I went for a stroll along the seafront in St Leonards-on-Sea yesterday and came across this statue of Queen Victoria in Warrior Square - complete with bullet hole! Looking online the story goes that it was the Luftwaffe wot done it. BBC - WW2 People's War - Queen Victoria has a Hole in Her Skirts. How Queen Victoria was hit by enemy fire in Hastings – Hastings In Focus Whether the story of the woman and the baby is true, I couldn’t say, although it has just a whiff of propaganda talk about it, stir up the natives, what what…
Grandmother was caught in the street by one of these hit and run raids in Hastings and had to jump down into a nearby basement. Something similar happened to my uncle before he went off to Torbay for RAF training. The raids are quite well documented in the AA Division and Brigade diaries.
I've uploaded a couple of raid reports with reference to Hastings plus (although not Hastings) the report on the incident when a German aircraft attacked a locomotive and the resulting boiler explosion bought the plane down immediately after.
Fascinating read, especially the train. Just been reading this thread as a result: https://ww2talk.com/index.php?threads/were-any-british-trains-attacked.76089/
I photographed a snip of 27 AA Bde's WD from 1944. Do you know if they covered Sussex from 1939 onwards as I'd like to learn more about the searchlight and gun dispositions?
I have the Gun Defended Areas on my site and there are a number in Sussex. They show a map of the area with the HAA sites marked and some data as to which guns were there at various times. The following areas are covered for Sussex: Brighton, Chichester, Ford, Littlehampton, Newhaven, Rye, Shoreham, Tangmere & Thorney Island. The Extended Defence of Britain overlay for Google Earth shows a lot of the gun and searchlight positions also. Derek
Thanks Derek. I'd like to know more about the inland defences, in particular the searchlight grid. As the whole file was massive, I only took 316 images for the Apr - Jul 44 period, which admittedly was a busy time but I'd like to try and avoid wading through monster files if poss. BTW I have some follow up Qs on 56 Heavy, can I DM you?
I have a couple of Dobinson's AA books. I'll see if they have anything useful in them. Always willing to help with anything RA if I can, by all means DM me. Derek
I have 5 27AA Brigade diaries 1939 - 1944. I have a lot of things on but will try to go through them in a little more detail later in the week. Re Derek's references to Dobinson, thoroughly recommend both his 'AA Command' and 'Operation Diver' but they will empty your bank account. A chance visit to Foyles a couple of weeks ago cost £50 for Operation Diver but it is a fascinating read.
Thanks very much. I have all of Dobinson's work and yes the books weren't cheap. Totally worth it though. I have some oblique refs to searchlight locations on the Surrey / Sussex border and I know maps were produced for other parts of the country so I'd ideally like to find similar for around here. If you do get a chance to have a look I'd be very interested in learning more
Not sure how best to help here but I have in total just over 6k files under my heading of 6AA Division. You would be welcome to have a copy of them all but you may prefer to be a little more selective. As a starter, and in relation to Searchlights, this map from September 39 gives 6AA Division boundaries along with the Searchlight regiments (red) and then the battery areas. Of these I have a scattering of diaries for 31SL Regiment, 324 Battery and 70 SL Regiment.
