In Battery 519, which is tucked inside the Great Dune in Cape Henlopen State Park, there is a wall of honor made from concrete pavers. Many are etched with names of former military men. But one paver at the top stands out. It reads: “Lee Jennings: May Your Dream Be Fulfilled.”
Leland C. Jennings Jr. was the historian and chief of cultural resources for the Delaware Division of Parks and Recreation. In March 2010, Jennings suffered a heart attack in his hotel room after a day spent working on the bunker. Jennings was pursuing a passion: creating a museum to pay tribute to Fort Miles, a coastal fortification built on Cape Henlopen in World War II.
- Renovations at Fort Miles.
Click here to see pictures of the historic coastal battery.
Jennings was not alone. Members of the Fort Miles Historical Association have spent thousands of volunteer hours restoring the battery and raising funds to purchase items for a museum. Plans are currently underway to secure cannon 371, a mammoth 16-inch barrel gun from the USS Missouri.
“We want to have a gun to represent every size gun that was at the fort during the war,” said Gary Wray, who in 2003 founded the Fort Miles Historical Association with Jennings, David Main and Bob Frederick. “This is our push to get the big gun.”
Visitors can see the progress on the project for themselves on Oct. 8, when the park and the association host an open house from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. There will be continuous tours of Battery 519. Visitors will hear about plans for the museum, which could be the largest World War II museum on its original site.
The park on Oct. 22 at 6 p.m. is also holding lantern tours of the battery, given by an interpreter in a period uniform. Certainly there is much to tell.
Since the Delaware River was the gateway to Wilmington, Philadelphia and other important ports, Fort Miles became key to the area’s coastal defense in World War II. Construction began in 1940, and troops started arriving in 1941.
The 11 fire control towers that line the Delaware coast, from Lewes to Bethany, were used to hold instruments that determined the range and speed of incoming targets. They were intended to last no more than 10 years, according to “Fort Miles,” the book that Wray and Jennings wrote together. As any tourist or resident will tell you, they lasted much longer.
The fort was home to Battery 519 and the larger Battery Smith. There were two smaller batteries: Battery Hunter and Battery Herring. The fort also served as the control headquarters for the mines positioned at the mouth of the bay.
On May 14, 1945, U-858 surrendered at Fort Miles, marking the first time an enemy vessel surrendered in American territory since the War of 1812. It was sweet revenge. Fort Miles was designed to protect against surface vessels. Submarines, however, became the real threat. They viciously attacked the East Coast, starting as early as 1942. Hundreds of military and commercial ships went down and thousands of sailors lost their lives.
- The Surrender of U858.
Click here to see pictures of the surrender of the German U-boat U858 of the coast of Lewes.
Photos courtesy of the Delaware Historical Society.
By 1958, the fort was deemed irrelevant to the region’s defense. Parts of the property were used as a recreation area until the early 1990s. John Roberts, now on the Fort Miles Historical Association’s board of directors, recalled joining his uncle, who was in the military, on vacation. “I would explore all this stuff,” he said of the structures built in the 1940s. Meanwhile, the Navy used Battery Herring for a listening facility to spy on Soviet vessels.
In 1964, the Army gave a portion of Fort Miles to the state, which formed Cape Henlopen State Park. Then-Sen. Joseph Biden worked to have the remainder of the land given to the park. Fort Miles in 2005 was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
All that, however, did nothing to preserve the historic structures. A former school administrator, Wray, who has a master’s in history and in doctorate educational leadership, met Jennings at a talk he gave on Fort Miles in Rehoboth. Park personnel had been told to attend the event to learn about the site, Wray said. Jennings had been heavily involved in restoration at Fort Delaware, located off Delaware City and became interested in Fort Miles.
The two formed the association with Main and Frederick. “Lee was the visionary,” Wray said. “He was the prime mover. He was inside the state government and I was outside of it. We were like brothers.”
They started cleaning Battery 519 themselves. “It was like cleaning a 200-year-old house,” Wray recalled. “There were snakes, critters and trash left behind by kids. It was not a sight to be seen.”
There’s little evidence of that now. Battery 519—two gun areas connected by a long, echoing hallway lined with ammunition rooms—is in remarkable shape. This will be the main structure for artifacts and displays. The southern casement offers the prize: a 12-inch gun from the USS Wyoming, whose long nose pokes through a glass window toward the ocean.
The cleanup and improvements—even the wiring and plumbing—have been largely done by volunteers. Roberts alone spends 80 hours a month on fort work. “We’re trying to stop the deterioration,” he said. “The infrastructure comes first.”
Volunteers press forward with quest to create Fort Miles museum
Gary Wray, co-founder of the Fort Miles Historical Association
In 2008, the Fort Miles Historical Association, which now has about 350 members. Today those efforts include the quest for a museum. A schematic is already in hand. Wray anticipates that the nearly $6 million endeavor could open in 2016 or 2017.
“They’re the ones out front with this [museum project],” said Jim Hall, Chief of Cultural Resources at Delaware Division of Parks & Recreation. “Kudos to them for taking this on. We would not be able to undertake something of this magnitude with today’s current budgets.”
But first comes the 16-inch gun from the Missouri. Hall and Wray have come up with a plan to transport the gun from Norfolk, Va. to Lewes. If it goes by train, transportation could cost $140,000. By tug and barge, it may cost $100,000. Funding is coming from grants and donations.
“The project is a template for fundraising for the museum,” Wray said. “We’re setting the stage.” The gun must leave Norfolk by March 2, 2012. It will sit near a cluster of guns near the old barracks. Visitors to that part of the park can’t miss it, and that’s the point. The association hopes it will spark interest in Fort Miles.
“I came to this state from West Virginia in 1965 in part because of its rich history,” Wray said. “It’s a personal thing for me. Fort Miles is part of Delaware history—that reason alone is enough reason to save it.”
No doubt, Jennings would agree.
