Battery Peck

Battery Peck

Quick Facts

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Construction on Battery Peck was started during 1901, but the work was not completed until late 1903, when the battery was finally armed with two 6-inch guns mounted on barbette pedestal carriages. Battery Peck served many years in Fort Hancock's Underwater Mine Defense Command.

Advantages

The battery had two advantages over many of Fort Hancock's other gun batteries:
- each 6-inch gun could fire rapidly at a rate of 3 to 4 rounds a minute
- the guns had a 360-degree field of fire to cover a wide area of 10 miles in any direction around Sandy Hook. During World War II, the battery was modernized to meet the new defensive needs of the war. During the spring of 1943, Battery Peck was renamed Battery No. 8 and its two guns and carriages were transferred to Battery Gunnison.

Battery No. 8

The battery was armed with four new 90mm gun, two of which were mounted on Peck's old concrete gun emplacements, and two others were located in the sand dunes west of the battery. In the coast artillery service during World War II, 90mm guns were known as "dual purpose" because they were assigned to shoot at both fast moving warships and warplanes. They were also referred to as AMTB batteries, which stood for Anti Motor Torpedo Boat. When World War II ende,d Battery No. 8 was disarmed.
 

1954-1955

During 1954-1955, an Army Missile Battalion used the old battery as an operations center for a temporary Nike Ajax defense missile battery and radar site set up in the tip area of Sandy Hook. When permanent Nike Missile launch and radar sites were completed at Sandy Hook during 1955-1956, the army stopped using the battery and it faded into obscurity.

U.S. Lieutenant Fremont P. Peck

Battery Peck was named in honor of U.S Army Lieutenant Fremont P. Peck. Peck was mortally wounded in 1895 when a new gun that was being tested at the Sandy Hook Proving Grounds blew up.