Military

Armed with incredible power and an array of technological and weaponry innovations, Fort Hancock protected New York Harbor from any mode of attack for almost 80 years. Named in 1895 after Civil War hero Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, it sits on the northern tip of New Jersey's seashore on the Sandy Hook peninsula. The fort's evolution serves as a classic example of how the U.S. Army defended American harbors from the War of 1812 through most of the cold war era. It blazed the way in defending a prime U.S. harbor, while boasting impressive and unique architecture. Since 1975, Fort Hancock has been administered by the National Park Service and thousands of visitors delight in its history year round from sunrise to sunset.

The U.S. Army established Fort Monmouth in June 1917, just a few months after Congress declared war on Germany. It initially served as a signal training camp for the First and Second Reserve Telegraph Battalions. The first camp, on the grounds of the old Monmouth Park racetrack, was named Camp Little Silver. The army renamed the camp Fort Monmouth in 1925 to honor the brave Americans who died at the Revolutionary War battle of Monmouth Courthouse a few miles away in Freehold. For almost a century, the dedicated military and civilian personnel of the fort have made groundbreaking advances in developing, fielding, and sustaining communications and electronics systems. These breakthroughs have included the development of radar in 1937, bouncing the first electronic signals off of the moon in 1946, and producing the first communications satellite in 1958.

The ingenious people of the Garden State were instrumental in the early development of the submarine. The first American submarine sank off Fort Lee in 1776, and the first successful one adopted by the U.S. Navy was invented by Paterson's John Holland at the end of the nineteenth century. Those early vessels were tested in the Passaic River and on the Jersey City waterfront. Today, the only surviving Union Civil War submarine, built in Newark, sits in the National Guard Militia Museum in Sea Girt. In 1918, the technology pioneered there was turned against the Jersey Shore when U-151 went on a one-day ship-sinking rampage. A World War II U-boat offensive torpedoed numerous ships off the coast, leaving oil-soaked beaches strewn with wreckage. Authors Joseph G. Bilby and Harry Ziegler reveal the remarkable history of submarines off the New Jersey coastline.

McGuire Air Force Base, built on property ceded by the Boy Scouts of America, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the contiguous Fort Dix, has served the nation proudly for decades. Originally, it was intended to be used as a home for observation antisubmarine reconnaissance aircraft and army support as Fort Dix Army Air Field, but the focus of the base quickly changed as a result of its strategic location. McGuire Air Force Base recounts the contributions of this military asset with more than two hundred photographs from the archives of the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Army. Among its many achievements, McGuire was the first American military base to become operational with the F-106 Delta Dart; the first base to operate an all-jet military transport, the C-135 Stratolifter; and finally, the first base to become operational with a ground-launched antiaircraft nuclear missile squadron. In the 1950s, McGuire became the air force's principal aerial port on the East Coast-a role it continues to this day.

Explore the construction of the giant hangars and a main area for the development of aviation on the US, and the birthplace of the dirigible.

The naval air station in Lakehurst, New Jersey, has a rich and bittersweet history steeped in success and tainted with tragedy. The area evolved from a gas warfare proving ground during World War I to the focal point of lighter-than-air operations in the United States. Labeled one of the world's first international airports, Lakehurst quickly became a hub of lighter-than-air activity. Although the dirigibles are no longer active, it remains crucial in the operational support of naval aviation as the Naval Air Engineering Station, Lakehurst. Rare photographs and material from the archives of the Navy Lakehurst Historical Society chronicle more than eighty-five years of base activity. Offering a unique glimpse of the people, the machines, and the background against which it has all unfolded, this volume examines Lakehurst's vital contributions to the development of aviation and national defense. Naval Air Station, Lakehurst explores the construction of the giant hangars and support buildings for the airships of the U.S. Navy and the glory days of the German zeppelin visits. The blimp programs from World War II through 1962 and the various schools and tenant commands turned the air station into a key component of naval aviation.

Michael S. Adelberg brings to life the struggles within Monmouth County, a place that New Jersey governor William Livingston called "the theatre of spoil and destruction."

Like much of New Jersey during the American Revolution, Monmouth County was contested territory in between the great armies. As the Battles of Trenton, Princeton and Bound Brook raged nearby, the people of Monmouth County fought their own internal revolution; Loyalist partisans led insurrections and raids that laid waste to entire neighborhoods. In 1778, General George Washington rallied his Continental army and fought the British within Monmouth's borders, barely holding the field. Monmouth Countians joined the fight and then spent the following weeks caring for the wounded and burying the dead. The remaining war years brought more hardships, as they grappled with a local civil war charged with racial, religious and economic undercurrents - a local civil war that continued long after the Battle of Yorktown supposedly ended hostilities.

Chronicling the history of life central New Jersey's Fort Dix army camp from 1917 to the present day.

Located in central New Jersey, Fort Dix has been training soldiers since its founding in 1917. More than three million men and women have passed through its gates since it was built as one of the original 16 army camps to train and mobilize soldiers for World War I. The fort, once known as Camp Dix, has experienced many changes over the years.

This unprecedented photographic history traces the evolution from a wooden cantonment to the installation of brick and fiber optics, from a horse-dominated transportation system to a motor vehicle system, and from training recruits to serving Army Reserve and National Guard soldiers. Along the way, Fort Dix depicts the influence of the 78th Division, the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Women's Army Corps, Desert Storm, and the humanitarian work of resettling the Kosovo refugees.

The US Coast Guard Training Center at Cape May tells the story of the Center from Navy Section Base 9 to the only recruit training center in the US.

Commissioned as Navy Section Base 9 in 1917, the US Coast Guard Training Center at Cape May stands on the site of a former amusement park that bordered the Atlantic Ocean a few miles east of Cape May in southern New Jersey. Dirigibles, submarines, and minesweepers were based here during World War I. Because of its proximity to the ocean and Delaware Bay, the base was used by Coast Guard patrol boats and cutters to chase rumrunners during Prohibition in the 1920s. An airfield was established adjacent to the base in 1926, and in 1940, both combined to become Naval Air Station Cape May. The station protected the coast line from German U-boats during World War II. The Coast Guard took over the facility in 1946, and in 1948, the base became the only recruit training center in the country, today graduating more than 4,000 recruits per year.

Camp Merritt, located in Bergen County, New Jersey, was authorized by the federal government in August 1917 as a critically needed embarkation base for processing US Army soldiers bound for the battlefields of Europe during World War I. The site of the camp, which now encompasses parts of five towns, was chosen for its proximity to roadways, railroads, and the Hudson River, which enabled the rapid movement of large numbers of troops and equipment to the nearby shipping port of Hoboken. As the war progressed, the size and scope of the base expanded; it was closed on June 30, 1920. During its lifetime, the camp processed over one million soldiers and nurses both going to and returning from war zones.

With its many inlets, points, and coves, the coast of New Jersey stood out as a haven for rumrunners brazenly thumbing their nose at the federal government during Prohibition. New Jersey was also recognized as the birthplace of the federal government's shore-based units of the United States Coast Guard, the organization charged at that time with stopping the flow of "demon run" into America. With its vivid images, New Jersey Coast Guard Stations and Rumrunners revives the days when New Jersey's "coasties" stood toe-to-toe with the rumrunners of the 1920s and 1930s.

The bucolic small-town life of Denville in the 1940s would change forever with the outbreak of World War II. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the town mobilized, creating the Denville Local Defense Council, designating air wardens to watch the skies and establishing air raid sirens. Schoolchildren gathered around home radios to learn if there were enough supplies to heat the school, and families learned to live within the confines of a ration book. The Denville Salvage Committee proclaimed "Bomb 'em with Junk!" as it collected waste goods for the war effort. Hundreds of Denville men served valiantly in all theaters of the war, some earning prestigious military accolades and many tragically never returning. Author Peter Zablocki covers the history of World War II Denville, including interviews with members of the town's "Greatest Generation."

Fort Mott held a prominent role in the military history of the area from the late 1800s until WWII.

Located on the banks of the Delaware River, Fort Mott was once part of a three-fort system that protected the ports and industry of New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. When completed in 1896, Fort Mott was one of the most technologically advanced fortifications of the period. Originally called the Battery at Finns Point, in 1897 it was renamed in honor of Maj. Gen. Gershom Mott, a New Jersey native who commanded with distinction during the Civil War and later served as state treasurer and commander of New Jersey's National Guard. When fully garrisoned with troops, the Army post was its own little town, complete with a hospital, bakery, stores, and sport fields. Coast Artillery Corps soldiers manned the fort until 1944, when the Army decided to abandon the site. In 1947, the state purchased the property, and in 1951, Fort Mott State Park opened to the public. Today, many of the buildings and fortifications are open for tours, and ongoing preservation and rehabilitation efforts are preserving the site for future generations.

Flanked by the Hudson River to the east and the Delaware River to the west, Bergen County comprised one of the most vital theaters of the Revolutionary War.

An army that could control this territory could drive a fateful wedge between New England and the other colonies.In The Revolutionary War in Bergen County, Carol Karels and her team of scholars weave a masterful account of the war in northeastern New Jersey. Here in Bergen County General Washington took the young Marquis de Lafayette under his wing; here in Bergen County the future antagonists Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton were baptized by fire; here in Bergen County families--in a prelude to the Civil War--split bitterly along Loyalist and Patriotic lines. From Washington's miraculous November 1776 retreat to the Delaware to the beginning of the Continental Army's epic August 1781 march to destiny at Yorktown, The Revolutionary War in Bergen County, comprehensively encompasses one of the Revolutionary War's most dramatic and pivotal fronts.

The Garden State has made innumerable contributions to our nation's military history, on both battlefield and homefront, but many of those stories remain hidden within the larger national narrative.

Perhaps the most crucial one-day battle of the Revolution was fought in Monmouth County, and New Jersey officers engineered the conquest of California in the Mexican War. During the Civil War, a New Jersey unit was instrumental in saving Washington, D.C., from Confederate capture. In World War II, New Jersey women flocked to war production factories and served in the armed forces, and a West Orange girl helped ferry Spitfire fighters in England. War came home to the coast in 1942 with the sinking of the SS ""Resor"" by a German submarine, but the state's citizens reacted by contributing everything they could to the war effort. Uncover these and other stories from New Jersey's hidden wartime history.