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Remembered Today:

Anti Aircraft Sections Salonika


Gardenerbill

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Keith, would you say that the following was a reasonable description of the establishment of an AA section:

'An Anti Aircraft Section typically consisted of 43 men in total: 2 officers, two gun detachments of 12 men including an ASC Driver and mate, in addition to the gun detachments there were telephonists, linesman, height finders, Height and Fuze Indicator men, an Order Board Setter, a Lookout man, an orderly and a cook.'

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I'm sure that something like that was true where Sections worked close by each other but there would be two officers at each position where they were widely separated. The O/C was usually an Acting Captain - often a substantive Lieutenant - but could be up to a Major. Just as an example, this is taken from 24th's Diary for 20th May, 1916:

03.00 2 Officers: Capt The Hon Major R Halford-Thompson, 2nd Lt S G Hart, 28 OR, 1 gun, 2 lorries, 1 m'car left on detached duty. Entrained 08.00.

The Diary then changes, with separate reports from each position being written up. That for no 2 Gun, which remained at Kirechkoj, is kept by Lt F H Claus and records this block of text. It begins on the 21st May and also appears to include the rest of May, as you'll see:

The OC and half the unit left for KUKUSH, leaving me with 2nd Lt Mortimer, 1 gun, 3 lorries, a motor cycle, 28 OR and 360 rounds of Shrapnel. I immediately put in indents for range finder, binoculars, telephones & wire, etc, in order to carry on. These units have not the equipment to run sub-Sections separately. Had much trouble with these indents & also with indents for fitters' tools lost at Helles. This is due to the fact that there is no establishment laid down for MT Stores and the tools, being on order & supply, require special authority.

Sent all ammunition in boxes to the other half Section at SARIGOL 80 rounds by rail and 180 rounds in the Peerless 3 ton lorry with a Corporal and a guard. After a successful journey the ammunition was delivered & the lorry returned on the 27th. This speaks very well of the machine & the men as the difficulties were great. The men are being drilled in gun drill, semaphore, musketry and types of aeroplane.

Adding the two complements together we have four officers and 56 OR. The difference from your figures may well be down to the number of vehicles: two guns, five lorries, two motor cycles and a staff car.

I don't know how far it is from the Hortiach plateau to the No 1 Gun position near Sarigol but it speaks volumes for the state of the roads and capabilities of the vehicles of the time that it took six days to drive the lorry there and back. Adrian Wright will know for sure but I doubt it would be more than about forty miles at the very most. Given the No 1 Gun entrained, presumably at Dudular Military Station, at 08.00 after leaving Kirechkoj five hours before, the roads to the north away from Salonika must have been spectacularly bad.

Keith

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So between 40 and 50 men and 2 to 4 officers depending on deployment. If the guns were deployed separately then the higher number would apply.

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Keith,

Next question, back to vehicles, I know that anti aircraft guns were mounted on Thorneycroft type J lorries, but did they fit them to whatever 3 ton lorries were available, I have seen that picture you have of a lorry of the 98th section that appears to have a gun mounted on a Packard?

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Yes, they were not all mounted on a Thorneycroft chassis. Some Diaries give enough details to work out what lorries they had but only about half. 24th definitely had Packard gun lorries, as did 74th. 91st had at least one - so probably two - Thorneycrofts as they exchanged a part from a Thorneycroft GS lorry for a broken one on a gun lorry during a position move. As you say, we know that at least one of 98th's gun lorries was a Packard. 99th's were both Type Js and the only gun used by 153rd was a Thorneycroft, too. I don't think that the date of formation has a lot to do with it. "Sideshow" AA units had to put up with obsolescent kit so many of their allotments would have come from guns exchanged for 9-cwt versions on the Western Front, although some 9-cwts were used at Salonika.

Keith

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I have only their own records, although I suppose the various CRA's Diaries might have something to say. As with aircraft, kills could only be accepted if they were corroborated by an independent source and I doubt if that was possible very often. Once IIRC. Success is a wriggly customer when it comes to AA gunnery. To the Tommies who were being strafed or shelled as a result of reconnaissance I'm sure that success would very much have been classed solely as bringing enemy planes down but that wasn't their sole function and was only a small part of it, IMO. When I began my research, I thought in these terms but came to realise that was short-sighted. What the presence of a gun may do can be listed as:

  1. forcing a plane to turn away from its target
  2. forcing a plane to fly higher than the optimum for its mission, compromising the quality of its photographs and/or the accuracy of its bombing
  3. causing significant damage to a plane
  4. bringing a plane down.

The first two are tactically very important but would appear ineffective to the infantry. Planes were certainly diverted but that became less common as time went on and the operational ceiling of the planes increased above the effective altitude of the shells - about 15,000 feet for the 6-cwt and about 19,000 feet for the 9-cwt. A few planes were brought down but not many and I haven't made a separate accounting of that. You also have to remember that AA gunnery was in its infancy in WW1 and tactics had to be developed in the field rather than in the classroom. There's one entry which is recorded by an obviously excited officer recording how firing an HE shell so that it exploded at a certain position and distance from an enemy plane caused it to wobble violently. It was clearly something that they had not seen before.

We all tend to think of WW1-era planes as being very flimsy but that's not altogether true. In some senses they were quite robust. There was a vast amount of fresh air inside it so that you could hit the plane with shell fragments or shrapnel and do nothing more than punch holes in its fabric. To be sure of bringing it down you had to hit the engine, fuel tank or the pilot so the target area is suddenly very much smaller than you might think. In early 1917, a German bomber squadron was based at Hudova aerodrome, near the Vardar, and raided for several months before being sent to the Western Front. One AA Section hit the tail of a bomber as it returned north but, despite considerable damage, the plane flew on with the nose in the air. Until missiles were developed you couldn't target a plane and expect to hit it. All you could do was put up as much metal as possible and hope some of it hit a vital place. It wasn't much better in WW2. Think of all the planes that came back full of holes and you'll see what I mean.

The other thing is the limited time the gunners had to put up a barrage. Even at the speeds of the planes of that time, the 30 seconds or so it took for a shell to arrive at altitude gave a pilot plenty of time to manoeuvre so when you only have a few minutes to spot, identify, prepare, sight and fire and it soon goes out of range you can't put up that many shells and you can't adjust quickly to a change. The most vulnerable aircraft were those patrolling front lines, which seem to have flown up and down at a constant height - presumably photographing the positions. You see records of guns firing at such planes for a few minutes in every 15 or 20 but they were somewhat more predictable than most.

An AA gunner's lot was not a happy one.

Keith

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Keith thanks again for another detailed reply, in summary then it was all about making life as difficult as possible for the enemy pilots and disrupt their mission, something quite difficult to quantify.

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That. I think, is the top and bottom of it.

[Edit] They could be a sacrificial target, too. I'm not sure whether I've mentioned this before but there is one Diary entry on the Doiran Front where the AA Gun is related to a siege gun (might be a heavy but siege comes to mind). When a plane is spotted approaching the position the AA Gun first fires a warning shot so that its bigger sibling ceases fire and restores its camouflage while the AA Gun keeps the pilot's attention on itself by firing rapidly.

Keith

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I don't remember anyone being killed by bombs or shells. They weren't attacked very often and, if they were, the troops went into trenches they had dug to get away from the danger. As you say, as elsewhere losses came from Spanish flu. A few came back from hospital but too many went sick and never recovered. As the greatest number died after the end of hostilities it's always seemed all the more poignant to me.

Keith

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Keith,

I have attempted to summarise your detailed account of the AA sections posted here on a page on my website, could you read it and let me know what you think. It seems to me you have enough detailed information to create a whole website raather than just a page.

Anti Aircraft Sections

Thanks again for your help.

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The only error I can see is you mention 76th AAS but that was never at Salonika. 73rd and 74th arrived in August 1916, were trained by the O/C of 32nd AAS - according to 32nd's Diary - and 73rd definitely became active in October 1916 because that's when its Diary appears. I presume 74th did as well but its Diary is missing everything up to February 1917. 74th, not 76th as you have it, was posted to the Struma end of things and had guns at the positions you state. There are references in 73rd's Diary to one of its guns being loaned to 74th while the latter had one of its guns repaired shortly after 73rd's Diary begins so I think we can safely say that 74th was active from October 1917.

Keith

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Thanks again Keith, I think that must have been a typo, I have now corrected it.

In another thread here you posted a picture of one of the gun lorries of the 98th, I think you said it came from either Kate or Martin Wills is that right? I would like to ask their permission to put it on my website

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