Battery Granger

Battery Granger's ten-inch rifle could strike a battleship eight miles out to sea, and its simple counterweight system quickly raised and lowered the gun so that a well-trained crew could fire two rounds a minute. Protected in front by fifty feet of earth and concrete, this 1897 battery was almost immune to the flat-trajectory fire of nineteenth-century warships. The disappearing gun's recoil lowered the weapon behind the parapet, helping conceal and protect coastal guns and crews from the increasingly accurate fire of modern warships. Two American officers, Adelbert Buffington and William Crozier, perfected the design of the disappearing gun carriage, and loading was easier because shot trucks could bring heavy ammunition directly to the breech of the lowered weapon. To pivot the gun back to firing position, a latch was tripped, releasing a forty-five-ton counterweight hanging in a well below the carriage. This battery made Battery Potter, two hundred fifty yards north, obsolete almost as soon as it was completed, because Potter's steam-powered hydraulic lifts allowed its guns to disappear also but could not compete with the speed and efficiency of the Buffington-Crozier system.

New Jersey · United States