Montauk Air Force Station was a US military base at Montauk Point on the eastern tip of Long Island, New York. It was decommissioned in 1981 and is now owned by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation as Camp Hero State Park.
History
The eastern tip of Long Island has always had strategic significance, even in the days of the American Revolution. When the Montauk Lighthouse was first authorized in 1792, part of its mission was to keep a lookout for British ships sailing for New York or Boston, and as such was the first military installation at Montauk.
Montauk was always considered a prime location for a possible invasion because of its remoteness and prime location midway between two major American cities. During World War I, the Navy established Naval Air Station Montauk in August, 1917, commanded by LT Marc Mitscher. Reconnaissance dirigibles, an airplane, troops and Coast Guard personnel were stationed at Montauk.
World War II
Fort Hero was established in 1942 on the point just south of the Montauk lighthouse. The fort was named after Major General Andrew Hero, Jr., who was the Army's Chief of Coast Artillery between 1926 and 1930. He died in 1942.
In World War II, with German U-boats threatening the East Coast and Long Island, Montauk was again considered a likely invasion point. The US Army upgraded Fort Hero, and renamed it Camp Hero in 1942. The Navy also acquired land in the area, including Fort Pond Bay and Montauk Manor. They built docks, seaplane hangars, barracks, and other buildings in the area. There was also a huge torpedo testing facility.
The whole facility, with Army, Navy and Coast Guard constituents, was officially known as the "US Military Reservation" but the locals just called it "Camp Hero".
Camp Hero itself grew to , and included four surplus 16-inch naval rifles, originally intended for battleships, installed as coastal artillery pieces in two concrete bunkers. These batteries rendered obsolete almost all previous heavy guns in the Harbor Defenses of Long Island Sound. They were designated with battery construction numbers 112 and 113, Battery 113 was also known as Battery Dunn. A two-gun 6-inch battery, Battery 216, was also built. The coastal gun emplacements were camouflaged with netting and foliage. A large "Fire Control Center" was built next to the lighthouse to direct the artillery and anti-aircraft guns. Other armaments included quadruple .50 caliber machine guns for low altitude defense, and 90 mm and 120 mm anti-aircraft guns. The camp was a self-contained town with recreational facilities, barracks and its own power station.
Camp Hero was also used as a training facility and a target range, with guns being fired at offshore targets.
To protect it from enemy bombers and German spies in fishing boats, the entire base was built to look like a typical New England fishing village. Concrete bunkers had windows painted on them and ornamental roofs with fake dormers. The gymnasium was made to look like a church with a faux steeple.
When World War II ended, the base was temporarily shut down and used as a training facility by the Army Reserve. The naval facilities were largely abandoned and the gun emplacements were dismantled in 1949.
Cold War
After the 1948 Berlin Blockade in Germany, the Cold War began in earnest. This event, coupled with the advent of the Soviet Tupolev Tu-4 intercontinental bomber in 1947, created serious concern about the possibility of a Soviet air attack on the continental United States. This spurred the United States Air Force (USAF) to direct its Air Defense Command (ADC) to take radar sets out of storage for operation in the Northeastern United States in 1948. By August of that year, a radar station had been placed at Lashup Site L-10 at Montauk, NY. This program was appropriately named "Lashup"
As part of this temporary network, ADC placed an AN/TPS-1B long-range search radar at Fort Hero in June 1948 and designated the site as Montauk Point, L-10. The Montauk site fed into a primitive control center established at Roslyn AFS, New York. In 1950 it activated the 773d Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron (AC&W Sq) to operate the facility. On 1 December 1953, the site designation was changed to LP-45 and the Air Force facilities were renamed Montauk Air Force Station. Montauk AFS was incorporated into the permanent ADC network of General Surveillance Radar Stations.