjoy attending them as I tend to find great old knives, militaria, and firearms up for grabs. One sale I recently attended was for a late local Biloxi-area photographer who took a number of images up and down the Gulf Coast in the 1970s and 80s that were turned into postcards. Apparently, as part of his payment, he got a stack of each postcard that was printed. While a lot were your standard lighthouse-shrimpboat-sand dollar-bikini girl scenes, there were also some military subjects that I picked up.

I got a *stack* of each of these five.


They are detailed as such:

“The 6-inch disappearing rifle located at Battery Cooper in Fort Pickens. The uniforms shown were from the late 1890s. The Fort only saw about 60 hours of combat; that during the Civil War. “

U.S. Air Force Armament Museum outside of Eglin AFB, showing a B-17, F-4, and T-12 “Cloudmaker” 44,000 lb bomb

USS Kitty Hawk underway. No note as to when the image was taken but she still has A-7 Corsairs and SH-3 Sea Kings on deck and CIWS aft, so I am guessing mid-to-late 1980s.

“Pascagoula” showing the mouth of the river at Ingalls-Litton’s East Bank with the USS Wisconsin (BB-64) berthed undergoing her post-mothball modernization 1987-88. I attended her recommissioning as a kid! An LHD (likely Wasp) and a late batch VLS CG-47 are visible in the postcard on the West Bank, though I can’t tell which numbers

Fort Massachusetts on Ship Island off Gulfport. This image is pre-1998 as the island has changed significantly since then. Everything to the right of the fort is now underwater due to Hurricanes Georges and Katrina and the casemates are currently very close to the beach at high tide

Bottom line, I am never going to use several hundred postcards, so I am bundling one of each of the above (five in total) together to send for free to anyone that wants a set. So if you want a set of the five above, email me your shipping address at: egerwriter@gmail.com and I will drop an envelope in the USPS mail box headed your way.

Be advised some of these are 30-40 years old and, while they never took up store space or were circulated, they were not stored in museum conditions (rusty old filing cabinets marked “NASA Marietta”). But they are free and I will not use your address for anything but scribbling it on the envelope.

Did I mention they are free?