Final History with ‘Hud’: Story behind Topsail concrete towers, once part of top-secret Navy project
TOPSAIL BEACH, NC (WWAY) — If you travel along the coast near Topsail Beach, you’ll likely notice some unique structures towering up from the sand. These concrete buildings were once part of a top-secret U.S. Navy project used to develop supersonic surface-to-air missiles which would eventually become the first guided missiles.
Coined ‘Operation Bumblebee’, the project was started in the middle 1940s on a then barren barrier island without homes, stores or roads. Navy and Marine personnel, numbering 500 men, arrived in 1946 to begin installing the necessary facilities.
In March of 1947, the military research team built several structures to house the experimental project and provide a test platform. The buildings included a launchpad, rocket assembly building and photographic towers used to track and study the flights of the rockets through 1948.
Over an 18 month period, as many as 200 rockets between 3 and 13 feet long were fired from Topsail off the coast to a maximum clear distance of 40 miles. The area was later abandoned because of weather patterns and increasing sea traffic, with the project shifting to California and New Mexico, and the towers sold to the public.
The towers were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993.
The majority of the towers are still standing, having survived countless hurricanes. Each one sits on a 900-square-foot concrete platform that’s five feet thick and held up by 41 pilings buried 40 feet into the sand. Most of them having been remodeled into homes or other large structures.
Although it’s been nearly eight decades since a rocket was fired from the region, the Topsail towers still mark a very important time in military history.
Meteorologist Matthew Huddleston (‘Hud’) has always had two major loves – weather and history. This will be his 121st and last history segment, as he has taken a meteorology job in Raleigh. Thank you to everyone who has read his history pieces over the last two years.
To read all previous History with ‘Hud’ segments, click HERE.
