4. No Battle Has Ever Been Fought at Fort Totten
With the construction of the Water Battery, Battery King, and the Endicott Battery from the 1860s through the early 1900s, Fort Totten was poised and ready for action, but luckily, it never came. Besides test fires, no missiles or cannons were ever shot from Fort Totten at enemy forces.
The Water Battery was deemed obsolete before it was even finished. The guns at Battery King, which shot artillery straight up into the air with the intention of hitting something when they came back down, were upgraded with the construction of the Endicott Battery in 1902. Cannons at the Endicott battery were hoisted over the wall and shot artillery straight at its intended target, a much more effective strategy. When World War I broke out, the guns at the Endicott Battery were shipped overseas to Europe where they were much more needed than on the coast of Queens.
