Gun emplacement: detail of specimen ready ammunition locker

Description Gun emplacement: detail of specimen ready ammunition locker

Catalogue Number SC 670769

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of C 73117

Scope and Content Ready ammunition locker, World War II six-inch gun emplacement, Ness Battery, Stromness, Mainland, Orkney Islands In both World Wars coast batteries were built to protect the channels into Scapa Flow and Kirkwall Bay, where there was an important contraband control. The greatest concentrations of firepower were at the main southern and north-western entrances to the Flow, the latter covered by a series of coast batteries centred, in World War II, on Ness Battery at Stromness. These are heavy-duty steel doors which cover and protect one of the ready ammunition lockers associated with the six-inch guns at Ness Battery. Placed in series around the outer wall of the platform which surrounds the gun pit, these lockers housed the shells and charges which had been brought up from the underground magazine and which were then made ready for final assembly and firing. At the heart of the Orkney archipelago, Scapa Flow was the main fleet anchorage for the Royal Navy during both World Wars. Its vital importance led to the creation of one of the most concentrated defence networks in Britain. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/670769

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap