During World War I, the Navy established Naval Air Station Montauk in August 1917, commanded by LT Marc Mitscher.

In World War II, with German U-boats threatening the East Coast and Long Island, Montauk was again considered a likely invasion point.

The whole facility, with Army, Navy and Coast Guard constituents, was officially known as the "US Military Reservation" but the locals just called it "Camp Hero".

Camp Hero itself grew to 278 acres (1.13 km2), and included four surplus 16-inch naval rifles, originally intended for battleships, installed as coastal artillery pieces in two concrete bunkers.

These batteries rendered obsolete almost all previous heavy guns in the Harbor Defenses of Long Island Sound.

When World War II ended, the base was temporarily shut down and used as a training facility by the Army Reserve.

[4] This program was appropriately named "Lashup"[5] As part of this temporary network, ADC placed an AN/TPS-1B long-range search radar at Fort Hero in June 1948 and designated the site as Montauk Point, L-10.

In November 1957, the Army closed the Camp Hero portion of the military reservation as Soviet long-distance bombers could fly well above ground-based artillery.

The Eastern portion of the site was donated to New York State, but it remained unused because of its close proximity to a high-security facility.

During 1958, Montauk AFS joined the Semi Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) system, feeding data to DC-01 at McGuire AFB, New Jersey.

Montauk AFS was state of the art and many new systems were developed or tested there including magnetic memory for storage, light pens, keyboards, WANs (Wide area networks) and modular circuit packaging.

Montauk was the operational parent station for Texas Tower 3 (TT-3) offshore in the Atlantic Ocean from June 1958-25 March 1963.

In 1978, the Air Force submitted a proposal to the Carter Administration to close the base, as it was largely obsolete due to the emergence of orbital satellite reconnaissance technology.

A GATR (Ground Air Transmitter Receiver) facility remained in service to direct military aircraft operating within the region.

Source after 1951[6] This article incorporates public domain material from the Air Force Historical Research Agency