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WWII AA site question

What a great find , didn't think there were any left this intact
I give you Chadwell Heath:

Chadwell Heath.jpg
 
Did Ferranti take advantage of the ground-mat for the GL Radar? GL Mk. I radar - Wikipedia

... don't know!

The circle I am referring to is here on Google maps..

55.910698,-3.177286

I think the Bloodhound was parked in the centre of that circle. The Ferranti test site was the loop to the 7 o'clock of the circle, and to the east of the gun position. From what I remember there were usually a row of Type 86 radars sat there for many years..
 
I've done a few walks round there. I remember seeing what looked like holdfasts for masts of some description, presumably related to the modern "WT & TV Station" marked on the 25km map west of the Cleveland Way at SE 4590899504. There's also a mast marked about 300m south of that location. I'm fairly sure there's a ROC monitoring post in that neck of the woods too.
Rather than just edit the grid ref in my earlier post and hope nobody notices, I'll come clean and admit I made a fundamental contour error. In light of Streetview footage now available of the Cleveland Way, I find that a better location is NZ 462001. Only a move of 250m but that's significant in a wood.

As regards the WT and TV masts, I discounted them on the grounds of age although I must presume that they were put there before the Bilsdale mast.
 
I believe that there were also many more Light Anti-Aircraft batteries. The mobile nature of these determined that there was much less of a residual footprint. During 1944, many were relocated to the South East coastal areas as part of Operation Diver, as a countermeasure to the new V1 threat before they reached London.

Very little could be done to counter the V2 threat once they had been launched.
Actually, quite a lot was done to defeat the V2. See a very comprehensive article written by an Arrser last year in the Air and Space Review: pp110 onwards:

 
Diver sites left little or no remains as they used a portable holdfast known as a Pile Portable Platform.

Typical Diver site at Southwold:

View attachment 495859

The Pile Platform used a matrix sleepers and railway track with a holdfast attached and buried in the ground, This is a model of one:

View attachment 495861
Orford. About 25 k south of Southwold (that’s Orford Castle at the back). Also about 5 k from Shingle Street, where THAT landing is alleged to have taken place.
 
Covered extensively in other threads on the site .
Sadly , most RA WWII RA officers were not Hans Von Luck walts , and the 3.7in didn't like being fired in A/T role because the trunnions couldn't take the weight of the barrel in the horizontal firing position , plus there was no dedicated AP ammunition anyway ( I learned that on here ) .
That said I would have loved to have seen what a troop of Bofors would have done to Mk III's in the desert .
I have heard stories about the 3.7" in the anti tank role forever, that it strained the carriage, damaged the recoil system or it couldn't cope and now it's the trunnions it seems. Does anyone know the truth about it as there are photos of it being used as field artillery which must come close.
 
I have heard stories about the 3.7" in the anti tank role forever, that it strained the carriage, damaged the recoil system or it couldn't cope and now it's the trunnions it seems. Does anyone know the truth about it as there are photos of it being used as field artillery which must come close.
It was a combination of things. The carriage couldn’t handle sustained horizontal fire - it was used in the indirect role but at angles of fire that were within design limits. A more basic issue was that, unlike the 88, it wasn’t designed for multi-purpose use and thus much heavier and taller, which made it very difficult to use in a direct fire role. There were also organizational issues in that few were assigned to the field army and were therefore in a position to provide AT fire. Finally, the fielding of the 6 and 17 Pounder guns alleviated the need for using the 3.7 in the AT role.

Bottom line is that it could be used in the AT role in a emergency, but the design features that made it such a good AA weapon made it a questionable choice as a dedicated AT weapon.
 
Bit of thread drift but looking at that British AA system in the picture I can't help but notice the cosmetic similarities to the German 88 AA system (and bearing in mind the anti tank success the baddies were having with the 88s) did anyone within the MOD at the time look at deploying said AA system in an anti - tank role?

Short answer:
A) Because we weren't stupid and desperate.
B) We did occasionally and it worked.

Longer answers:


I have heard stories about the 3.7" in the anti tank role forever, that it strained the carriage, damaged the recoil system or it couldn't cope and now it's the trunnions it seems. Does anyone know the truth about it as there are photos of it being used as field artillery which must come close.

In a word: Bollocks.
In a longer word: Booooooollocks

There used to be a big rant on Wikipedia about all of the above. Right next to a picture of a 3.7in being used DF...

Now, back to finding bunkers near me!
 
Actually, quite a lot was done to defeat the V2. See a very comprehensive article written by an Arrser last year in the Air and Space Review: pp110 onwards:


I did make a point of specifying "after they had been launched". As far as I am aware, there were absolututely no countermeasures at that time for what was, in effect, a rudimentary ICBM already on its way.

The saving grace for us was that both the V1 and V2 were deployed at such a late stage in the war that the progress of the allies after the Normandy landings steadily rendered the development and launch sites unusable. I understand that there were further Vergeltungswaffen nasties in the pipeline.
 
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