Military Archaeology

This is a great leap forward....
Duxford Aviation Museum

 

Wouldn't you know that someone was bound to complain?
Upper Heyford Plan Attacked

 

Ah yes, the old euphemism 'tidied up' ie demolished, eradicated, flattened.....

 

Or vandalism by any other name.....
I was reading my copies of the Defence of Britain Gazetteers for Scotland the other night, and in the general introduction it mentioned that of the 1000-ish HAA gunsites built during the war in Britain, at least 790 have been demolished post war.

 

Speaking of which, this is the former HAA gunsite at Myre End Farm, Cairneyhill, Fife. It was coded RNG (Rosyth North Gun) 3, and belonged to the northerly division of the Forth Gun Defended Area.
A mile to the south is the Royal Naval Armaments Depot at Crombie (which had it's own LAA Battery, being a Vulnerable Point). A mile to the east was an ammunition dump in the village of Crossford, while the town of Dunfermline and Rosyth Naval Base were only a few miles further away.
In the early part of the war, the battery had 4x4.5 inch AA guns, but by 1943 was armed with 4x3.7 inch static guns, the site being unmanned at that time. It was manned by troops from 36 AA Brigade, 3 AA Division, 3 AA Corps.
This is the guardhouse



This is the original pre-war WO security fence around the perimeter-itself an incredibly rare find.



This is one of the magazines, each gun had one. Internally, they were divided into five bays to separate shells from charges etc.



Each bay had legends like this, allowing the gunners to see at a glance how many rounds were stored in each magazine; it reads '272 rounds'.



This is an overview of number one gunpit.



And this is one of around four ready ammunition lockers spread around each gunpit.



These clamps are dotted around the top of every gunpit wall, and were used to secure camo nets.



[ 24. July 2005, 02:23 PM: Message edited by: The_Historian ]

 

This is a crew shelter. Because the gunsite was built immediately pre-war, there were none of these originally. They were hurriedly built outside each gunpit, and surrounded by protective berms, as a result of crews taking casualties from strafing enemy aircraft during the Battle of Britain. Sites built later in the war had at least two of these inside each pit.



This is no2 gunpit.



These next two shots are of the cable conduits leading from the operations block to each gun. These carried the cables from the predictor and height/rangefinder equipment directly to each gun to enable rapid aiming.





This is the remains of an original instruction in the shelter of n0.3 gun...



And this is a unit badge in the same place...



It appears to be the AA Command badge of an arm firing a bow and arrow upwards, with '455' superimposed on it. This is probably a battery number, as I can't find any reference to an AA regiment of that number.

You can just see traces of the Dark Earth camouflage scheme on the outside of no.3 gunpit. This is more evidence of the battery's pre-war origin, as there would have been no need for camouflage paint if each pit had been intended to have earth banked against the walls.

 

This is inside no.3 magazine, but illegible...



While this is from the inside of no.4 gun shelter....



This shield looks like another unit badge, but the rest is also illegible unfortunately.

 

These are shots of the walls inside no.4 gunpit, the best preserved of the whole battery.
These markings would have marked off compass points (from contemporary magnetic north), and also any targets to be avoided, like nearby church spires.

 

This the operations block. Again one built during the war would have had a more logical layout, and also a ramp curving round from the building's front to the rear exit.

 

This is the most exciting building on the site...to me at any rate!
This is the building where the MkII Gun Laying radar was installed.



This is the only door in the building.



And on the wall are these equipment serial numbers.



The rest of the building is separated into two rooms, one each for transmitting/receiving sets. The only entry into each room is through one of these hatches; the two smaller ones lead to ducting for each room.











Anyway, sorry about the length of all these posts. Hope someone finds them interesting!

[ 24. July 2005, 02:59 PM: Message edited by: The_Historian ]

 

An absolute model of good recording, Gordon ! By coincidence, there were two 3.7" AA guns on display at Beltring this weekend - very impressive guns indeed.

 

Glad you enjoyed Beltring, Martin, I bet the ack-ack guns were a visitor magnet. I'm presuming they were the mobile ones on wheeled trailers?
Glad you enjoyed the photos too; an enjoyable way to spend Sunday!
I actually came back with around 70 pictures, but these are probably the most interesting ones to most people. The rest only excite sad anoraks like wot I am.

 

Yes, they were both in pristine condition and were the mobile AA version. This was the very complex and heavy mounting which precluded the gun becoming the 'British 88' for Anti-tank use in the early years of the war.

PS : What a trip down memory lane - this gun was the subject of my very first posting on the forum ( 3 long years ago ! )

 

It's been a beautiful summer so far. Any of the rest of you guys got snaps of any wartime sites found/visited? I keep feeling that Scotland generally, and Fife in particular, are like living museums when it comes to WW2 archaeology, but I know that can't be true. While I was in Dover looking for the hovercraft terminal, the clifftops were FULL of pillboxes, bunkers etc, so there must be loads of sites out there. I've got a list the length of your arm of sites I need to re-photograph-and that's just in central Scotland! I photographed dozens of them about 10-15 years ago, then gave the snaps to the Defence of Britain Project and assumed I'd subsequently lost the negatives. I found all the negatives last year, but there are nearly 300 and it's acually cheaper to re-photograph all the sites with the digital camera and save them onto CD-ROM.
Anyone got any pictures of stuff in their neck of the woods?

 

I haven't been to sites as such, but have been visiting wargraves all over the country, which will be added to my site in due course. I still plan to visit 'Arnhem' later this summer. Oh wait, the only site I did visit was a mansion in the Dunes near Bergen, Netherlands, which the germans took over and build an watch tower on top of, so they could observe the whole coastline there. To oversee the fortifications and check the Allied fleets off the coasts.

Nice thing is they build it in the same architectual form (?) as the mansion, which was really nice of them....Unfortunatley I don't have a pic handy....

 

Be interested to see one, Stevin. Your site's looking good btw.
It's like when I was on holiday in France last month: we passed two German casemates by the roadside on the way out of Calais when we arrived; I saw a couple of flak bunkers on the heights above the beach at Boulogne; a farm a few miles outside our village had substantial concrete bunkers-and I never managed to photograph ANY of them.

 

I just found this on a newsfeeder. Anyone got any more info?
German Soldiers' Remains Unearthed in Lithuania

 

Another new "concrete" book.

"Pillboxes - Images of An Unfought Battle"

 

Hi Pillboxes, and welcome to the forum!
Do you know if that book is an improvement on Henry Wills' classic?

 

'Pillboxes' has been an occasional visitor to the forum before, Gordon ! Take a look at ; -

http://www.pillboxesuk.co.uk/