THE STORY OF STANLEY FORT
R.G. HORSNELL
Brief History
There seems to have been a military presence at Stanley since the
early days of Hong Kong as a British Colony. The original barracks
were situated at Chek Chue (Stanley Village). Tyiarn Bay. The English
name seems to have been derived from the name of the Colonial Secretary
of the day, Lord Stanley.1 Work on erecting new barracks commenced
in 1841 and by 1857 there was accommodation available for 3
field officers, 10 officers, 1 mess room, 1 anti-room, and accommodation
for 441 NCOs and men. The high rate of lever within the Hong
Kong garrison resulted in a decision being taken in 1857 that Stanley
Barracks was to be used as a Convalescent Station and orders were
given for the unused portions of the barracks to be prepared for convalescent
soldiers. With an increasing number of troops arriving in Hong
Kong the accommodation problem made it necessary for the hiring of
private buildings, supplemented by Madras tents which could accommodate
20 men per tent. Bell tents were not considered to be suitable,
nor were the traditional Chinese matshed temporary camp structures
which formerly had been used in the very early days.
The present barracks on the Tytam Peninsula, known as Stanley
Fort, were built in 1936 to replace the old 1840s barracks which had
been abandoned about 1895 and fallen into ruin. A contract was given
to a Chinese contractor on 11 June 1936 for the following buildings :
1 Barrack Block
1 Sergeant's Mess
1 Dining Room and Cookhouse
1 Bath House
1 Medical Inspection Room and a 2-Bed Ward
A Quarter for the Brigade Commander
2 Blocks of Officer's Quarters
1 Block of 2 Warrant Officer's Quarters
1 Block of 12 Warrant Officer's Quarters
1 Block of 12 Married Soldier's Quarters
The work took about a year to complete and in 1937 a further
building programme was initiated to provide additional accommodation,
messes and a church. At the same time artillery defences were also
being built.
The Artillery Defences
Design of fortifications was the responsibility of the Directorate
of Fortifications and Works at the War Office. This department prepared
the drawings of fortifications and issued them to the various army
commands, which in turn issued them to their contractors. The Commander
Royal Engineers at the various commands modified the designs
to suit local requirements and local materials. The designs took
the weapon to be used and protection from enemy fire as the main
considerations, but standardisation was also introduced as far as possible
to assist in construction. The siting, positioning, and grouping of
structures were also obvious major considerations in the building of
defensive works, batteries, and other types of fortifications.
Modernisation and reorganisation of the defences in Hong Kong
in the 1930s was also governed by the Washington Treaty, an agreement
signed in 1921 by nations with interests in the Pacific Region.
Article 19 of the Treaty proscribed any increase or major improvements
in heavy weapons and any improvements in coast defences other
than those already planned and agreed to by the signatories to the Treaty.
Gun emplacements were not regarded as fortifications but any disused
emplacements were to be destroyed when new ones were erected.
As part of a colony wide reorganisation and modernisation
programme of the armament, a new battery was constructed at Stanley
between 1935 and 1937 consisting of three 9.2 inch calibre Mark X
guns mounted on Mark VII mountings. One of these guns came from
the battery at Devil's Peak and the other two came from Mount Davis,
as both of these batteries were being modernised. The gun shifts were
difficult and complex operations as the guns were very heavy, the barrel
and breech assembly weighing 28 tons. Everything was dotie by
hand and the pieces, and all their mountings, were transported to Stanley
by sea. The two lower guns (No. 2 & No.3) were situated on concrete
emplacements now occupied by parabolic antennae dishes in the Cable
and Wireless Ltd. Satellite Earth Station complex. These two guns
could only fire out to sea and were later encased in concrete gunhouses
or casemates by the Japanese who seemed to have kept them in service
during the Occupation. The gun houses were demolished and the guns
cut up for scrap in 1952.
The No. 19.2 inch gun mounted on top of "Gun Hill" was equipped
with all round traverse, that is, it was able to engage any target, for it
was mounted on a circular platform which was rotated mechanically.
It was this gun which bombarded the Japanese almost continually from
the 14th to 24th December, 1941, firing at the rate of three rounds per
half hour at targets as far away as Kowloon City. The shells weighed
more than a hundredweight each. The gun was able to fire at this great
range due to its mountings which gave a thirty five degree angle of
elevation. After the completion of the new Stanley Battery, two 6 inch
naval guns were installed on the Bluff forming a second emergency
battery known as Bluff Head Battery. These smaller guns had an effective
range of 9,500 yards and also seem to have been equipped with
all round traversers as they could engage land and sea targets. These
two batteries were reinforced in December 1941 by two 3.7 inch howitzers
in a position in Stanley Village with an observation post in the
Officers Mess, and an anti-aircraft battery at Tai Tarn Tau. The Japanese
reported that "long range fortress artillery bombardments were
extremely effective." Targets were engaged with clock code observation
by the Infantry and also where possible by direct observation. In
addition many targets such as road junctions and bridges had been registered
and carefully tabulated in the months leading up to the Japanese
attack so that direct observation was not really necessary to know
that the shells were on target. Japanese artillery set up at the captured
Gun Club Hill Barracks in Kowloon was silenced in this way by British
guns on Hong Kong island.
The Fortress System
By the 1930s the operation of batteries had become immensely
sophisticated and complicated, difficult for a layman to understand.
The old 19th century arrangement of individual battery range and position
finders was improved by a new arrangement known as the Fortress
Range Finding System. Under this system the range of vision and of
precision was greatly extended by a series of what were known as Fortress
Observation Posts to cover targets within range of the guns. These
transmitted bearings and ranges gained from observation to a central
Fortress Plotting Room where the target, such as an enemy vessel, was
tracked on a chart known as a Fortress Plotter. The co-ordinates of the
target were then calculated or computed on a mechanical device known
as a predictor which made allowance for the time in flight of the shell
and the movement of the vessel assuming it had not realised it had
been observed and taken evasive action by changing course. The coordinates
were then telephoned or telegraphed to the individual batteries
which then possessed all the information necessary to engage the
enemy, even though the target might be so far away as to be invisible to
the Battery Commander. The data could also be relayed directly to the
guns where it was displayed on electrically operated dials.
In Hong Kong as part of reorganisation and modernisation of the
Hong Kong defences a Fortress Range Finding system was developed
consisting of three Fortress Plotting Rooms at Stanley Fort, Mount Davis
and Tytam Gap, also ten Fortress Observation Posts all connected to
two Fire Commander's Posts which in turn, were connected to the
Commander Fixed Defences who had his Coast Artillery Headquarters
in the underground Operational Headquarters in Victoria Barracks
known as Fortress HQ, nicknamed the "Battle Box". The Fortress Plotting
Room at Stanley Fort is located in an underground bunker below
an old Signal Station, Block 3, opposite the Officers' Mess. Remains
of a plotting table and predictor still can be found inside.
The Stanley Battery
The 9.2 inch three gun battery at Stanley Fort, was probably one of
the most modern of its kind in 1937 in spite of the fact that the guns
were secondhand having come from the batteries at Devil's Peak and
Mount Davis. The Mark X 9.2 inch 28 ton Breech Loader was the
premier coast defence gun at that time and was used extensively in all
major defences. In the UK it was sometimes railway-mounted so that
it could be moved about together with its ammunition wagon. Rail-
mounted guns before being fired had to be secured with heavy iron
guys known as chain pickets to stop them toppling over from the force
of their recoil. In fixed guns like those at Stanley Fort the recoil was
absorbed by a spring accumulator mounted to the rear of the gun. The
Mark X had been developed from the Mark IX in 1899. It had a single
motion breech mechanism with an electrical or percussion firing
mechanism. Its maximum range was 29,200 yards which meant that
the upper gun at Stanley which was mounted on a traverser could reach
targets in Kowloon and also the Lema Islands to the south of Hong
Kong.
The weight of the Mark X B.L. including breech assembly was 28
tons and the weight of the cradle mounting nearly 130 tons. As previously
explained the guns were transported from their old batteries by
sea as the roads would not have supported such colossal axle loads.
The transportation of the guns and the construction of their huge concrete
bases would have been carried out by civilian contractors, but the
actual installation of the guns would have been undertaken by the Royal
Artillery using a special portal crane known as a gantry crane. The
installed guns would have been disguised with huge camouflage nets
draped over them, and protected from the weather when not in use by
canvas tarpaulins. The concrete gunhouses built over the two lower
guns by the Japanese were probably not bombproof casemates and
would only have given the gunners protection from the weather and
from strafing by enemy fighters. Judging by old photographs of these
gunhouses the arc of fire must have been severely restricted.
The Stanley Battery, situated at the south-east corner of the
peninsula, was made up of three gun emplacements and a large number
of magazines, bunkers, and other battery support buildings spread
over a fairly wide area. Most of these structures are still in existence.
Inside the satellite earth station there is a steep flight of steps from
an old generator house down a very rugged and precipitous ravine to a
concrete footpath which girdles the south-eastern coast of the peninsula.
Remains of old concrete posts at regular intervals suggest a security
fence existed at one time alongside the footpath. About halfway along
the footpath situated on a ledge of the cliff stands a small concrete
structure with a semi-circular bow shaped front and a large open embrasure
facing in an easterly direction. This shelter housed one of the
coast artillery searchlights for the battery. The searchlight was protected
by steel shutters when not in use. The rear part of the shelter
housed either a small generator or a series of accumulator batteries to
provide the electricity supply to power the searchlight. A second searchlight
emplacement can be found further along the footpath facing in a
south-easterly direction.
Situated higher up the cliff above the second searchlight emplacement
is the searchlight command post. This consists of a two-tiered
structure connected by an internal flight of steps. The same standard
design as the searchlight emplacement has been used for each tier, the
only modification being to increase the height of the parapet wall which
reduces the size of the embrasure opening but still allows observation.
This is where the searchlight directing officer and battery observers
would have been stationed. Adjacent to the searchlight command post
is a small concrete shelter probably used as an off-duty rest room by
the searchlight operators and observers working shifts or watches.
Defence electric lights or projectors could be used in either a searchlight
role, sweeping across the sea in front of the emplacement picking
out and following hostile targets for the gunners to engage, or as a
fixed illumination covering constantly a body of water through which
enemy ships might pass. The beams could be adjusted to narrow for
long range or wide for shorter range, but with a greater area of coverage.
Sometimes a system of 'sentry' and 'sweeper' beams would be used .
Two lights situated some distance apart would remain in the same position
as sentry beams. The light operators would watch for enemy
ships passing through their beams, and when something was seen a
third searchlight, the 'sweeper,' would pick up the ship and illuminate
it for the guns. Sweepers would also light up at irregular times, make
a quick sweep of the area then douse, 'Douse lights' was the niticial
term used when passing an order. Coasi artillery searchlights could
not be used in an anti-aircraft role as they had ver\ liiilc elevation.
The Bluff Head Battery
The Bluff Head Battery was set up as an improvised emergency
battery sometime after 1938 in the event of war. Although no two
batteries were exactly alike they all conformed io a general pattern. A
typical emergency coastal battery, such as that set up on ihe Bluff,
would consist of two guns either fitted with their own gun shields or
mounted in temporary steel framed casemates covered with sandbags
which would later be rebuilt in brick or concrete, with sunken expense
magazines or shell stores and air-raid shelters or dugouts for the gunners
between then. There would be two searchlight emplacements,
one on each flank of the battery, so that the guns could be used at night.
' A battery observation post equipped with range tinder, predictor, and
fire-control equipment would be sited behind the guns, if possible on
higher ground, otherwise in a two or three storey tower, or in a conve
nient nearby building.
The battery would have been surrounded by barbed wire
entanglements, and protected by infantry defences such as pillboxes,
sandbagged machine-gun emplacements, and slit-trenches. The search
lights were housed in small brick or concrete shelters protected by steel
shutters, each searchlight powered by its own diesel-engined generator
housed in a small engine room at the rear of the shelter. Alternatively
wet cell accumulator batteries in series could be used ami probably
were at Stanley, as a number of carbon rods, which were a component
of this type of battery, have been found discarded in old bunkers and
several old battery charging rooms have also been found. Emergency
sandbagged searchlight emplacements could also be set up quickly if
required.
Other Gun Emplacements
A mobile anti-aircraft battery, 18th AA Bty, 5"' AA Regt RA, is
known to have been captured at Stanley on 25 Dec 1941. An AA position
is shown on old wartime maps on the spur above Tai Tarn Tau,
between the two main batteries, but being mobile the battery could
have been at any position, within the fort at the time of the surrender.
This battery would have had its own mobile searchlights.
A wartime machine gun post is shown on some old maps beside
the footpath leading down to the present pumphouse behind the new
married quarters on the west side of the peninsula. Nothing is shown
on the Ordinance Survey map and it is believed that this post would
have been an improvised sandbagged strongpoint. Its purpose would
have been to prevent the enemy coming up the path from the sea. It
also may have had its own searchlight set up in a sandbagged
emplacement.
The story of the fierce fighting in the Stanley area and the last
stand at Stanley Fort, which in the latter stages of the battle had no
water supply and no communications link with the Fortress Headquarters
in Victoria Barracks, has been told in Oliver Lindsay's book "The
Lasting Honour", Tim Carew's "The Fall of Hong Kong", and the
Volunteers' Little Red Book. It was in this final action on Christmas
Day 1941, that severe damage was done to the Stanley Fort Batteries
by intensive shell and mortar-fire bombardment from the Japanese
counter-batteries combined with continuous air-raid attacks by Japanese
dive-bombers throughout the day until the capitulation was made
on written orders from Fortress HQ shortly after midnight.
From 1942 to 1945 Stanley was used as a civilian internment camp
by the Japanese. In July, 1943 the batteries at Stanley Fort, then of
course in Japanese hands, were again subjected to air-raid attacks this
time from American dive-bombers. Fourteen internees were unfortunately
killed in one of these bombing raids by a stray bomb. These air-
raids continued intermittently until the end of the War. The war damage
sustained by the bunkers, magazines, observation posts, and pillboxes
which made up the batteries can still be seen today.
After the Liberation, Stanley Fort was again occupied by the British
Army. The garrison was reinforced in 1949 and remained strong
throughout the 1950s despite deployments to fight insurgency in Ma
iaya and to assist in the Korean War. In 1957 me Royal Artillery lost
one of its major stations in the colony described as "the hist of the great
Gunner bastions on the island," when 27lli Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment
RA, which was stationed at Stanley Fort, was sent hack to the
United Kingdom for reorganisation. From then up to the handover to
the Hong Kong Government in 1994, Stanley Fort was occupied by
British infantry battalions on 2-year tours of duty. In 1997 it was handed
over to the Peoples Liberation Army who are the present occupants.
NOTES
Lord Stanley, Edward Henry, 15th Earl of Derby, Secretary of State for the
Coionies, t845.
REFERENCES
"Stanley, Hong Kong - The First Three Years" by Lieut. G.P.
Shearer, R.E.,Royal Engineers' Journal, June 1938.
"British & Indian Armies on the China Coast 1795 - 1985", by
Alan Harfield, A&J Partnership, 1990.
"The Guns & Gunners of Hong Kong", by Denis Rollo. The
Gunners Roll of Hong Kong 1992.
"Eighteen Days", by Col. D.R. Bennett, R.A.P.C, The Royal
Army Pay Office, Hong Kong, 1976.
"Lyemun Barracks: 140 Years of Military History", by Phillip
Bruce, 1987.
R.G. HORSNELL
Brief History
There seems to have been a military presence at Stanley since the
early days of Hong Kong as a British Colony. The original barracks
were situated at Chek Chue (Stanley Village). Tyiarn Bay. The English
name seems to have been derived from the name of the Colonial Secretary
of the day, Lord Stanley.1 Work on erecting new barracks commenced
in 1841 and by 1857 there was accommodation available for 3
field officers, 10 officers, 1 mess room, 1 anti-room, and accommodation
for 441 NCOs and men. The high rate of lever within the Hong
Kong garrison resulted in a decision being taken in 1857 that Stanley
Barracks was to be used as a Convalescent Station and orders were
given for the unused portions of the barracks to be prepared for convalescent
soldiers. With an increasing number of troops arriving in Hong
Kong the accommodation problem made it necessary for the hiring of
private buildings, supplemented by Madras tents which could accommodate
20 men per tent. Bell tents were not considered to be suitable,
nor were the traditional Chinese matshed temporary camp structures
which formerly had been used in the very early days.
The present barracks on the Tytam Peninsula, known as Stanley
Fort, were built in 1936 to replace the old 1840s barracks which had
been abandoned about 1895 and fallen into ruin. A contract was given
to a Chinese contractor on 11 June 1936 for the following buildings :
1 Barrack Block
1 Sergeant's Mess
1 Dining Room and Cookhouse
1 Bath House
1 Medical Inspection Room and a 2-Bed Ward
A Quarter for the Brigade Commander
2 Blocks of Officer's Quarters
1 Block of 2 Warrant Officer's Quarters
1 Block of 12 Warrant Officer's Quarters
1 Block of 12 Married Soldier's Quarters
The work took about a year to complete and in 1937 a further
building programme was initiated to provide additional accommodation,
messes and a church. At the same time artillery defences were also
being built.
The Artillery Defences
Design of fortifications was the responsibility of the Directorate
of Fortifications and Works at the War Office. This department prepared
the drawings of fortifications and issued them to the various army
commands, which in turn issued them to their contractors. The Commander
Royal Engineers at the various commands modified the designs
to suit local requirements and local materials. The designs took
the weapon to be used and protection from enemy fire as the main
considerations, but standardisation was also introduced as far as possible
to assist in construction. The siting, positioning, and grouping of
structures were also obvious major considerations in the building of
defensive works, batteries, and other types of fortifications.
Modernisation and reorganisation of the defences in Hong Kong
in the 1930s was also governed by the Washington Treaty, an agreement
signed in 1921 by nations with interests in the Pacific Region.
Article 19 of the Treaty proscribed any increase or major improvements
in heavy weapons and any improvements in coast defences other
than those already planned and agreed to by the signatories to the Treaty.
Gun emplacements were not regarded as fortifications but any disused
emplacements were to be destroyed when new ones were erected.
As part of a colony wide reorganisation and modernisation
programme of the armament, a new battery was constructed at Stanley
between 1935 and 1937 consisting of three 9.2 inch calibre Mark X
guns mounted on Mark VII mountings. One of these guns came from
the battery at Devil's Peak and the other two came from Mount Davis,
as both of these batteries were being modernised. The gun shifts were
difficult and complex operations as the guns were very heavy, the barrel
and breech assembly weighing 28 tons. Everything was dotie by
hand and the pieces, and all their mountings, were transported to Stanley
by sea. The two lower guns (No. 2 & No.3) were situated on concrete
emplacements now occupied by parabolic antennae dishes in the Cable
and Wireless Ltd. Satellite Earth Station complex. These two guns
could only fire out to sea and were later encased in concrete gunhouses
or casemates by the Japanese who seemed to have kept them in service
during the Occupation. The gun houses were demolished and the guns
cut up for scrap in 1952.
The No. 19.2 inch gun mounted on top of "Gun Hill" was equipped
with all round traverse, that is, it was able to engage any target, for it
was mounted on a circular platform which was rotated mechanically.
It was this gun which bombarded the Japanese almost continually from
the 14th to 24th December, 1941, firing at the rate of three rounds per
half hour at targets as far away as Kowloon City. The shells weighed
more than a hundredweight each. The gun was able to fire at this great
range due to its mountings which gave a thirty five degree angle of
elevation. After the completion of the new Stanley Battery, two 6 inch
naval guns were installed on the Bluff forming a second emergency
battery known as Bluff Head Battery. These smaller guns had an effective
range of 9,500 yards and also seem to have been equipped with
all round traversers as they could engage land and sea targets. These
two batteries were reinforced in December 1941 by two 3.7 inch howitzers
in a position in Stanley Village with an observation post in the
Officers Mess, and an anti-aircraft battery at Tai Tarn Tau. The Japanese
reported that "long range fortress artillery bombardments were
extremely effective." Targets were engaged with clock code observation
by the Infantry and also where possible by direct observation. In
addition many targets such as road junctions and bridges had been registered
and carefully tabulated in the months leading up to the Japanese
attack so that direct observation was not really necessary to know
that the shells were on target. Japanese artillery set up at the captured
Gun Club Hill Barracks in Kowloon was silenced in this way by British
guns on Hong Kong island.
The Fortress System
By the 1930s the operation of batteries had become immensely
sophisticated and complicated, difficult for a layman to understand.
The old 19th century arrangement of individual battery range and position
finders was improved by a new arrangement known as the Fortress
Range Finding System. Under this system the range of vision and of
precision was greatly extended by a series of what were known as Fortress
Observation Posts to cover targets within range of the guns. These
transmitted bearings and ranges gained from observation to a central
Fortress Plotting Room where the target, such as an enemy vessel, was
tracked on a chart known as a Fortress Plotter. The co-ordinates of the
target were then calculated or computed on a mechanical device known
as a predictor which made allowance for the time in flight of the shell
and the movement of the vessel assuming it had not realised it had
been observed and taken evasive action by changing course. The coordinates
were then telephoned or telegraphed to the individual batteries
which then possessed all the information necessary to engage the
enemy, even though the target might be so far away as to be invisible to
the Battery Commander. The data could also be relayed directly to the
guns where it was displayed on electrically operated dials.
In Hong Kong as part of reorganisation and modernisation of the
Hong Kong defences a Fortress Range Finding system was developed
consisting of three Fortress Plotting Rooms at Stanley Fort, Mount Davis
and Tytam Gap, also ten Fortress Observation Posts all connected to
two Fire Commander's Posts which in turn, were connected to the
Commander Fixed Defences who had his Coast Artillery Headquarters
in the underground Operational Headquarters in Victoria Barracks
known as Fortress HQ, nicknamed the "Battle Box". The Fortress Plotting
Room at Stanley Fort is located in an underground bunker below
an old Signal Station, Block 3, opposite the Officers' Mess. Remains
of a plotting table and predictor still can be found inside.
The Stanley Battery
The 9.2 inch three gun battery at Stanley Fort, was probably one of
the most modern of its kind in 1937 in spite of the fact that the guns
were secondhand having come from the batteries at Devil's Peak and
Mount Davis. The Mark X 9.2 inch 28 ton Breech Loader was the
premier coast defence gun at that time and was used extensively in all
major defences. In the UK it was sometimes railway-mounted so that
it could be moved about together with its ammunition wagon. Rail-
mounted guns before being fired had to be secured with heavy iron
guys known as chain pickets to stop them toppling over from the force
of their recoil. In fixed guns like those at Stanley Fort the recoil was
absorbed by a spring accumulator mounted to the rear of the gun. The
Mark X had been developed from the Mark IX in 1899. It had a single
motion breech mechanism with an electrical or percussion firing
mechanism. Its maximum range was 29,200 yards which meant that
the upper gun at Stanley which was mounted on a traverser could reach
targets in Kowloon and also the Lema Islands to the south of Hong
Kong.
The weight of the Mark X B.L. including breech assembly was 28
tons and the weight of the cradle mounting nearly 130 tons. As previously
explained the guns were transported from their old batteries by
sea as the roads would not have supported such colossal axle loads.
The transportation of the guns and the construction of their huge concrete
bases would have been carried out by civilian contractors, but the
actual installation of the guns would have been undertaken by the Royal
Artillery using a special portal crane known as a gantry crane. The
installed guns would have been disguised with huge camouflage nets
draped over them, and protected from the weather when not in use by
canvas tarpaulins. The concrete gunhouses built over the two lower
guns by the Japanese were probably not bombproof casemates and
would only have given the gunners protection from the weather and
from strafing by enemy fighters. Judging by old photographs of these
gunhouses the arc of fire must have been severely restricted.
The Stanley Battery, situated at the south-east corner of the
peninsula, was made up of three gun emplacements and a large number
of magazines, bunkers, and other battery support buildings spread
over a fairly wide area. Most of these structures are still in existence.
Inside the satellite earth station there is a steep flight of steps from
an old generator house down a very rugged and precipitous ravine to a
concrete footpath which girdles the south-eastern coast of the peninsula.
Remains of old concrete posts at regular intervals suggest a security
fence existed at one time alongside the footpath. About halfway along
the footpath situated on a ledge of the cliff stands a small concrete
structure with a semi-circular bow shaped front and a large open embrasure
facing in an easterly direction. This shelter housed one of the
coast artillery searchlights for the battery. The searchlight was protected
by steel shutters when not in use. The rear part of the shelter
housed either a small generator or a series of accumulator batteries to
provide the electricity supply to power the searchlight. A second searchlight
emplacement can be found further along the footpath facing in a
south-easterly direction.
Situated higher up the cliff above the second searchlight emplacement
is the searchlight command post. This consists of a two-tiered
structure connected by an internal flight of steps. The same standard
design as the searchlight emplacement has been used for each tier, the
only modification being to increase the height of the parapet wall which
reduces the size of the embrasure opening but still allows observation.
This is where the searchlight directing officer and battery observers
would have been stationed. Adjacent to the searchlight command post
is a small concrete shelter probably used as an off-duty rest room by
the searchlight operators and observers working shifts or watches.
Defence electric lights or projectors could be used in either a searchlight
role, sweeping across the sea in front of the emplacement picking
out and following hostile targets for the gunners to engage, or as a
fixed illumination covering constantly a body of water through which
enemy ships might pass. The beams could be adjusted to narrow for
long range or wide for shorter range, but with a greater area of coverage.
Sometimes a system of 'sentry' and 'sweeper' beams would be used .
Two lights situated some distance apart would remain in the same position
as sentry beams. The light operators would watch for enemy
ships passing through their beams, and when something was seen a
third searchlight, the 'sweeper,' would pick up the ship and illuminate
it for the guns. Sweepers would also light up at irregular times, make
a quick sweep of the area then douse, 'Douse lights' was the niticial
term used when passing an order. Coasi artillery searchlights could
not be used in an anti-aircraft role as they had ver\ liiilc elevation.
The Bluff Head Battery
The Bluff Head Battery was set up as an improvised emergency
battery sometime after 1938 in the event of war. Although no two
batteries were exactly alike they all conformed io a general pattern. A
typical emergency coastal battery, such as that set up on ihe Bluff,
would consist of two guns either fitted with their own gun shields or
mounted in temporary steel framed casemates covered with sandbags
which would later be rebuilt in brick or concrete, with sunken expense
magazines or shell stores and air-raid shelters or dugouts for the gunners
between then. There would be two searchlight emplacements,
one on each flank of the battery, so that the guns could be used at night.
' A battery observation post equipped with range tinder, predictor, and
fire-control equipment would be sited behind the guns, if possible on
higher ground, otherwise in a two or three storey tower, or in a conve
nient nearby building.
The battery would have been surrounded by barbed wire
entanglements, and protected by infantry defences such as pillboxes,
sandbagged machine-gun emplacements, and slit-trenches. The search
lights were housed in small brick or concrete shelters protected by steel
shutters, each searchlight powered by its own diesel-engined generator
housed in a small engine room at the rear of the shelter. Alternatively
wet cell accumulator batteries in series could be used ami probably
were at Stanley, as a number of carbon rods, which were a component
of this type of battery, have been found discarded in old bunkers and
several old battery charging rooms have also been found. Emergency
sandbagged searchlight emplacements could also be set up quickly if
required.
Other Gun Emplacements
A mobile anti-aircraft battery, 18th AA Bty, 5"' AA Regt RA, is
known to have been captured at Stanley on 25 Dec 1941. An AA position
is shown on old wartime maps on the spur above Tai Tarn Tau,
between the two main batteries, but being mobile the battery could
have been at any position, within the fort at the time of the surrender.
This battery would have had its own mobile searchlights.
A wartime machine gun post is shown on some old maps beside
the footpath leading down to the present pumphouse behind the new
married quarters on the west side of the peninsula. Nothing is shown
on the Ordinance Survey map and it is believed that this post would
have been an improvised sandbagged strongpoint. Its purpose would
have been to prevent the enemy coming up the path from the sea. It
also may have had its own searchlight set up in a sandbagged
emplacement.
The story of the fierce fighting in the Stanley area and the last
stand at Stanley Fort, which in the latter stages of the battle had no
water supply and no communications link with the Fortress Headquarters
in Victoria Barracks, has been told in Oliver Lindsay's book "The
Lasting Honour", Tim Carew's "The Fall of Hong Kong", and the
Volunteers' Little Red Book. It was in this final action on Christmas
Day 1941, that severe damage was done to the Stanley Fort Batteries
by intensive shell and mortar-fire bombardment from the Japanese
counter-batteries combined with continuous air-raid attacks by Japanese
dive-bombers throughout the day until the capitulation was made
on written orders from Fortress HQ shortly after midnight.
From 1942 to 1945 Stanley was used as a civilian internment camp
by the Japanese. In July, 1943 the batteries at Stanley Fort, then of
course in Japanese hands, were again subjected to air-raid attacks this
time from American dive-bombers. Fourteen internees were unfortunately
killed in one of these bombing raids by a stray bomb. These air-
raids continued intermittently until the end of the War. The war damage
sustained by the bunkers, magazines, observation posts, and pillboxes
which made up the batteries can still be seen today.
After the Liberation, Stanley Fort was again occupied by the British
Army. The garrison was reinforced in 1949 and remained strong
throughout the 1950s despite deployments to fight insurgency in Ma
iaya and to assist in the Korean War. In 1957 me Royal Artillery lost
one of its major stations in the colony described as "the hist of the great
Gunner bastions on the island," when 27lli Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment
RA, which was stationed at Stanley Fort, was sent hack to the
United Kingdom for reorganisation. From then up to the handover to
the Hong Kong Government in 1994, Stanley Fort was occupied by
British infantry battalions on 2-year tours of duty. In 1997 it was handed
over to the Peoples Liberation Army who are the present occupants.
NOTES
Lord Stanley, Edward Henry, 15th Earl of Derby, Secretary of State for the
Coionies, t845.
REFERENCES
"Stanley, Hong Kong - The First Three Years" by Lieut. G.P.
Shearer, R.E.,Royal Engineers' Journal, June 1938.
"British & Indian Armies on the China Coast 1795 - 1985", by
Alan Harfield, A&J Partnership, 1990.
"The Guns & Gunners of Hong Kong", by Denis Rollo. The
Gunners Roll of Hong Kong 1992.
"Eighteen Days", by Col. D.R. Bennett, R.A.P.C, The Royal
Army Pay Office, Hong Kong, 1976.
"Lyemun Barracks: 140 Years of Military History", by Phillip
Bruce, 1987.
