September-October - Air Defense Artillery

5 SECHET PHASE OF THE FLYING BOi\lB 45
Inuch greater volume of fire than can a mobile battery. slabs, 30,000 tons of hard core and the construction of road.
Further, the static batteries are what are known as mixed That in its turn required the employment of 1,500 skilled
~~I1eries; that is, thev are manned bv teams of men and men and 3,500 unskilled. No civil labor could be spared, so
1 omen-gunners and'members of the' Auxiliary Territorial A.A Command had to find them all.
I' Service. The men load and operate the gun in the gunpit. These men themselves needed tents and cookhouses,
t The\\'omen lay and operate the instruments that put the fourteen railheads for the stores and material (at which 300
) £unson the target. A good mixed battery is a combination freight cars were cleared daily) and an average of 900
l~ffast and accurate work by both men and women in their 3-ton trucks each day for a month.
~t\.espectivejobs, and by quite a high percentage of profes- So much for the basic requirements. The men and women
. ionalgunners it is considered to be better than an all-male of the batteries had to be fed and the guns had to be supbatteryusing
the same equipment. plied with ammunition (in four months just over 50,000
Until the Hying bomb attacks began, a static gun was rounds of 3.7" ammunition were fired). Nor could the men
rerystatic indeed. It implied the building of a concrete em- and women there be left with nothing but the site and ordiplacement
and base for the gun and the provision of hutted nary rations. The ration scale was augmented, to provide
\Jccommodation for the personnel of the battery. The Hying an additional hot supper at night (the batteries were nor-
~mb changed all that. The personnel went into tents and mally in action at night only) and for hot drinks throughout
thegun went on to a new design in platforms. This, known the day and night.
asa "mattress," consisted of two sets of railway lines bolted By way of amenities, 20,000 woollen garments were sent,
to sleepers and laid in the form of a cross. A steel frame was 5,000 books, 1,000 upholstered chairs, 1,000 canvas chairs.
bolted on to the central intersection of the lines and this Fifteen 16mm and one 35mm mobile movie projectors were
,en'ed as a base plate for the gun. The mattress could be sent on tour in the area. Rest hostels were opened in the
bid on any sort of ground capable of being levelled. The
ItWOsets of rails and the base plate travelled separately, and
nearest towns and transport
vided.
for short periods of leave prothe
whole was finished by bedding the sleepers, when laid
with hard core. "Static" in At\. Command became
That was one problem. The next was the coordination
of ground and air defenses.
I down,
J relative term. The fundamental difficulty was that that area of Britain
• Early in September, 1944, ten Hying bombs crossed the
7East Coast of England Hying west toward London. That
Iwasthe.start of Phase Two of the operation.
lies along the fringe of the biggest concentration of bomber
airfields in the world. Before dawn the heavv bombers of
the U.S.AAF. would leave, to return by midday or early
It was immediately decided to retain the Box and to' push afternoon. In the dusk they \\'ould be followed by the heavy
on with the plans for manning it with static guns. All AA bombers of the R.AF., which would return during the
Batteries along the South Coast were warned that they must early hours of the following morning. And, since the Gerbe
prepared for a move northward. Then followed an II-day mans knew everything about those bombing Heets by the
lull. time they were on their homeward way, what would be
On the night of September 14 there was a further attack. 'simpler than to mix up Hying bombs with the returning
. This time the Hying bombs crossed the coast to the north of aircraft?
the Box. As a result of the attack the Box was supplemented It is no easy problem to solve. There is nothing an R.AF.
(
by the Strip, and the Strip was nothing less than a line of Controller hates more than the chance that ground gunners
guns extending along the East Coast from the existing de- will fire into his Heets of returning aircraft, many possibly
fenses in the Box, on the north of the Thames Estuary, to damaged and in difficulties and all with tired crews. And
the existing defenses around Lowestoft and Yarmouth. yet if a bomb slips by with those aircraft it may be the
N The establishment of the Strip was a considerable task. families of those verv crews who are killed by that bomb
I The over-all plan was for a belt of guns 5,000 yards deep because the guns ha~e been interdicted from 'firing at the
lwith guns spaced 2,000 yards apart and as near the sea as moment when it passes.
possible. It meant the immediate move of 34 heavy bat- That complication was solved, largely by regulating the
' teries and 36 light, with all their arms and equipment. Of height at which friendly aircraft would Hy and by close
the heavy batteries 12 were static, which meant the pro-
) vision of transportation for their mattresses and guns.
liaison between the R.AF. Controllers and the gunners
who manned the operation rooms of the Strip.
;\Tinety-sixgun-towing vehicles and their transporters were
I required at once.
The final problem was peculiar to AA Command at that
particular time. It was the problem of manpower and the
\ Further, sites for all these gun positions had to be found. comb-out.
~ But that part of the English coast is Hat, marshy and in l\Ianpower is a question with which Britain has wrestled
, many places accessible only by rough cart tracks. Roads had since 1940. It has a thousand ingredients, from the decision
to be made, bridges built or strengthened. This is what the to build the present Heet of heavy bombers to the hope that
Strip involved in the end. it we put everything we had into the force that invaded
Accommodation was built for some 50,000 men and 10,- Normandv the war could be finished in the autumn of 1944.
000 women, in the winter months and on land liable to The war did not finish that year and the armies in the field
Hooding and in some cases below sea level. still needed reinforcements~ AA Command had to be
That meant the provision of 3,500 huts (the majority dis- combed again, as it had been on various occasions before,
mantled from unused sites all over Britain and shipped to to find men for overseas. This time everv A 1 man of 35
the East Coast), 150,000 concrete blocks, 373,000 concrete and under had to be drafted away. In all 'there were 5,203