Mobile Anti-Aircraft Guns

[MotCO]

My father lived in Essex during the war. He often told me that there were some anti-aircraft guns mounted on to trains which travelled (maybe between Epping and Ongar?) so that the German aircraft never knew where the guns were.

Has anyone else heard of such arrangements?

 

[yorksrob]

Yes, the Elham Valley Railway had large guns based on it (not sure if they were specifically anti-aircraft):

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/features/index6.shtml

 

[eastdyke]

'A GUIDE TO SECOND WORLD WAR ARCHAEOLOGY IN SUFFOLK
Guide 3: Orford to Felixstowe by Robert Liddiard and David Sims'
https://heritage.suffolk.gov.uk/Dat...books/ww2_guidebook3_orford_to_felixstowe.pdf
Page 28 makes reference (with pictures) to:

two enormous 12-inch rail guns with a range of almost ten miles that
were placed inland, at Trimley and Nacton. The gun at Trimley was housed
in a purpose-built gunhouse that comprised a shed placed astride the railway
line on its own parallel set of rails. When the gun was prepared for action the
shed would be moved back, so allowing the gun a clear field of fire (Figures
35 and 36). Photographs of test firing show that the railway carriages upon
which the guns were mounted were literally bolted down to lessen the recoil
(Figure 37)

The guide itself is a fascinating history of what went on in those dark days when invasion was expected.

 

[randyrippley]

There's a list of known types of railway gun at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_railway_artillery
However none are AA artillery. However a lot of stuff was done in those days which was never recorded: for instance a chap I know has the shell case for a WW2 railway gun which the Imperial War Museum says was impossible to exist

 

[FGW_DID]

Not in Essex but in Kent, an Armoured Train operated on the Romney Hythe & Dymchurch Railway:

Looks to be mainly machine guns (bren / lewis) but some mounted in an AA role.

http://www.nevingtonwarmuseum.com/romney-hythe-and-dymchurch.html

 

[John Webb]

With North Weald airfield an obvious target at that time, I would have thought it more likely that AA guns protecting the airfield would have been in fixed locations for maximum efficiency. After all, if the guns happened to be at Epping or Ongar they would not be in the best location to protect North Weald if an attack started on it. It indeed suffered a number of attacks as the North Weald Museum site describes - see http://www.nwamuseum.co.uk/index.htm. This site makes no mention of such a train, and the Epping Ongar Railway http://www.eorailway.co.uk/ comments that the LT plans for the line were put on hold and the train service reduced to seven trains a day each way shortly after the start of WW2. This suggests that perhaps an armed train would not have been practicable? But stranger things happened!

 

[30907]

I've just reread Fiennes' "I tried to run a Railway" - on p38f theres a reference to dismounted guns on the Hunstanton line "between certain hours". So they certainly existed, and could have been used off-peak at North Weald too. Anyone got it on Kindle?

 

[MotCO]

that the LT plans for the line were put on hold and the train service reduced to seven trains a day each way shortly after the start of WW2.

Would this have been to create capacity to run a gun train? I honestly can't say that it was definitely the Epping Ongar line, but it would have been in that general area.

 

[Indigo Soup]

From a military perspective, it's hard to see what rail-mobile AA guns would achieve in defence of the UK that fixed ones couldn't.

What they're best suited to is defending a train against air attack, by putting a couple of guns into the formation of a train that's liable to be bombed/strafed. That scenario didn't really apply in the UK - there wasn't a systematic campaign of interdiction against rail supply lines in the way that there was in occupied France or on the Eastern Front. Mostly because Fighter Command and fixed AA defences made it impractical.

 

[Clarence Yard]

My father lived in Essex during the war. He often told me that there were some anti-aircraft guns mounted on to trains which travelled (maybe between Epping and Ongar?) so that the German aircraft never knew where the guns were.

Has anyone else heard of such arrangements?

That sounds like the coastal defence trains. An armoured LNER F4 tank engine with a couple of wagons at each end, the end wagons having a 6 pounder gun mounted on them. They were designed as a sort of rapid reaction force and in the wagons could carry (at least) an armed platoon of men at each end. The home guard ended up manning them and the last of about a dozen trains came out of war service in 1944.