Saturday, 14 March 2015

"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!

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