A taste of Lincolnshire's military history part 3 of 3: Stallingborough Heavy Anti-Aircraft Gun Site

For the final instalment of this series we go back to WW2 and a site which helped protect the Humber from air attack.

Stallingborough Heavy Anti-Aircraft Gun Site

A 3.7 inch gun site was in place here from June 1940 until May 1944, when it became one of 15 sites in the UK where 5.25 inch guns were mounted, of which 6 survive in some form today.

Example of a 5.25 AA gun at Heugh Battery Museum, Co. Durham

This one is in Gibraltar

The site is Grade II* listed as a result of its rarity, survival and technological, historical and social interest.

All four emplacements with their engine houses survive, plus the command post, guardhouse/gunstore and the generator house.

The British Listed Buildings website notes that "the design of the command post suggests that this was a gun site that employed female soldiers from the ATS, one of the milestones passed during the Second World War in the furtherance of equality between the sexes".

The guns remained in operation until as late as 1955. A Royal Observer Corps (ROC) post was constructed in 1961 and is also listed - presumably it is in good condition, but there wasn't chance to check during this visit.

Rod Collins' excellent website has a page dedicated to the site and includes first hand accounts of life on the site from a Len Copsey, including snippets such as

Re: [...] the compartments in the concrete surround, the 90lb projectiles (shell) were placed in there also the 56lb cordite explosive cartridge case so that as the Gun traversed to follow it target ammunition was always to hand on its 360 degree turning circle, the shell was passed up to the fuse setter, and placed in the trough with the cartridge behind moved over to the ramming position and brought back this was all done to chanting numbers = seconds of time until you reached as fast as possible, the Gun was operated by Hydraulic Pump powered by a Crossley Diesel Engine which were bastards to start...

Now covered by woodland, it provided an interesting exploratory.

One of the 4 emplacements

One of the entrances to a long part-submerged building, perhaps the command post

Looking into one of the bunkers - a torch would have been useful

Unfortunately at this point the phone camera battery went so sorry to not be able to bring you more!

Thanks for reading - that concludes this three part debrief. Click the "older posts" link below to see the previous two, or mobile readers can swipe left and right.