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Battery 164 consisted of Troop “A” and Troop “B”
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Battery 167, Troop “C” and Troop “D”
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Battery 265, Troop “E” and Troop “F”
Dad joined Battery 164, Troop B. There appear to have been 8 guns per Battery, and there were 3 types of gun.
A.S.Cross (ex 167 Battery) describes the ordinance;
Each Battery had two Troops who
were identical in their make-up, each having four pieces of ordinance
(guns), a predictor (akin to a modern computer), a Height & Range
Finder, and a Telescope for identification purposes. Each also had a
Communication Unit for linking up to outside sources.
There were three types/sizes of gun
used by the Regiment during the period 1939-45, the 3 inch, the 3.7
inch and the 4.5 inch. The 3.7 inch Mobile version being the most
used and most liked.
According to Henry Moore (164
Battery) the 3 inch gun was least liked. It had poor capabilities,
and the loud “crack” it made when firing, sometimes resulted in
perforated eardrums and permanently impaired hearing.
the gun crew
There were generally 9 members in a QF 3.7" gun team, and they were known by their numbers:-
- Number 1: in charge of the gun (gave instructions)
- Number 2: bearing setter (direction)
- Number 3: elevation setter
- Number 4: fuze setter
- Number 5: the breech man
- Number 6: the rammer
- Numbers 7, 8 & 9: the ammunition men
These guns could be operated for short periods with only 6 men.
about the shells
It may not be obvious to us mere civilians, but the shells fired at enemy aircraft where not necessarily expected to hit the target. These shells included a propellant, a high explosive (HE) charge, and some means of detonating the HE.
At the start of World War 2, a timed fuze was used for detonation. When the gun was fired, the propellant exploded forcing the shell to separate from the shell-case with a muzzle velocity of about 800m/s (in the case of a QF 3.7" gun). The idea was to set the fuze on the shell to explode the HE when the shell was close to the aircraft, and rely on fragments of metal ("flak") to damage the plane and bring it down.
Exploding the shell within (say) 30m might be enough to bring the plane down, or exploding the shell within 200m might be enough to damage the plane or injure the crew. Naturally this would depend on the size of the shell or force of the blast.
Note that 800m/s is almost 1,800miles per hour. Therefore a small error in fuze setting may result in the shell bursting hundreds of metres from the target aircraft.
It is also worth mentioning that 'what goes up, must come down'. A large number of military and civilian casualties were thought to be incurred by metal falling back to earth.
Towards the end of the war, a proximity fuze was introduced which exploded the shell when the fuze detected that is was close to an aircraft. This resulted in a dramatic improvement in hit rate, maybe 5-10 times better than before.
According to Bill Church, shell cases were recycled and sent back to the munitions factories. They could be used 4 times. He also mentioned that after an air-raid, the hot shell cases were gathered up and put into their beds to warm the blankets!
A.S.Cross continues;
To burst the shells in the target
area was a complex business requiring the combined efforts of a
number of highly trained and dedicated operators. By following the
target with the instruments we could measure its height, its course
and rate of travel. This information would be translated into usable
data by the use of shaped cams and intricate gearing and fed to
specially prepared rotating drums, these being engraved with height
and fuze curves. By matching a pointer to a height curve a ‘lead
time’ could be predicted, this was the time to be allowed for the
shell and target to reach the same spot in the sky.
Information required by the guns,
bearing and elevation, was transmitted to them via cables from the
predictor, terminating at dials with ‘follow the pointer’
displays for the ‘Layers’.
Each engagement was managed by the
Gun Position Officer (G.P.O.), his orders to control the shooting
were relayed by his assistance (G.P.O.Ac.), this allowed the G.P.O.
to concentrate wholly on conducting the shoot and obey instructions
from the G.O.R. {gun operations room}
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| The Vickers Armstrong QF 3.7 inch gun |
The Vickers Armstrong QF 3.7 inch gun fired a 28lbs (12.7kg) shell to a height of 30,000 feet with a maximum range of over 7 miles. Maximum rate of fire was 20 rounds per minute.
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| A Number 1 Mark III Predictor used with the QF 3.7 inch AA gun. (South African National Museum of Military History, Johannesburg) |
The predictor is a mechanical analogue computer used to track aircraft and control the attached anti aircraft weapons. According to Henry Moore, this was operated by a 5 man team.
A.S.Cross continues;
We had been
led to believe that on declaration of war, the enemy would unleash
his forces upon us almost immediately, and in fact the government had
produced a film, shown throughout the country earlier in the year,
depicting what horrors we could expect, and so, on that Sunday, we
were called out, the Municipal Siren sounded and we heard our fate
over the radio with mixed feelings. All sites were on this alert and
probably listened as we did and many an eye was cocked to the sky as
we were stood down, to spend the rest of the day in reflection.
Now that war
was a reality, and we were deemed “Regulars for the Duration” we
all appeared to have matured over-night and everything we did had a
sense of purpose to it. When the siren sounded, by day the lads
dropped what they were doing and high-tailed it to their posts
grabbing their gas respirator as they went. By night they came in
many stages of attire, dressing as they came, none wanted to be the
last. All covers were removed and ‘Number 1s’ {a team member}
would report their readiness. The time taken was of the order of one
minute, even by night and without the use of ‘carrots’.
Up to November
there were many call-outs all ending after varying amounts of time,
without a shot being fired. If the session was of a long duration,
tea would come round, served from a ‘dixie’, hot, strong and
sweet. If a meal was missed the cookhouse staff would regale us with
sandwiches, those massive door-stop efforts which were a meal in
themselves, but very welcome.
Then in a
clear cold night in November, the siren sounded about 9pm. We took
posts and almost immediately heard the drone of an aircraft. The
local searchlights exposed and in their beam was a Dornier Seaplane.
It was a text-book engagement. The H/RF gave us a height, the
Predictor set it and balanced their rates, a fuze was set, the guns
loaded and fired. Almost a perfect salvo as I remember it each gun
fired 2 rounds, their bursting obscured the target from view as it
dived out of sight. We were traversing back to our standby position
when the lights exposed a second hostile aircraft. This was given the
same treatment. Both Troops engaged the targets, but we never did
hear if we had been successful or not, but the compliments were many
from all directions on the way the engagements had been handled, and
we ourselves felt very proud of acquitting ourselves so well on this
our first action in this war.
Now came the
hard bit, the gun barrels had to be scrubbed clean of all debris, and
for this we used a circular bristle brush on a shaft known as a
‘Brush Piasaba’ {from a Brazilian palm: Leopoldinia Piassaba}
with lashings of hot water, then carefully dried out. Meanwhile No.5
would be stripping down the breech to clean and oil its many parts.
This task was carried out one gun at a time in case of an emergency
call out, so we always had fire power available. In practice No.5
would have that mechanism back and working by the time the gun was
ready for loading. But this night was different. Never had a gun been
given such loving care than this as 9 loving fathers would help to
put their first-born to bed and sleep. {I assume there was a 9 man
team operating the gun} None of these tasks were easy, the Breech
Block (of special hardened steel) weighed just under a hundredweight
{about 50kg} and great care had to be taken not to damage the many
slots and apertures for fear of any malfunction in action.
Having cleaned up to their own satisfaction, they were free to go to bed or spend a short time celebrating in our makeshift canteen.
Having cleaned up to their own satisfaction, they were free to go to bed or spend a short time celebrating in our makeshift canteen.
The next
morning was business as usual, and our latest project was “drainage”.
Our site was below sea level so, to keep us from becoming
waterlogged, the existing ditches were cleaned out and some fresh
ones dug to route the water away.
Christmas came upon us bringing
with it very heavy snow. All sites were cut off by huge drifts
forcing them to improvise, making sledges to haul the rations across
the fields to the sites. We on Canvey were lucky, ours had arrived
just before the snow, but we did have to dig through a huge drift
towards Benfleet to get the Christmas leave party away to the
station.
We were given our own petrol tank;
silent prayers were offered to the God of Purloin by those who could
see a quick few bob on the horizon, until they saw the tanker driver
empty a flash of red dye in. Then the budding chemists within our
ranks spent many hours trying to filter the dye out before they
finally admitted defeat (Army 1, troops 0).
But it wasn’t all light-hearted fun. A.S.Cross again;
Somewhere about this time the
Regiment suffered its first casualty, all due to a silly mistake.
At the time, sites were ‘Standing
To’ an hour at dawn and an hour at sunset due to the threat of
invasion from ‘Jerry’. On ‘Stand Down’ one of the rifle party
was taking a practice aim on an aiming disc held by B.S.M. Herbie
Wells. The rifle had not been unloaded or checked, there was in fact
a live round in the chamber, thus, when the aiming sequence was
completed the rifle fired and the round passed through his forehead,
killing Herbie instantly.
I recently uncovered some information concerning this accident, which occurred in July 1940 (see: https://sergeant-ack-ack.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-accidental-death-of-bsm-herbie-wells.html).
Battery Sergeant Major Herbert (Herbie) Wells was an experienced soldier in his late 30s. This training exercise involved a trainee pointing his rifle at an aiming disc, while the instructor (Herbie) looked through the disc to see if the rifle moved off-target when the trainee pulled the trigger.
Obviously this exercise was to be carried out with an unloaded rifle, and it seems incredible that the rifle was not double checked by the instructor and trainee to ensure this was the case.
A.S.Cross continues;
One sunny Saturday afternoon in
August, the siren sounded, the site was manned and ready for action
in seconds, when we heard the drone of aircraft engines, our
‘Spotters’ picked them up and we were ‘on target’. The sight
that met our eyes was almost unbelievable. Hundreds of enemy aircraft
in 3 separate “V” formations. Some rounds were fired at them, but
then we had to stop to allow our own fighters to get at them, which
they did like terriers after rats, an apt description. The Battle of
Britain had commenced in earnest.
Night raids now took over. We would
start manning fairly early in the evening right through to dawn,
though not shooting all the time, the guns and instruments were being
manned. Each gun would fire approximately 200 rounds per night, and
that meant a lot of energy expended to keep those hungry breeches
fed, the spent cases removed, and the stocks replenished. Then when
the ‘all-clear’ sounded after dawn, we faced the maintenance of
the guns, hauling the ammunition from the magazine, stacking the
spent cases ready for the collection by the R.A.S.C. This all
amounted to about an hour before we could expect breakfast and then
possibly some sleep.
There is an excellent film over on Periscope.org (if the link is not broken) showing the men relaxing before the alarm goes off! Here is the full link to the video:-
...but do bear in mind that this film was made for domestic war-time consumption. The men are too relaxed, and they may not have had access to a piano or a billiard table. They probably played draughts rather than chess, and cards rather than billiards.