Non-standard, substitute standard, and captured weapons in British and Commonwealth service

Capel and Hougham Batteries on the south coast each had three 8" ex-navy guns. One quirk was that their mountings allowed an elevation of 70 degrees and when V1's were passing it allowed them to contribute to the general barrage.

ISTR that the 5.5" secondary armament was removed from HMS Hood during her last refit to allow 4"? anti aircraft guns to be installed. The removed guns then turned up in various emergency batteries, two being installed at Coalhouse Fort on the River Thames.

 

Cited in part from Post 397 by TTH:

A visitor to Mumbai found in their research that:

 

A little detour to the Middle East, beyond all the guns of Navarone:
Australian Renault R35 in Lebanon/Syria after OP “Exporter”

 

Czechoslovakian tank chassis, Soviet AT gun, Nazi German conversion in the service of the Jewish Brigade Group with the British Army somewhere in French North Africa.
It would be hard to get any more international/motley than this

 

Yes, those R35s belong to the Australian 6th Cavalry Regiment, which first captured them and then used them against the Vichy French in Syria.

 

I don't know about Coalhouse Fort or the specific fate of ex-Hood guns but 5.5" Mark I guns were installed in coastal defenses in a number of places, including the Faroes, on Ascenscion Island, and at Walberswick on the Suffolk coast.

 

The story I told is the one given on the navweaps.com site.

 

Interesting. Do you have a link for the story on it?

 

Bitte sehr:
Yad Vashem - Request Rejected
The more, the better:
star of david tank - Google Suche

 

The 8-inch guns at Dover were Mark VIII. This was a standard RN weapon used in all wartime heavy cruisers. It threw a 256 lb. HE or APC shell to 30,650 yards at 45 degrees of elevation. The guns at Dover were on single mountings with 70 degrees of elevation but no range figure is given. One of the guns is shown in action in the photo.

 

Ian Hogg gives a figure of 29,200 yards in one of his books.

 

Here is a good image of the 8" Mk VIII on its coastal mounting.

 

5.5-Inch Gun Mk 6/7/138.6mm Gun M1910
Two obsolete French battleships, the Paris and Courbet, fell into British hands in 1940. Each battleship carried a secondary battery of 22 138.6mm M1910 guns for a total of 44. On examination, it turned out that the guns (or their barrels?) were of varying vintages and degrees of repair. Twenty-seven of the most recent pieces from 1927 and 1929 were removed and employed in coastal batteries, designated 5.5 Inch Gun Mark 6 or Mark 7 according to the year. Ammunition was in limited supply, so in at least one case the guns could not practice. Navweaps.com says the 138.6mm M1910 fired an 80.5 AP round and an HE round weighing 69.4 lbs. I can't find figures for range on the coastal mounts, but Navweaps gives shipboard range of 17,600 yds for AP at 25 degrees elevation, 16,500 for the HE at the same, and 10,970 yds for AP at 14.5 degrees elevation. Attached are images of a 138.6mm emplaced at Whitehaven.

 

6-Inch QF Mark II: the Niobe Guns
HMCS Niobe was a Diadem-class cruiser built in the 1890s with a main battery of 16 6-Inch QF Mk II guns. Guns and Bluejackets from the ship served with distinction in the Boer War, after which the vessel was given to Canada. The Niobe was, in effect, the mother ship of the then-tiny Royal Canadian Navy and as such it had a significant role in Canadian history. After service in the Great War the Niobe was stricken and broken up but some at least of her guns were saved and stored. Early in WWII two of her old 6-Inch QF Mk II were installed on Partridge Island as part of the harbor defenses of St. John, New Brunswick. Most British 6-inch guns were BL types which used bag charges, but the Niobe guns were QF with the charge in the case. The Mk II QF fired HE and AP weighing 100 lbs, standard for all 6-inch in British service. I haven't found range data for the coastal mounts, but wikipedia says shipboard range was 10,000 yards at 15-20 degrees of elevation and 15,000 at 28 degrees. Barrels from two of Niobe's 6-inch still survive in Canada. The old ship and its weapons made quite a record, with service in three wars.

 

Whitehaven in Cumbria? Not the highest priority location for coastal defences, I'd have thought.

 

For those of you interested in big guns on cliff tops I can recommend 'The Service of Coast Artillery' (1910) by Frank Hines. Pre-WW2 and from an American author but still full of goodies like this.

 

A number of manuals for US coastal guns are available for consultation or download on the internet, I think Hyperwar may have some. I've consulted the one for the 10-Inch M1888.

 

Yes, that Whitehaven. It was considered a "minor port," but in 1940 the army and navy were taking no chances. Its relatively low priority, however, may be why it received such odd-caliber guns instead of the standard 6" Mark VII. A man named Barnes has a comprehensive and fascinating site devoted to WWII defenses in Cumbria, see Russell W. Barnes' guide to 20th Century defence architecture in Cumbria, England.

 

6-Inch BL Mark V
a) On Disappearing Carriage
b) QFC

The 6-Inch BL Mark V was the oldest 6 inch gun still in British service in WWII. The design dated from the 1880s, an Elswick piece originally intended for the defenses of Hong Kong. Some were mounted in Australian gunboats and in coast defenses in Australia and New Zealand. The NZ guns were mounted on disappearing carriages. By 1939 nearly all these weapons had been scrapped or abandoned, but two Mark V were active in Australia. These had been converted at some point to quick firing, making them QFC, and they remained in service at the Princess Royal Fortress in Albany, WA. A small number of the unconverted Mark Vs on disappearing mounts were reactivated in WWII, two at Fort Jervois on Ripapa Island at Littleton NZ, and two in the Lighthouse Battery on Taiaroa Head in the defenses of Dunedin. One of the Taiaroa Head guns is still intact and has been restored. I don't have good data on these guns, but they fired the usual 100 lb. shells and probably ranged to about 8,000 yards or perhaps somewhat more. [LATE NOTE: Apparently some very similar 6-Inch BL Mark VI on disappearing carriages were still in use in British Columbia early in the war.]

 

The fall of France had something to do with the fortification of the Western Command area of England. Previously Germany was at much more of an arm's length, but the capture of French ports opened up the possibility of a German landing in Eire and an attack by the back door. Hence the hasty efforts in Western Command (and I suspect in West Scotland but I have not looked at this) to protect ports in particular. I am guessing that Whitehaven and other ports had to take the left overs after the south and east had the pick earlier on. There was a similar earlier surge in defending the North East and E Scotland after the invasion of Norway. Some of this is in Newbold, ‘British planning and preparations to Resist invasion on Land, September 1939 – September 1940’ (unpublished PhD thesis, King’s College, London, 1988). An excellent helpful document covering a subject that is barely dealt with comparatively speaking.