Searchlight unit Organisation & operation

Discussion in 'Royal Artillery' started by Uncle Target, Aug 27, 2021.

  1. Uncle Target

    Uncle Target Mist over Dartmoor

    Attached is a letter from Gnr Beadle (later to be lieutenant) from his posting to Kinmel Training Camp near Rhyl Circa 1940.
    Regarding his Searchlight training.
    Perhaps this might be useful information for some of the members of various groups from RA to modelling.
     

    Attached Files:

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  2. Reid

    Reid Historian & Architectural Photographer

    Thanks, UT! My grandfather was a gunner with 62nd SL 437 Btty, so this is really interesting for me to understand how it all worked. :)
     
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  3. Red Goblin

    Red Goblin Senior Member

    Sorry for long post but correctional ...

    Maybe a misleading student faux pas but just ask yourself what heavyweight vital spark is crucially missing. Ironically, though, Gnr B seems to have been getting around to that very point just where the 2nd page ends ?

    SL crews normally numbered 10 - not 9 - with non-optional 'Cinderella' #10s too-often taken for granted due to having to acoustically hide their noisy generators so as not to hamper sound location. My dad was a #10 and so one of my sources. Another #10 source was Gordon Beard but his excellent memoir account no longer seems to be online - so (republish and be damned) I've attached a copy of the 27pp PDF print I originally made of it 14 years ago. See 6 PDF pp16-21 re SLs.

    Both my dad and Gordon were RE Sappers - only becoming RA Gunners when lights were consolidated, under RA command, with the guns they helped at night. For the published account of a good writer who contrarily came at this merger from the RA side, please pop across to my Fighting Lights thread where I've shared my transcript of my dad's 1942 copy due to its out-of-print rarity and feeling its content worth the effort.

    I've finally attached a couple of my dad's topical photos - suitably-annotated.
    1940 - SL generator.jpg 1940 - SL crew (7 of 10).jpg
    I've no idea about the 2nd bloke in the 1st shot but the oddly-partial 2nd shot demonstrates the stripe needed to serve as a #6. That 'stripe up' may have only been hastily chalked onto a sweater arm but still a promotion Beadle lacked if still really only an ambitious Gunner at the time of writing.

    Steve
     

    Attached Files:

    Last edited: Aug 28, 2021
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  4. Uncle Target

    Uncle Target Mist over Dartmoor

    The excerpt was part of a letter to his mother after his first training course, it went on to suggest that he would not go home due to the distance and time taken to get from Rhyl to Buxton his parents home.
    He returned to Pinner NW London where he was working for Glaxo in their PR Dept. He was training with the TA still working on and off until 1941.
    I do find it odd how you can rearrange the establishment to of a Searchlight unit to "The book" when they were actually written on a course he has attending in 1940 when men and particularly materials were in short supply. He was no fool but returned to Mersea Island where he was posted to 373 Coastal Battery with guns and searchlights to illuminate any invasion forces.
    At the time it was all under construction, the guns were not ready in their casements until 1941 so they spent time at weekends digging trenches for cables and drainage with occasional exercises, together with the Home Guard and Regular Army when small arms weapons became available.
    The first year 1940 is sparse in correspondence. He begins to write more in January 1941 when the Battery begins to take shape and training begins in earnest.
    You have to realise that the troops who returned from Dunkirk had very little in weapons and ammunition. It was not unusual to be defending the East Coast with one ancient Artillery piece per Battery and three rifles per section of eight men with five rounds of ammunition per rifle.
    Equipment was needed to defend the cities and industrial areas and for the troops fighting abroad. It wasn't only Dads Army who carried broomsticks until 1941.

    For more read: Noel Beadle, 373 Battery, Royal Artillery

    It was written six years ago. More has emerged since regarding his story.
    Mersea Island Museum have themselves carried out research regarding 373 Coastal Bty including photographs of what remains of the installations taken in recent years.

    I will read your fathers story with interest. Noel Beadle was posted to Mersea Island where he cycled extensively, visiting local churches and his relatives who lived in the area. He mentions in particular his aunt, uncle and cousin farming in the Colchester/Harwich area.
     
    Last edited: Aug 28, 2021
  5. Red Goblin

    Red Goblin Senior Member

    Oh but I'm not trying to tell my dad's story here - just trying to set the record straight using his and other exhibits to make certain points. All I really know about WW2 defence of Liverpool Bay from N Wales incidentally stems from the now-ruinously-subsiding old anti-Naval heavy gunnery site on the western flank of Llandudno's Gt Orme headland - and that mostly social history about local families who squatted there between its abandonment and their eventual eviction. And as for ideas of RE still 'winging it' by 1940, lets just say they had amassed >4 decades of experience 'under their belt' by then - see attached as another now-lost web page I originally PDF-printed in 2007.

    PS: Previewing that Mersea Museum page - I'm too busy to do more now - aside from the accuracy disclaimer at the end, I chiefly note its suggestion of site stability seemingly at odds with the tactical policy of routinely physically moving SL groups into new geometric formations simply to prevent the Luftwaffe learning their positions well enough to effectively destroy any.

    PPS: Corrected typo - "site" misspelt "side" with 'flank' in mind.
     

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    Last edited: Aug 30, 2021
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