Battery Adair

Battery Adair was designed in the early 1890s as part of the Endicott Period upgrades to Fort Taylor. It added four 3-inch 15-pounder Rapid Fire Rifles on masking parapet mounts. Construction began in 1898 under the supervision of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers., Rapid Fire Rifles , This Battery was two stories tall and built in place of the American Civil War casemates along the west face of the Fort. The four 3-inch guns were emplaced on the upper level with a separate powder magazine for each emplacement on the lower level. Shell and powder hoists were not required because the 3-inch ammunition was light enough to be hand-carried., Guns Retired , When the United States entered World War I, there was a widespread removal of coastal defense weapons for service in Europe. Many of the gun and mortar tubes removed were sent to arsenals for modification and mounting on mobile carriages., On March 27, 1920, all four guns were ordered to be removed and the carriages salvaged. Dredging of the moat in 1981 recovered the four gun mounts from the sediment of the former ocean bottom., Caretaker Status
Between 1906 and 1916, the U.S. Army kept the Battery in caretaker status. It was used only by the Florida National Guard during their annual summer maneuvers or non-operating conditions., (captions) , 3-inch gun like those on top of Battery Adair, Diagram of same 3-inch rapid-fire rifle