3.7 Inch Heavy Anti-aircraft Gun, Fort Amherst

Image: © David Anstiss Taken: 8 Sep 2011

This gun and several other World War II relics are around a memorial garden in the Fort beside Khartoum Road. Across the road is Image Within the rosemary, is an information plaque which reads '3.7 Inch Heavy Anti-aircraft Gun the most advanced gun of its kind when it came into service in January 1938. It remained in use with the British Army The 3.7 Inch Heavy Anti-aircraft Gun was until 1957, when heavy static guns were replaced by modern missile systems. The gun was capable of firing a 28lb. shell some 32,000 feet in 50 seconds and required a crew of eight men.Supporting fire control, range and height detachments, were required to support a battery of four guns. The 3.7 came in mobile or static versions, the static version of the variety would have been mounted within a concrete emplacement as part of a four gun battery arrangement. Large numbers of these guns were deployed around the Medway Towns during the Second World War to protect the Royal Dockyard and other strategic targets. The 3.7 Inch Heavy Anti-aircraft Gun was manufactured in 1943 by Vickers. After the war, it was sold in a batch to the Portuguese Government and deployed in Angola, seeing action in the civil war in that country. The gun was subsequently sold back to a British arms dealer and acquired and restored by Fort Amherst as part of its Second World War Memorial collection. It is now in the care of Medway Historical Ordnance.'

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