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‘SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND’

The story of one of Kent’s W.W. 2 secret weapons

By David Collyer

if you were old enough to go to the cinema during the last war, the British
Movietone News will be familiar to you. Used for morale boosting and propa-
ganda purposes, the newsreels would often contain heavily censored items about
various aspects of the defences of the U.K. Only those ‘in the know’ would
recognise where certain items had been filmed, and usually the audience would
only be informed that the location was ‘somewhere in England’. This was the
case with the largest railway mounted gun fired in England and was often fea-
tured in the newsreels when visited by V.l.P.s, which it frequently was. The gun
was the 18" Mk.| 90 ton Howitzer named ‘Boche Buster’ which was stationed
on the Elham Valley Line which ran between Folkestone and Canterbury, being
an adapted W.W.1 railway mounting carrying a larger calibre barrel (or piece)
than the 14" Mk.l|l railway gun which had fired ‘The King's Shot’ at Arras on
8th August 1918. Four of these 18" pieces were delivered into the Arsenal at
Woolwich at the end of 1918, being proofed in April 1919 onwards. They stayed
on the Heavy Gantry until 1940.

Allocated to the 2nd Super Heavy Regt, Royal Artillery, ‘Boche Buster’ was
sent to Catterick, Yorks to the School of Super Heavy Artillery, after the mount-
ing had been discovered by Col. Montague Cleeve in November 1939 in a dingy
railway shed at Chilworth, Notts, where it had been stored since returning from
France in 1920. Both ‘Sceneshifter’and ‘Boche Buster’ had 13.5" pieces mounted
on them when they arrived at No.1 Bay South Boring Mills to have the modified
Howitzers mounted on them, the front thrust rings having to be modified before
the larger pieces were fitted. While the Howitzer was being refurnished, a model
from the Imperial War Museum was sent to Catterick for the training of the 11th
Super Heavy Battery, R.A. who were formed to man ‘Boche Buster’.

One member of the 11th Super Heavy Battery is Mr Jim Woodward of Adi-
sham who was a Bdr Signaller and remembers their arrival in Kent thus:—

“Our advanced party left Catterick on 30th January 1941 and we moved
on the 2nd February, arriving at Bishopsbourne, Nr Canterbury at 0.400 hrs
on the following morning. The Battery Offices were set up in the station
buildings, while the Regimental H.Q. was at Charlton Park under the command
of Col. J.F.C. Austin M.C., with his Adjutant Capt. L.G. Williams. We had
Major Boyle with his Adjutant Capt..,G.L. Sommerville as C.O.

“Boche Buster travelled down to Kent behind two ex G.W.R. 0-6-0 tank
engines with its train of shell and cordite wagons, fitters coach, dining coach,
galley wagon and brake van disguised as three banana wagons. Having arrived

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0“ 7th M3)’ 1941- (Bob Hollingsbee)

at Bishopsbourne it was secreted in the tunnel between Bridge and Bishops-
bourne. Whenever we moved it was disguised with tarpaulins draped over an
angle-iron framework to look like an ordinary train, and I am sure that the
Germans must have been aware that it was there.

“The whole battery consisted of 87 men which included some Royal
Engineers for work on the lines and driving the engines, but the gun detach-
ment was 24 men who had been picked from the St Helens and Wigan Rugby
League teams. Our No.1 Sgt was named Sharrocks and had played for Wigan,
while another, our No.2, Pimlett, had played for St Helens.

“We first fired ‘Boche Buster’ on 6th February, but we didn't think to
warn the people at Barham, and I believe we shattered nearly every window
in the village and also removed a- few roofs. So after that we used to go round
to the people "and say ‘We're going to fire a round, will you please open all
your,windows’. The first time we fired the gunners didn't have a clue and

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only put the brakes half on, and ‘Boche Buster’ came quite along way back
down the track, and frightened us a bit. So after that we used to clamp the
brakes on to all 30 wheels each time we fired, but even then it came back
some 20 feet with the recoil."

The area to be covered by ‘Boche Buster’ in the event of an invasion attempt
by the Germans was the strip of coast between St Margaret’s Bay and Dungeness,
the gun having to be shunted along the curved track to traverse it. A spur line
was also constructed just north of the village of Kingston to enable the gun to
be hidden from enemy aircraft. A shallow cutting was constructed and roofed
with wire-wool impregnated netting on tubular steel poles and painted to match
the surrounding fields. This was completed by 25th February 1941, when a
special flight was made by a R.A.F. photo-recce aircraft to check the camouflage
of the local gun emplacements.

“This spur was necessary because we only had 4° traverse on the gun when
we chugged up the line, and we could only fire ahead or 2° on either side. So
if you wanted to cover the whole sweep of the Kent Coast, you had to back
up to the curve to point in that direction. ‘Boche Buster’ was primarily a
counter-invasion weapon, we didn’t have enough range to lob shells to the
other side until we came down to the coast, although we had various charges
with the guns (1, 2, 3 and Super) depending on how far you wanted the shells
to go.

“We fired ‘Boche Buster’ again on 13th February, near the Black Robin
public house, Kingston when the shells fell in mid Channel and were observed
from a Battery Observation Post at Dover. We received a Met. Office report
every day. There was another firing on 7th April near the World’s Wonder
bridge, and again shortly afterwards from Lickpot Bridge, Elham.

“We had a Drill Order on 15th April, and another on 14th May when we
started at 23.00 hrs and finished at 02.00 hrs on the following morning. The
Drill Order was without the gun, we just went through the motions for prac-
tice. We arrived at the spur too early, so the whole detachment went on a
route march and left me in charge of the gun.

"There must still be some shells in Dover Harbour from our practice firings,
as we were using nose fuses at first and quite often the shells didn't explode.
The theory was that it pushed a plug of air in front of it when it landed and
prevented detonation. After this we changed to base fuses and the shells
exploded, but unfortunately one of them exploded over the Royal Marines
Depot at Deal. The following day a large piece of shell, weighing about 14 lbs,
arrived back at Battery H.Q. with a note from the C.O. of the Depot tied to it
which read ‘Is this one of yours?’. I was in the office when it arrived, and l
won’t tell you what our C.O. said.”

Another shell dropped near the village of Worth, near Sandwich and was‘
blown up by the Bomb Disposal Squad fairly recently.

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‘Boche Buster’ at Elham 14th May 1941. Some idea of the size of the 18" Mk.l 90 ton

Howitzer can be gauged from the figures of the gun detachment alongside the gun. The
curve of the rail track is evident along which the gun was shunted to enable it to cover the

sweep of the Kent coast. (Southern Railway Archives)

Because of the weight of the gun, some work had to be done to the railway
track at the places where it was expected to fire. The track was re-laid with six
additional sleepers every 45 ft length, laid on fine ballast to help absorb the
shock. Extra track was laid in Bourne Park tunnel to enable service trains to
bypass the gun as the northern section of line was only single track, while shell
and cartridge magazines were built at Bishopsbourne Station, together with mess
and sleeping accommodation. The whole area was surrounded with a barbed wire
perimeter fence and Bren guns were mounted for defence.

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“The complete gun and mounting weighed 243 tons, the piece itself
weighed 81 tons, and the chamber for the cordite was like a bank vault under-
neath it. There was a ratchet and a big handle which undid a lock and then
the breech swung open and you got into this vast cavern. According to the
kind of charge which was used, the boys would come running along with the
hessian wrapped bags ofcordite, about 18" long, and throw in the appropriate
number. When the breech was loaded, the door was shut and then the number
one of the detachment would put in one of the firing cartridges he carried on
his belt. It was just like a 12 bore cartridge and set off the charge, which was
fired using an extra long lanyard about 12 yards long. Now the funny thing
about old ‘Boche Buster’ was that it had more of a ‘woof’ than a bang, and
if you were standing fairly close, it used to put you out for a fraction of a
second.

“The shells weighed 1% tons and were 6'7‘/4” tall so had to be moved on
railway trolleys and they were hoisted up to the breech level by two davits on
the mounting’. On the gun mounting there was a little trolley with a couple of
lines and shells were hoisted up via the davit and rammed into the opening.
It took ten men to ram the shells home, first of all it went halfway into the
breech, then came the order ‘Fully Home’ and there was a ‘Doing’ as it went
in. If you were on the other end of the gun you could almost tell which
detachment was loading because the shell went home with a different kind of
‘Shhh’. We had two Ford V-8 car engines to raise the barrel and one of the
gun detachment had to stand by to kick start the engines. There was a big
circle with a pointer to show how much elevation was being put up, but the
detachment never stood on the mounting when it was fired.

“At Bishopsbourne we were loading one shell and one of the gunners must
have slipped up, and the whole thing came crashing down, knocked a lump
off the gun and then buried its nose between two sleepers. l was about three
yards away, and wouldn't be here now" if it had been nose fused.

‘‘I believe we were supposed to be able to fire at a rate of one shot every
three minutes, or that is what they said we could do. Another thing which
worried Major Boyle was how many shells the gun would fire before the lining
wanted renewing. It was thought that the large shells would rip lumps off the
rifling, but the experts were surprised how little wear there was. Of course we

never really fired enough‘ times to find out how many shells could be fired
before the lining wore out.”

Practices were carried out in moving the complete gun train to other locations
as quickly as possible. However, the sites where it could be fired were limited
because of the shortage of suitable track. One such location was the firing spurs
on top of the cliffs at St Margaret’s Bay.

“We were nearly hit at St Margaret’s Bay when we were ranging into the
Channel; the Germans decided that it was time they started shooting as well.
I remember that there was an elderly couple standing by their cottage near

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where we were shooting, and every time we fired their roof lost a few more
tiles. Then the Germans opened up, and the same thing happened every
time their shells exploded and the poor old dears just stood there. They
couldn’t do anything, but they wouldn't leave the place. A lump of shrapnel
went through the ammo wagon, and a lump went through the gun mounting,
and afterwards we picked up some pieces and worked out that they were 15"
shells they had been throwing back at us.
“Our Observation Post was on Shakespear Cliffe, Dover and we spent
hours, even days digging a trench all the way to the clifftop so the enemy
didn’t see us. The poor gunners dug away carefully, carried the chalk away
and formed a slit trench at the top, then we had a photograph taken by one
of our Lysander aircraft. You could see every little bit of it, where they had
covered it in and tried to camouflage it — it was a pathetic waste of time.”
ln November 1943 ‘Boche Buster’ was relocated at Elham Station, where
once again existing buildings were taken over for Battery H.Q. and accom-
modation was constructed. There it remained until it was relocated just prior to
the D-Day operations and was earmarked for transportation to France together
with some of the smaller calibre railway guns. But in the end it was decided that
the rail-mounted guns would not be able to keep pace with the rapid advance
through Europe when wheeled heavy artillery was available, so ‘Boche Buster’
stayed in the U.K. but had already played its part for publicity purposes. No
V.l.P.s visit to the South East was complete without seeing ‘Boche Buster’, and
Winston Churchill was a frequent caller, the first occasion being on 31st January
1942. He also accompanied Mrs Roosevelt on 30th October that year when she
watched the gun being fired. The following day Canterbury received a heavy
blitz from ‘hit and run’ raiders, two of which shot up a military train going from
Canterbury to Folkestone, killing the driver and fatally injuring the fireman.
More tragically a young boy riding on the footplate was also killed.

Mr H.A. Baker who worked at Woolwich Arsenal with the heavy artillery
during W.W.2 recalls something about ‘Boche Buster’:-

“There was a Master Gunner in charge of the equipment when it left us,
who was supposed to have had a course on it. As they hadn’t been fired since
1919, and as far as we knew had never been fired for establishing range tables,
we wondered who had given him the course; which makes the Fred Karno’s

turnout described quite feasible.”

The llth Super Heavy Battery was disbanded just prior to the fall of Calais in
September 1944, and left ‘Boche Buster’ on Salisbury Plain, from where it was
taken to Shoeburyness Ranges in Essex for use in experiments with ‘skip bomb-
ing’ by the R.A.F. After the war the mounting was returned to Woolwich, together
with the smaller railway mounted guns and eventually was cut up in the early
1960s, leaving nothing to remind the future generations of the time when the
Super Heavy rail-mounted artillery waited for the enemy ‘somewhere in England’.

Acknowledgements
Mr J. Woodward, ‘After the Battle‘ magazine, Lance Bombardier S. Taylor R.A. (Retd) and
Mr H.A. Baker.

  

‘Boche B_uster’s spur line at Charlton Park. To enable the Howitzer to remain hidden from

‘Boche Buster’ speaks. Taken at Kingston on
7th May 1941, this view shows the frame-
work at the front of the mounting which
was used to carry the tarpaulins when the gun
was camouflaged. (Imperial War Museum)

the view of enemy aircraft, a spur line was built at Kingston and camouflaged with tubular
scaffold poles and netting. This camouflage was checked on 25th February 1941 by a R.A.F.
photo-recce aircraft. Unfortunately the chalk in the cutting behind Charlton Park shows up

well.

(Bob Hollingsbee)

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