Fort Miles Rifle Range: From WWII to Desert Storm
Fort Miles in Delaware is a fascinating blend of hidden history and overgrown ruins. Part of Cape Henlopen State Park today, this former coastal fort was once bristling with heavy guns and busy training ranges – prompting one historian to dub it “the most heavily armed state park in the world”. In this post, we’ll explore the history of Fort Miles’ rifle range – when it was used, what it was used for – from its World War II origins through its Desert Storm-era final days. No nature walk here; this is all about the military legacy lingering behind the dunes.
World War II: Coastal Defense and a Secret Rifle Range
Established in 1941-42 as a key coastal defense installation, Fort Miles guarded the entrance to the Delaware Bay during World War II. The Army built massive concrete bunkers and mounted huge seacoast guns to deter German warships and U-boats. But alongside the big 16-inch and 12-inch cannons, the fort also included more ordinary facilities – barracks, ammo bunkers, and small-arms firing ranges for training troops. Every soldier stationed at Fort Miles needed to practice with their rifles, so a multi-position rifle range was constructed early on (one veteran recalled building it as “one of the first jobs” when the fort was new in 1941). Troops likely fired M1 Garands and Springfield 1903s on these ranges, honing marksmanship in the pine woods behind the sand dunes.
Despite all the armament, Fort Miles never fired a shot in anger during WWII – no German ships ever came into range. The fort’s biggest brush with the enemy came in May 1945, after V-E Day: the German submarine U-858 approached Cape Henlopen flying a white flag. It became the first enemy warship to surrender in U.S. waters since the War of 1812. The U-boat’s crew was taken ashore at Fort Miles as POWs on May 14, 1945.
Figure: May 1945 – German U-858 crewmen being transferred at sea to a U.S. Navy vessel for internment at Fort Miles. Fort Miles’ claim to fame was accepting this U-boat surrender, a dramatic capstone to its WWII service.
After Germany’s surrender, Fort Miles quickly wound down. The huge coastal guns were declared surplus by 1948 and removed. Yet the post itself did not close completely – a hint that the rifle range’s story wasn’t over yet.
Cold War Training: From Recreation to Reserve Ranges
With the coast artillery mission gone, Fort Miles entered a quieter phase but remained under Army control for decades. In 1961, part of the base became Fort Miles Army Recreation Area, managed by Fort Meade as a seaside rest-and-training center. The federal government started handing over other sections to the new Cape Henlopen State Park (564 acres in 1964 alone), but about 190 acres stayed with the Army for training use. Soldiers and reservists would bring their families to enjoy the beach, even as weekend drills and summer exercises continued on site. Fort Miles’ gentle shoreline proved ideal for amphibious vehicle practice, and local Army Reserve units used the gently sloping beaches for “across-the-beach” landing training. Just inland, the old rifle range waited to be used again.
By the late 1960s and early ’70s, the Army decided to put that range back into action. Plans were made to rehabilitate the 20-position rifle range at Fort Miles so that Delaware-based Army Reserve and National Guard units could conduct their annual rifle qualification there. This would spare local units from traveling to Fort Meade, MD, for target practice. The renovation likely involved rebuilding target butts and clearing the firing lines out to 300 yards. Once refurbished, the Fort Miles range hosted weekend warriors zeroing M14s and later M16s as part of regular training. In fact, a U.S. Army Engineer publication from 1971 noted that reactivating the Fort Miles range would save time and money for Delaware’s Reserve/Guard marksmanship tests.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Fort Miles quietly served as a backwoods training site for Reserve component units. The Delaware Army National Guard’s soldiers would come in to run amphibious drills, practice infantry tactics, and qualify with their service rifles amid the old concrete bunkers. The Army officially categorized Fort Miles as a Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) area, but it was essentially a multi-purpose training annex managed by Fort Meade. During this era, the once-formidable fort slowly faded from public view – parts became a state park campground – yet the crack of rifles could still occasionally echo from the pine forests. Locals may have forgotten the range was there at all.
Desert Storm and the Final Shots
Fort Miles’ long military tenure finally ended in the early 1990s. As part of the post-Cold War base closures, the Army decided to shut down the Fort Miles site completely in 1991. Fittingly, the last official military use of Fort Miles came during Operation Desert Storm. After the Gulf War’s conclusion in 1991, some returning U.S. troops bivouacked at Fort Miles – essentially camping on the old base – for demobilization and homecoming processing. One can imagine those soldiers, fresh from the Arabian Desert, sleeping in tents near the same dunes where GIs had once guarded against Nazi U-boats.
When the Army left for good in 1991, the remaining 96 acres of Fort Miles (including the range area) were transferred to the State of Delaware to be preserved for public recreation. The once-busy rifle range fell silent. No more crack of M16 fire, no more shouted range commands – just the wind in the scrub pines. The earthworks and target pits were left to nature. Over the ensuing years, sand and vegetation slowly began reclaiming the firing lines.
Yet evidence of the range’s final chapter is still out there if you know where to look. On a recent trip into the brush, I discovered several discarded 5.56mm stripper clips on the ground – the kind used to quickly load M16 magazines. Finding these little metal clips was like uncovering artifacts from a modern archeological site. They likely date to the late 1980s or 1990 (the Desert Storm era), confirming that National Guard troops were shooting out here within the last days of Fort Miles’ service. It’s a small but tangible link to the range’s history, bridging the WWII generation and the Gulf War generation on the same soil.
Fort Miles Today: Remnants and Memory
Today, Fort Miles has been reborn as a historical attraction inside Cape Henlopen State Park. The bunkers and gun batteries have been stabilized and opened as the Fort Miles Museum, with exhibits on coastal defense and WWII life. In 2015, volunteers even acquired and installed a massive 16-inch naval gun from the battleship USS Missouri as a centerpiece display – a nod to the fort’s big-gun heritage.
Figure: A rusting 16-inch Mark 7 gun from USS Missouri on display at Fort Miles (2015). Fort Miles’ museum now preserves such artifacts of its coastal defense past, while the old rifle range lies quietly in the surrounding woods.
As for the rifle range itself, it remains an unmarked ruin in the woods – a hidden part of the park’s landscape. If you wander off the beaten path near the repurposed barracks area, you might spot the telltale shape of the old earthen berms and concrete target pits. They are largely camouflaged by sand and tangles of vegetation now, but they speak to decades of soldiers firing away at paper targets downrange. There are no signs or tour guides for the range; it’s truly a ghost range, known mainly to local history buffs (and perhaps a few curious hikers who stumble upon an oddly flat clearing backed by a low wall of sand).
In retrospect, the Fort Miles rifle range saw a remarkable span of American military history. Built for WWII riflemen guarding the Delaware coast, repurposed for Cold War reservists during peacetime training, and ultimately used by troops of the Desert Storm era, it quietly mirrored the changes in the U.S. Army over half a century. Now it sits silent, an echo of soldiers past. Next time you visit Cape Henlopen and explore Fort Miles, remember that beyond the big gun displays and towering observation bunkers, a humble rifle range once played its part in keeping America sharp – from the days of M1 Garands to the era of the M16. The targets are gone, the shooters have long since packed up, but the history remains etched in the sand.
Sources: The historical details in this post are drawn from the Fort Miles Museum archives and official records. Key references include the Delaware Public Archives (which note Fort Miles’ extensive WWII facilities and the U-858 surrender), Army Corps of Engineers reports on Fort Miles’ post-war use by Reserve units, and Base Realignment and Closure documents confirming Fort Miles’ 1991 closure after Gulf War service. These sources, along with on-site exploration evidence, paint a comprehensive picture of the rifle range’s life from the 1940s to 1990s. The next time you hear the phrase “if these walls could talk,” think of those mossy bunkers and sand berms at Fort Miles – they’d have some stories indeed, from World War II right up to Desert Storm.
