Apostle Battery Table Bay Fire Command

• Main Author: L.A. Crook
• Format: Article
• Language: Afrikaans
• Published: Stellenbosch University 2012-02-01
• Series: Scientia Militaria
• Subjects: Apostle Battery; Navy's coast artillery units; Simons Town; British Commonwealth port defences
• Online Access: http://scientiamilitaria.journals.ac.za/pub/article/view/360

<p>Although it had been agreed at an Imperial Defence Committee meeting in London in June, 1933, that South African coast defences should be modernised at a cost of £130 000 – which today seems a quite ridiculous amount - none of the recommendations had been completed when World War II broke out more than six years later.</p> <p>The recommendations included the conversion of two 9.2-inch guns at Simons Town and two at Cape Town on 15-degree mountings to 35-degree mountings, which would greatly increase their range, and the emplacement of two 35-degree 9.2-inch guns to replace the two obsolete 6-inch quick-firing guns in a so-called state of care and preservation, unmanned and gathering sand, on the Bluff at Durban.</p>