The Coastal Artillery Thread

[spidge]

Thanks Tom.

Found my glasses and all is well!

[Interrogator#6]

Back to the subject of Coastal Artillery.

I have a story in my head, one I hope to relate on this site sometime, of a man who was seconded to the Coastal Artillery during the nadair days of early 1942. He was a member of the US Army 2nd Chemical Warfare Company, stationed in Manilla, P.I. in late 1941, when word of the December 8th attack came forward.

Some weeks later when the inquiry came, tasking the unit for someone with the knowledge of the manufacture of acids of the wet-cell method of making electricity, this fellow went in responce. It turned out that he was transferred to what may have been the most famous Costal Artillery batter site of the war -- the Island of Corrigador.

There he supported anti-aircraft-artillery throughout the island. As a part of Coastal Artillery Command the US Army TO&E lists search-lights. This lights were being battery-powered, and the batteries were of the wet-cell variety, requiring periodic (nightly) servicing.

The island of Corrigador had a number of AA batteries located on "topside" which could be reached and serviced by a one-way service road which ran around the island. To afford him a timely way to transport the large bottles of acid to these searchlights the sergent was given and drove the last operating truck on the island.

Having an operating truck man extra duty sometimes. He told me of how one night he was alerted for a special task -- that of driving some people from the mouth of the massive underground complex, to the wharf from which the Islands PT-boats operated. As it turned out this was the Douglas MacArthur party.

So this sergent was the last GI to bid farewell to Dugout Dougie.

I interviewed the sergent several years ago. He was captured and spent the war as a POW. At the end of the war he was in Japan. Let us hope I can write more about this man's facinating story later.

[Antipodean Andy]

You've got me on the edge of my seat, I#6. Looking forward to hearing more when you get the chance.

Another famous coastal artillery site in that general region:
Fort Siloso — The Sole Restored Coastal Artillery Battery from ‘Fortress Singapore’.

An interesting anecdote regarding the British gunners from Singapore. As recounted in Ian Denys-Peek's One Fourteenth of an Elephant (pp76-77) when removing a large boulder from the path of the soon to be railway line. A tunnel is dug under the boulder and is packed with explosives:

Half a minute passes, there is a dull whump and dust rises as though from a beaten carpet. For a slit second nothing more happens. Then there is a great roar, and an enormous quantity of gravel is ejected at high speed from the tunnel, travelling across the river in a flat trajectory. In another split second, all 500 of us are dashing smartly to our right as the hail of earth and stones (looking much like a comet's tail) smashes squarely into the [Jap's] hut.

The tunnel shaft had become the barrel of a giant cannon, the solid hillside behind the stacked dynamite and the mass of the boulder on top had confined the wholeof the explosion's force along the shaft, and the packed gravel had been hurled out like grapeshot from an old-fashioned naval gun. The boulder continues to sit there impassively, astride a blackened and smoking trench.

...It doesn't seem to occur to [the Japanese] to blame us...How were they to know that our men doing the tunnelling were gunners from the heavy coastal artillery regiments which manned Singapore's fifteen-inch guns? Knowing exactly what the effect of the explosion would be, the alignment of the tunnel had been most carefully aimed to find a satisfying target, and the men's scarred faces wear grins of quiet pride in their achievement.

[Antipodean Andy]

The Coastal Gun Batteries of Port Moresby - Then & Now

[Antipodean Andy]

New Zealand coastal defences:

nzrifle.com Coastal & Defence Fortifications in Canterbury & the West Coast

[Antipodean Andy]

The Atlantic Wall in Normandy:

Home Page

[Interrogator#6]

The cinama of "The Guns of Navaronne" shows a good example of Coastal Artillery.

By the was, David Niven, who played a demolition sergent in the cinema, was in real life a Colonel of Commadoes during WWII, thus the highest ranking officer in that film.

And speaking of D-Day, there was supposed to have been a special Coastal Artillery instillation at Pont du Hoc, which is the reason why the US Rangers scaled that cliff. You may recall the casement for big guns was there, but the guns were not installed.