Bunkers and batteries in the Panama jungle

We've been in Shelter Bay Marina for over 3 years now... but not long enough to have found all there is to see in this old fort of the US Army. I thought there were 5 batteries but now found information about two extra ones (incl. a really big one) further into the jungle, almost at the Chagres river, not to mention that there was a pontoon bridge across the river etc. This triggered me to start searching the Internet for extra information and I did find old army documents like this (once secret) map:

(click here to open the album of old documents and photo's I collected from the Internet)

Wow... this map shows way more stuff than what we thought was here. All those little circles and squares are actual structures. We're looking at a coastal artillery defense here so I had to start studying that to learn what all this means.

We see the 5 batteries Baird, Howard, Stanley, Mower and Kilpatrick with all their stations and posts. A little circle with a "P" stands for the Plotting Room. This is where they calculated azimuth and elevation required to hit targets. Every battery except Kilpatrick has two Base Stations (the circles with the "B's"). These form the base of a triangle where the target forms the 3rd corner. Each base station reports their bearing to the target and the Plotting Room can calculate distance and bearing to target.
Battery Kilpatrick has a little circle labelled CRF which stands for Coincidence Range Finder (click here to see one). That is like binoculars with the lenses for each eye 9 feet or so apart. This device can measure bearing and distance in one go.
Circles with BC are the Battery Command stations. They check on where the shells land, if the target is hit etc. In emergencies they can also plot firing solutions for the gunners.

All this is very hard to find today; the map was kept up to date until 1934 and much was changed after that. Luckily we have some modern tools we can use. The next picture shows the same map overlayed on a satellite image. This is a feature of Google Earth:

And now we have put the buildings that are here today on this old map, making it much easier to find everything. The rail tracks are the most elusive thing as most (if not all) has been removed. We haven't given up hope though and have some more tools on the way to help us even better. In the mean time, we can find and explore the easy parts. In the next photo, I just found Battery Howard:

Next time I go there, I know to look for the rail tracks coming from my right here. I also know that the building to the right must be what is labelled H2 on the map... a dormitory?! In front of the white wall in the distance were two 12" mortars. It once looked like this:

(I am almost sure that this old photo is from another battery, most likely from either Meritt, Prince or Carr from the Pacific side of Panama. But these 12" mortar batteries are all exactly the same design). Behind the gunners you can see the Plotting Room with the round "windows" and that square thing on top. It now looks like this:

The square thing on top is the Range Indicator that shows the numbers for azimuth and elevation (and this one also "zone proj." which stands for "zone projection" or "zone projectile" I think??).

I plan to select a number of old photo's and re-shoot them from the same positions, using the same focal length etc., so that it becomes very easy to compare then and now. These old photo's are all from before 1945.

We also tried to enter the bunkers but it is too dark and scary. I saw huge bats flying around there so next time we'll bring some torches so we can see where we put our feet haha! I will also need to bring the photo-flash equipment and pray it will work because it's huge inside there!

ciao!
Nick & Josie.

Comments

[Peter en Paula]

Hey Nick en Jose,
Hoe gaat het met jullie? Zijn jullie nog in Colon of is de boot weer klaar en te water?
Wij proberen langzaam uit het dal te klimmen. Er is geen vooruitgang wat de verlamming betreft maar het evenwicht is wat beter door gewenning.
Nog steeds bezig met dokters en misschien zenuwtransplantatie vanwege verlamming. Heb inm iddels twee gehoorapparaten.
Om de stemming te verbeteren een mooi huis gekocht. Hopelijk half Juli verhuizen.
http://garantiemakelaars.kijkmijnhuis.nl/Public/Welkom/Index.cfm?CFID=3756163&CFTOKEN=1f4f3a77b5b1cef5-BA16BEBF-9D2F-30AB-6EFD1EE29A102648&jsessionid=843083563ae
Benieuwd of jullie al onderweg zijn.
Groeten en bedankt voor jullie hulp en vriendschap.
Peter en Paula

[Jose]

Hoi Peter & Paula,

Wij zijn bijna klaar om het water in te gaan. De boot bleek 600 blister te hebben toen we de kant gingen (10 weken geleden) dus het duurde allemaal een beetje langer dan we gedacht hadden.

Jammer dat de verlamming nog niet verbeterd is, hopelijk is die zenuwtransplantatie de oplossing.

Als ik op de link van je huis klik krijg ik alleen een reclame site voor "kijkmijnhuis.nl".
Kun je een foto mailen?

Groetjes,

Jose en Nick