Service in the Orkneys 1940
Experiences of Stanley Randall
As dictated to his son, Andrew Randall
Stanley Randall arrived in the Orkneys in January 1940 as the most junior 2nd Lieutenant in 216/70 Heavy Anti-Aircraft Battery (3.7" guns). The job was to provide cover for the Royal Navy based at Scapa Flow. The unit consisted of a battery of 12 guns in 3 'troops' of 4 guns each. The battery commander was CJP Bateson; there was an adjutant, a quartermaster, 2 cooks, a dispatch rider and 2 others available for general duties. Each troop had a troop commander and a deputy. Each gun had a crew of 6:
- 3 men to lift the shells out of the stack, set the fuses, load the gun and clear the empty cases
- 1 man to 'lay' the gun (the left-right traversing of the barrel)
- 1 man to elevate the barrel
- a 'No.1' (NCO) to shout instructions
Each troop also had a Predictor and a Goertz Rangefinder. The Predictor gave the present position of the aircraft and its predicted future position at the time a shell would have reached it. This was indicated by a lit dial with a needle showing the target space the gun should be fired at. The Rangefinder enabled the fuses on each shell to be set at the appropriate timing, with a key that engaged with a graduated ring in the nose of the shell. A number would be shouted out, eg 'Fuse 8!' On the command 'Fire!' the 'No. 1 on the gun' pulled down sharply on a large brass handle, driving the firing pin into the shell casing. If this handle was not pulled down hard enough, the shell did not fire and hung up in the breech. This was a dangerous problem, as the shell had to carefully prised out and carried to a place of safety where the fuse could be completely removed. This was usually done by a brave man with a hammer and chisel!
Stanley's unit arrived at Thurso harbour after an overnight train journey from Widnes via Edinburgh. At Thurso they went by ferry (the Isle of Ely) across the Pentland Firth to Stromness. Everyone was aware of the recent fate of the Royal Oak, sunk at Scapa Flow by U47 two and a half months previously with the loss of 833 lives. The ship was visible about 5 meters below the surface.
When Stanley's unit left Thurso on the ferry, 3 of his gunners were in a very bad way from exposure and varicose veins. It was by now dark, with sleet and a howling wind. The camp they were headed for was a mile or so from Stromness, but was still under construction. The huts that had been put up had stoves but no fuel, because the ship carrying the coal had been sunk on the way over. With no comfort in the camp, there was the serious possibility that one or other of the gunners might perish unless they were warmed up. The gunners were all very sick on the boat. Stanley told them to stand on deck holding tight to the rail. One chap lost both dentures overboard. Eventually the 3 very dejected, cold and shivering men were disembarked onto the quay at Stromness.
Stanley undertook to get them somewhere where they could recover. He saw a gas light at the side of the road, and deduced that there must be a gasworks in the neighbourhood. He knocked at doors until he found someone who told him where the gasworks was. He went to the Time Office at the gasworks, explained that he had 3 very ill men and asked to be directed to the Retort House. In the Retort House, it was as hot as a Turkish bath, with mounds of red-hot clinkers. The shift running the works provided mugs of tea for the men, and they were allowed to stay the night in the Retort House. They were picked up the following day in a much better state, and taken back to camp.
The Army camp was quite close to an abandoned 1st World War seaplane base. All that was left was the concrete apron about 4 feet above sea level, with protruding iron stanchions dotted about.
The guns were pulled to camp by 1st World War 6-wheeler Army tractors that did half a mile to the gallon of petrol, and then mounted on concrete bases. There was a large steel structure about 200' in diameter, terminating in a giant scoop supported on steel legs. This was RDF (Radio Direction Finding). It swept 300 miles down the North Sea, and picked up enemy movement within a limited traverse. Later the set-up was altered to give a wider pick-up angle with a 200 mile range.
Huts for the officers had not yet been erected, so for the first few days they used the kitchen and dining room at a large private dwelling nearby, Hobbister House.
The camp huts were put up on 4 pillars to keep the floor clear of the ground. The prefabricated wooden panels were fixed into frames and cleated onto posts driven into the ground. The huts were also guyed to the ground with cables, 3 each side. They were equipped with tortoise stoves.
When the wind was up, the whole structure creaked and shifted about. There were doors at either end, and if you opened one, the other one blew open even if it was bolted and locked. A system was arranged to only use whichever door was away from the wind and tie the other one shut with ropes.
The outside lavatory had a gap for ventilation at the roof and a gap under the door to the cubicle. When the wind blew hard, it created a cyclone effect in the cubicle. On one occasion, Stanley had inadvertently placed his roll of lavatory paper with the edge facing the door. Within seconds the wind caught it, unrolled it with a fluttering roar and sent it through the roof gap and bounding down the cliff to the sea like huge snake.
Apart from the lack of fuel, there was hardly any food initially. The unit doctor had brought a shotgun with him, and brought down a duck. This was very good shooting, because with an onshore wind of about 40mph and the duck flying at 40mph, the approach speed was around 80mph. The duck had to feed 7 people; the HQ staff got the meat, and the other officers got the gravy into which bread was dipped.
Later, Stanley shot a cormorant that was swimming offshore, with a .177 Webley air pistol at about 20 yards range, hitting it in the eye. He swam out to get it; the water was so cold that it felt stingingly hot! He dried himself on his vest and pants, and then put them back on. He took the bird proudly back to the cookhouse, but when it was opened up it stank so strongly of fish that the cook pronounced it inedible.
Winter daylight was from 10am till 3pm.
The only crop noticeable in the fields was marigolds. There was one tree in the town of Kirkwall, but it was soon demolished by an Army vehicle! The town streets were almost deserted, as the locals did a minimum of shopping. The only food the soldiers were allowed to buy was milk chocolate, but they could buy booze at the pub in Kirkwall near the lovely old cathedral, where whisky was 9 shillings a bottle. At the time, Stanley's pay was 9s 10d a day and all found. The officers bought a barrel of beer for their mess. It was noticed that every mug-full drawn off contained one dead fly. No-one could understand how the flies had got into the barrel, and why every single draught contained just one; no more, no less. Eventually they discovered that the flies weren't in the barrel at all, but one at a time crawled into the tap spout, drank itself comatose and then was washed into the mug when the tap was turned on.
Stanley had brought his violin to the Orkneys in a protective case, and spent a lot of spare time practicing by invitation in the officer's mess. They were very short of entertainment!
About 3 weeks after they arrived, the whole battery was put out of action by a virulent flu epidemic, which fortunately went as quickly as it came.
There was a colony of eider ducks on a tiny island about 200 yards offshore but within sight of the battery. These were used to people and quite friendly, because once a year the islanders came across, caught them and plucked the soft feathers for 'eiderdown' quilts.
The battery's transport consisted of a lightweight 350cc dispatch motorbike, a Morris 8 saloon car and a 1-ton Morris truck. The motorbike soon broke its front forks, and the engine of the Morris wagon rapidly became too 'tired' for work. There were no vehicle maintenance facilities on the island. With trepidation, not knowing Stanley's extensive engineering background, the battery commander agreed that he could have a go at repairing both, using the unit's good set of tools, although there was no welding kit. Stanley found some scrap iron strips lying around on the base and used them as splints to bolt the broken motorbike forks together, thus restoring it. The Morris truck needed valve adjustments, and the manifolds were leaking. He spent a day scouring Stromness and Kirkwall for parts, and another day fixing the Morris. The bombardier driver's kind remark was 'It's got lots of power now, and it doesn't seem to use any petrol at all!' On the basis of this, Stanley's stock rose 'from zero to hero'.
During his posting, Stanley got a week's leave. You could either take the slow, cheap route by ferry to Thurso (the Marquess of Zetland or Isle of Ely) or fly out to Inverness via Scottish Airways which operated from a nearby grass strip. They had 3 De Havilland machines: a DH Dragon with 2 4-cylinder engines, rather slow; another DH with 2 Gypsy 6 engines; and the best plane, a DH Dragon Rapide with two 6-cylinder Gipsy Queen engines. He decided to fly out. The previous night had been very cold with heavy snow and a hard frost. He walked to the airstrip and hung around while the technicians tried to start the Gipsy 6 engines. The starboard one fired up OK, but the port engine started on only 2 cylinders and with great difficulty crept up to 6. Stanley guessed that the spark plug gaps were too wide and the cold, wet conditions were impeding the spark. Eventually about 20 passengers all piled in, with their kit filling the centre gangway to the ceiling. 3 Fleet Air Arm pilots sat up front with pilot, who wore a rough old leather coat and had a black Scottie dog sitting on his lap. Every time he turned his head to look out of the side windows the Scottie licked his face vigorously!
The plane was still covered in snow, except for the portion of wing immediately behind the propellers. It started its take-off, up a steady rise. Immediately the suspect port engine lost one, then two, cylinders and the acceleration fell away with a dry stone wall fast approaching. Somehow, the pilot pulled it over the wall, and the ground beyond dropped away steeply. All the snow blew off, the wing surfaces started to 'bite' and the plane became miraculously buoyant. Then the misfiring engine came back on full power and all was well.
On the return journey, Stanley was the only passenger in the Dragon Rapide and sat up front with the pilot. There was a narrow gap between the ground and the cloud cover, and the pilot 'hedge-hopped' excitingly through this gap.
The British military planes in evidence around Scapa Flow were:
- Fleet Air Arm Gloster Gladiators, which had a terrific rate of climb but a maximim speed of around 250mph which made it very difficult to catch the Heinkel bombers
- Blackburn Skuas, which had a sturdy airframe but were underpowered. Our Harpenden neighbour Tom Harrington managed to shoot down a German bomber in one of these by climbing to maximum height and catching it in a dive
- Supermarine Walrus, which was an amphibious biplane with a gun at the nose and a rotary pusher engine mounted between the wings. The exhaust stubs emitted blue flames, and as the plane flew away from you in the dark the blue flames appeared to join up in a blue ring which got smaller in the distance
- Avro Ansons for general transport
On clear days, Heinkel reconnaissance planes flew over at about 40,000 feet, out of reach of the defending guns and planes. The anti-aircraft gunners used a technology called 'Vic IE', which was 4 focused sound receptors that fed into a radio set, telling the operator which direction the planes were coming from. Stanley remembers an evening raid with 7 Junkers 88s over Scapa Flow, of which 3 were shot down by a combination of the Fleet guns and the AA batteries.
At the end of April 1940, Stanley was transferred out of the unit to Royal Army Ordnance Corps Mechanical Maintenance at Chester. The RAOC cap badge depicts a canon and 3 cannon-balls which are clearly of a much bigger calibre than the cannon itself, leading to many a 'rough jest' as to the competency of said Corps!
ARGOS Would like to thank Andrew Rendall for sending in his Father`s wartime experiences for us to share, along with his photograph..
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