The Jackson Gamers have always loved anything military (except KP duty) and so the allure of a well preserved coastal fortification at the Entrance to Tampa bay added zest to the idea of the long road trip neccesary to drive to RECON. Mark Stevens and Jay Stribling woke up bright and early on Friday morning, making the 25-mile (or so) day trip from Tampa to Fort Desoto Park, south of St. Petersburg Florida. Our trusty Volkswagen "Bug" led us onto the spectacular bridge across Tampa Bay, and then southward through "condo-land" to the latter part of the 19th century. At that time, to ward off the terror of the Spanish navy, Congress and the Army decreed a program of coastal fortifications without parallel on this planet.

One of the spectacular remnants of this "Endicott program" of coastal batteries and ferr0-concrete protective workis is Fort Desoto.

All photos by Jay Stribling unless otherwise credited.

Mark Stevens next to a 6-inch Armstrong gun recovered from Battery Burchstead in the surf at fort Dade on Egmont Key. Two of these guns, heavily pitted with rust from being in the surf for 50+ years in Tampa Bay are now mounted in front of Battery Laidley, located at Fort DeSoto on Mullet Key.

Jay Stribling poses next to a mortar in the loading position. On of the disconnected recoid cylinders is standing to Jay's right rear.

There are two pits at Battery Laidley, each originally contained four 12", rifled, breech-loading mortars. They were fired in groups of 4, the salvoes of shells designed to come down vertically through the deck armor of warships of that era. They were very accurate and had a maximum range of 9.5 miles.

Four of the mortars (2 from each pit) were removed in 1917. The army had found that the reduced congestion in the pits allowed for a doubling of the rate of fire of the remaining mortars. Many of the surplus weapons were mounted on railroad cars for use in France, to drop their massive projectiles on the heads of the Kaiser's army. The armistice came before this could be done.

The massive mortars were left in place, and survived years of neglect and the use of the fort as a bombing range in WWII. These mortars are the only such weapons to survive in the world, except for some battered remnants of the Harbor defenses of Manilla, and possibly Subic Bay, in the Phillipines.

Fort DeSoto is part of the park system of Pinellas County, Florida. You can go to the official FORT DESOTO WEB SITE at http://fortdesoto.com/

For more about this site and other American coastal fortifications on the Gulf of Mexico, I reccomend Andy Bennett's site: Coastal Fortifications on the Gulf of Mexico. Not only has he been there, he took pictures while he was there!

Jay Stribling with his arm around the fabled "old man" himself - Larry Brom. Note look on Brom's face, as if to say "get this bozo off of me!"

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