Diary Entries for March 1940

The War Diary for 157th HAA Regiment records the following for March 1940 continues:

12/3/40
0800 Eight guns ready for action - Earthworks and hut building continues.

1500 O.C. Battery Major J A Chivers MM RA admitted to 4 Casualty Clearing Station.

13/3/40
0800 Eight guns ready for action - Earthworks and hut building continues.  Personnel exchange with UK (Winslow and Green to UK).

14 -23/3/40
0800 Eight guns ready for action - Earthworks and hut building continues.

"Umbrella Camouflage" for Anti Aircraft Guns

When I checked the War Diary for 311 Anti Aircraft Battery (National Archive reference WO167 648) there was an intriguing entry for 1 March 1940.  The entry read:

1/3/40 Colonel Krohn (53rd) visits Jeff II to inspect "umbrella camouflage".

Colonel Krohn was the Commanding Officer of 53rd HAA Battery, Jeff II is the code name of one of the gun sites, but I was unable to work out the camouflage reference.  However, a good dig through the Imperial War Museum photographic archive brought up a picture of the camouflage in place and more excitingly a picture of it being used by the 157th (City of London) Regiment.  This discovery killed 2 birds with one stone, because I never seen a picture of the Regiment on active service on the airfields they were assigned to defend and it shows just what a good description the phrase "umbrella camouflage" is.

If you click on the following link, it will take you to the photograpah on the IWM site.

http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205204895

Unfortunately the caption for the photograph is incorrect in that it states that the guns are 3.7 inch whereas they are actually 3 inch AA guns.  I have emailed the IWM with references to support this change but it has not been altered as yet.

Hope you enjoy my find as much as I did!

Battery Diary Entry - March 1940

The Battery Diary for the 157th HAA Battery records:

1 to 11 March 1940 - 0800 Eight guns ready for action - Earthworks and hut building continues.