The Iron Cove/Five Dock Heavy Anti-aircraft Gun Battery
Introduction
In this post the word “battery” has two meanings. If the “B” is capitalised, it refers to an Australian Army organisational unit. If not, the word refers to a physical site at which guns, associated equipment and soldier’s barracks were located. A Battery could have guns at a number of physical sites.
Rodd Point is a small peninsula in Iron Cove which is part of Sydney Harbour. I visit it often to conduct shorebird surveys.
I came across a reference to a heavy anti-aircraft gun battery at Iron Cove during World War 2, on the OzatWar website. This was about the radar detection of a Japanese naval float plane over Sydney on 23 May 1942. Curious to know more I checked the 1943 aerial photography available at the SIX Maps website, and soon found a likely battery site at Rodd Point Park.
The standard layout for a heavy anti-aircraft battery at this time had 4 gun positions on the perimeter of a semi-circle, equally spaced between 90 and 150 feet apart. At the focus were 3 small structures, a predictor post, a command post and a HT and Rangefinder shed. The whole formed a distinctive pattern.
Closer inspection of the area on the 1943 photography revealed two more sites, both displaying the standard layout. One of these was to the south of Rodd Point, within what is now Timbrell Park, whilst the other was north of Rodd Point, in the area west of Nield Park, straddling Nield and Princess Streets which had not yet been built on.
Typically at this time dummy or decoy batteries were constructed near active batteries. But which was the active battery site and which were the dummies?
Which Site?
The Iron Cove battery was part of the defences of Sydney. Adjacent to Iron Cove were some major potential targets for attack . These were the Cockatoo Island Dockyard, the Woolwich Dock, the RAN Armament Depot at Spectacle Island, the Australian Army’s Base Ordnance Depot located near where the Hawthorne Canal enters Iron Cove and the Dunlop rubber factory at Birkenhead Point. In mid-1942 other heavy anti-aircraft artillery batteries provided protection from the west (Concord Golf Links), north (Naremburn) and east (Rose Bay Golf Links, Georges Heights, and North Head).
My guess was that the southern sites were the dummy ones as this would offer the best arrangement to decoy aircraft approaching from the south. However there are more compelling reasons to conclude that the Nield Park location was the active one.
Records from Australian War Memorial (AWM) and the National Archives of Australia (NAA) provide some more information about the site.
NAA indexes show that the Army had requisitioned houses and land in Duchess Avenue, Five Dock (now Rodd Point) to provide quarters for the gunners manning the battery. These houses backed onto the Nield Park site. The other sites were too distant from the quarters to permit a rapid response to a general alarm.
The AWM has a War Diary in 7 parts for “15 Heavy Anti-aircraft Battery”, the Army unit which established the Iron Cove battery amongst other battery sites on the south side of Sydney Harbour. The first of these covers only the months of May and June 1942 but includes a 2-page history of the unit since mobilisation in December 1941. Later parts refer to the Iron Cove battery as “Section C” or “356 station” or “356 troop”.
The first part of the Diary records that in June 1942 the gun emplacements were reconfigured so that they enclosed a 24-foot square revetted in brick. This was to carry the blast effect of the guns outside the revetment. On the aerial photo the square shape of the revetments is apparent at the Nield Park site but not at the others where the shape is circular. Shadows also reveal well-defined walls surrounding the emplacements at Nield Park but not at the other sites.
There are two further pieces of evidence in the War Diary. The Diary entry for 2 September 1942 describes the Rodd Point site as a dummy. And on 17 May 1942 US Air Force pursuit planes (probably Airacobras of 41st Fighter Squadron) carried out a simulated dive attack at Iron Cove “but pilots were apparently deceived by dummy positions at Hawthorne Canal.” There was no anti-aircraft gun battery at Hawthorne Canal so it’s likely that this was a mistake and that the dummy position attacked was the one at Timbrell Park which is near the Iron Cove Canal. It must have been quite a day for the residents of the nearby houses on Henley Marine Drive!
Timeline December 1941 to June 1942
Here’s a brief timeline of the battery extracted from the War Diary:
8 December 1941: Orders were received to man two 3-inch 20 cwt anti-aircraft guns at Iron Cove. Strength was 1 officer (Lieut. W. N. Prior) and 25 other ranks.
3 March 1942: Dummy sites were selected.
3 May 1942: The temporary command post was removed to allow construction of a new one.
4 May 1942: Commenced sandbagging to raise height of emplacements.
8 May 1942: Sites for reserve ammunition dumps selected.
9 May 1942: Cottage at 20 Duchess Avenue taken over as extra quarters.
11 May 1942: Work commenced on reserve ammunition dumps.
15 May 1942: GL Mark II equipment withdrawn. (This was a British mobile gun laying radar.)
15 May 1942: The Officer-commanding inspected camouflage by plane at 2,000 feet and reported that “with previous knowledge of location of stations they were easily picked out. Salient fault is regularity of design and construction. Dummy positions need more camouflage to be made more realistic.”
21 May 1942: There was an epidemic of influenza, with 22 cases. By the following day it was 30 cases.
27 May 1942: The new command post was sufficiently completed to allow occupation and use.
3 June 1942: C.R.E. A.A Defences (Major Robinson) visited with a view to alteration of gun emplacements, reducing the inside dimensions to a square of 24 feet. Work to be commenced immediately.
6 June 1942: Work commenced on alterations to emplacements, to be carried out in brick with ammunition to be carried in a recess in the revetment made with sandbags inside the bricks.
10 June 1942: Work on ammunition dump completed and ammunition moved in.
13 June 1942: Lieut C. W. Spooner and 35 other ranks marched in to new gun station at Moore Park.
16 June 1942: Lieut Randale, of Gun Operations Room, brought in station chart and other necessary gear for engaging unseen targets by G.L. Barrage.
22 June 1942: Work commenced on filling in the new revetments with earth, using a working party of 12 from H.Q. and Moore Park.
24 June 1942: Work continued using 23 trucks. A camouflage unit arrived to spray tents but this was abandoned due to rain.
25 June 1942: Work completed at 1720 hours.
26 June 1942: Informed by foreman in charge of new building that only one of the new buildings would be painted as the money allocated to the job had run out.
28 June 1942: Strong winds in the night. A tent with personal belongings was burnt. The cause was a spark from a fire in a brazier.
29 June 1942: Loose barrels removed for inspection. Found to be in good condition.
The Guns
The first part of the War Diary only mentions two 3-inch 20 cwt guns whilst OzatWar refers to four 3.7-inch guns. 3.7-inch guns were in short supply when the battery was established so the obsolescent 3-inch guns would have been used as a substitute until 3.7-inch guns were available. The first 3.7-inch gun from Australian manufacture was completed in early 1940. Production per month reached 8 in January 1941 and 22 by June 1942. A total of 600 were completed. Later parts of the War Diary refer to 3.7-inch guns at Iron Cove. Information about the gun can be found on Wikipedia.
A Bofors 40mm medium anti-aircraft gun was present from 31 July 1943 for training purposes.
Searchlights and Radar
The defence of the Iron Cove locality would also have involved searchlights. These were operated by other Army units known as searchlight companies and are difficult to detect on aerial photography as the searchlights were dispersed, do not form patterns as the gun batteries did, and were camouflaged. A searchlight position may have comprised only one searchlight, a generator, a sound locator and some communications. In early 1945 the War Diary of 61 Australian Searchlight Company R.A.A listed a site at Iron Cove. This company may have operated the site throughout the war however earlier records conceal the geographical location of sites for security purposes and sites were sometimes moved between companies.
The GL Marks 1 and II radars mentioned in the Diary were mobile gun laying radars. It seems clear that at the period covered by the Diary the Battery had not yet achieved proficiency in the use of the radar. This comment was made on 16 June 1942:
“This system (i.e. GL Barrage firing) was explained, and it appears that a very high degree of training among Command Post personnel will be necessary for its successful application”.
It’s reported that a GL radar was active at Rozelle, which borders Iron Cove, at the time of the Japanese float plane flight over Sydney on 23 May 1942. According to the OzatWar website, the plane was detected by the radar but the contact was ignored as it was considered an anomaly on what was an experimental unit. Peter Grose’s book “A Very Rude Awakening” gives the source of this claim as an Army gunner, Donald Caldwell Smith (Service No. N171477):
“Don Caldwell Smith, at the mobile radar station at Iron Cove, now takes over the story. The existence of a radar unit in Sydney was still highly secret, and the brand-new operators had spent their training time attempting to track a Tiger Moth which the RAAF sent up to fly around Sydney as a practice target.The wood-and-fabric biplane was hopeless. Its flimsy frame barely returned an echo on their radar screen. Now, to the delight of the radar crew, they had an unexpected and strong return. The all-metal Glen was a much better quarry. They tracked it enthusiastically down the harbour, with no thought that it might be an enemy aircraft, only that at last they could get in a bit of genuine practice with their secret weapon. The radar unit was linked to a nearby antiaircraft gun, so the radar crew gave the gunners instructions on the range and bearing of the convenient intruder. Everyone was pleased.
At this point the regulations called for the radar unit to report the intruder to Combined Defence Headquarters near Circular Quay. Don’s unit grabbed the telephone. ‘The next thing, headquarters came back and they said: Stop! We’ve just been in touch with the Air Force and they have no aircraft in the air at the moment. So you’d better get that machine of yours tested by an artificer [radar technician] tomorrow.’ Combined Defence Headquarters had clearly weighed up the possibilities. If there was a plane over Sydney it had to be one of theirs. So if none of their planes were over Sydney that left only one explanation: the radar must be on the blink again.” (Grose, Peter. A Very Rude Awakening: The night the Japanese midget subs came to Sydney Harbour (pp. 63-64). Allen and Unwin. Kindle Edition.)
A check of Smith’s service history shows that he transferred from the Army to the Royal Australian Air Force on 9 October 1942. At that time he was serving in the Headquarters of 15 Heavy Anti-aircraft Battery.
The Battery’s War Diary for 23 May records only an alarm condition at 0618 hours which was discontinued at 0715 hours. The overflight occurred around the middle of the day. As mentioned above, the GL Mark II radar had been withdrawn from the Iron Cove battery only 8 days prior. This overflight was a precursor to the Japanese midget submarine raid on Sydney on 31 May 1942.
Both Don Caldwell Smith’s recollections and the War Diary place a GL radar at the Rose Bay heavy anti-aircraft battery, also operated by 15 Heavy Anti-aircraft Battery, in the early morning of 8 June 1942. This was when when a Japanese submarine (not a midget) shelled Sydney’s eastern suburbs. It seems clear that the radar was being moved around as the gunners struggled to master the new technology.
After July 1942
According to the OzatWar website mentioned in the introduction:
“In July 1942, the Five Dock guns became 356 HAA Gun Station. Troops from the 11th Volunteer Defence Corps Battalion (11 VDC Bn) trained at Five Dock from May 1943. In August 1943 they became 356 HAA Tp (Static) in 15 HAA Bty (Static) and the troop was a mixture of AMF and VDC soldiers.”
The involvement of VDC (Volunteer Defence Corps) troops at this time was consistent with a policy decision in early 1943 to man coastal and anti-aircraft batteries in southern Australia with volunteers to release regular Army troops for service in northern Australia and New Guinea.
Soldiers of the Australian Women’s Army Service (AWAS) were amongst the complement at Iron Cove before the end of 1942, filling roles associated with target acquisition and gunlaying. In early 1944 cottages that had been requisitioned for soldier’s quarters commenced being returned to their owners.
One of the AWAS soldiers stationed at the battery in 1943 was the writer Charmian Clift. Her time there is discussed in Nadia Wheatley's biography The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift.
Demolition of dummy gun sites commenced in June 1944. By July 1944 all cottages had been returned to their owners. In the same month demolition of gun sites commenced. In November 1944 camouflage and radars were removed and AWAS soldiers were marched out. In December 1944 bomb blast walls were removed and the War Disposals Commission inspected the site buildings for disposal. All ammunition was removed and despatched by rail, probably to either the Moorebank or Myambat ammunition depots. On 1 January 1945 the four 3.7-inch guns were removed from the gun pits, departing the site the following day. On 7 February the site was evacuated, with guard duties to be undertaken by camp staff at Randwick. On 20 March 1945 at 1400 hours the remaining complement of 15 Heavy Anti-aircraft Battery, comprising 1 officer and 2 other ranks, marched out thus completing the disbandment of the Battery.
A search of Trove revealed only one set of newspaper references to the Iron Cove battery. This was in May 1946 when a post-war housing crisis was manifest. There was an “invasion of homeseekers” wanting to occupy some of houses in Duchess Avenue which had been vacated by the Army “about 9 months ago”.
Almost certainly the Iron Cove battery never fired a gun in anger, having missed their one chance to do so on 23 May 1942 . Ammunition was fired at drogue targets in training, but these firings seem to have been conducted at external sites where firing over the sea was possible, such as Bluefish Point at North Head. This would have been to avoid shrapnel falling over residential areas as projectiles self-destructed. Blank ammunition may have been fired at Iron Cove in training as this did not contain a projectile.
Like to Know More?
The War Diary for 15 Heavy Anti-aircraft Battery can be downloaded from the Australian War Memorial website. Just perform a collection search using the search terms ” War Diary 15 Heavy Anti-aircraft Battery”.