Heavy Anti-Aircraft Gun Station 385 is a heritage-listed former anti-aircraft defence and gun emplacement at 50 Pritchard Street, Lytton, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was built from 1943 by the Allied Works Council. It is also known as Lytton Heavy Anti-Aircraft battery emplacement and Gun Station 385. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 28 June 2019.
History Heavy Anti-Aircraft (HAA) Gun Station 385 was constructed at Lytton in 1943 to defend Brisbane against Japanese air attack during World War II (WWII), replacing a 1942 gun station at Colmslie. The Lytton area, on the southeast side of the Brisbane River mouth and part of the traditional land of the Turrbal and Jagera peoples, has long played a part in the defence of Queensland. In 2019, Gun Station 385 is located within the Caltex oil refinery to the east of Fort Lytton National Park, and retains: four above-ground gun emplacements for 3.7 inch (94mm) anti-aircraft guns, consisting of octagonal gun pits, formed of cinder blocks and concrete, surrounded on seven sides by earth revetments; and a semi-underground concrete command post, comprising an underground plotting room and an adjacent open concrete pit with three compartments. It has the most intact gun emplacements of the eight known 3.7 inch gun stations active in Brisbane between 1942 and 1944, and is also one of the most visible and intact 3.7 inch gun stations in Queensland.
Although WWII started in September 1939, Australia was under little threat of air attack until late 1941. On 8 December 1941, the United States of America entered the war, following the previous day's bombing of the American fleet at Pearl Harbor by Japanese carrier-borne aircraft. Simultaneously, Japanese forces launched assaults on Thailand, the Philippines and the British colony of Malaya. The sudden fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942 and the rapid Japanese advance through the islands of the Netherlands East Indies (NEI) raised fears of air attacks on Australia. The first Japanese air raid on Darwin in the Northern Territory occurred on 19 February 1942, while air raids on Broome in Western Australia occurred on 3 March 1942. Japanese air raids on other targets in Australia seemed likely, and an invasion of Australia was also feared. The attack on Darwin was carried out by aircraft launched from four of the six aircraft carriers involved in the attack on Pearl Harbor, plus land-based aircraft flying from the NEI. Casualties at Broome included Dutch civilians, evacuated from the NEI, who were killed when their flying boats were strafed and sunk in Roebuck Bay. Japan briefly considered invading Australia (an idea promoted by the Imperial Japanese Navy, but rejected by the Japanese Army due to a lack of resources) before shelving that option in March 1942, in favour of isolating Australia from the United States by capturing Port Moresby, and later Fiji, New Caledonia and the Samoan Islands.
Due to its position in the north of Australia, Queensland was at risk of land-based air attack (launched from airfields in the NEI or New Guinea), as well as attacks launched from aircraft carriers. As a result of the growing fear of Japanese air raids, the Queensland Government issued the Protection of Persons and Property Order No.1, gazetted 23 December 1941, which ordered the Brisbane City Council (BCC), and other local authorities near the coast, to build air raid shelters. All Queensland coastal state schools were closed in late January 1942, and although most reopened on 2 March 1942, student attendance was optional until the war ended. A policy of voluntary evacuation of women and children from Queensland coastal areas was also implemented on 27 January 1942.
Air raid shelters were a passive defence, and Brisbane – as well as other ports such as Townsville and Cairns – also needed active defence of the type provided by fighter squadrons and anti-aircraft guns. After the first US forces arrived in Brisbane in the Pensacola Convoy on 22 December 1941, the city became a major supply base and staging point for the war in the South West Pacific, and the largest US naval base in continental Australia. Brisbane was the location of various units’ headquarters, plus supply and ordnance depots, military transit camps and hospitals, research facilities, naval bases (including a US submarine base), munitions factories, military airfields, and aircraft assembly and maintenance facilities. In January 1942, Brisbane became Base Section 3 of the United States Army Forces in Australia (USAFIA), headquartered in Somerville House, South Brisbane. After General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, South West Pacific Area (SWPA), arrived in Brisbane in July 1942, the city also hosted his General Headquarters in the AMP building at the corner of Queen and Edward Streets (now known as MacArthur Central). General Sir Thomas Blamey, Commander Allied Land Forces, had his Advanced Land Headquarters at the Forgan Smith Building at the new St Lucia campus of University of Queensland (which, although built, had not opened due to the war). Queensland played a major role in the build-up of troops and supplies for the joint US-Australian counter-offensive in New Guinea, which occurred after the Japanese advance was checked at the Battle of Milne Bay and the Kokoda track campaign (August–September 1942).KC Dod, The Corps of Engineers: the war against Japan, Washington, Office of the Chief of Military History, U.S. Army, 1966, pp.109-12
Prior to WWII, efforts to defend Australia from air attack included raising the 1st Anti-Aircraft Battery (at George's Heights, Sydney), in 1926. "Battery" in this sense refers to an artillery unit and its personnel, but the term has also been used historically to refer to a number of cannons working as a group on the battlefield or in a fortification (e.g., the "Georges Head Battery" at Mosman in Sydney). The 3 inch gun, a naval gun which was adapted for use against aircraft during World War I (WWI), could fire a 16-pound (7.3 kg) shell to a 22,000 ft (6.7 km) maximum altitude, at a rate of 16–18 rounds per minute. This unit was later armed with British 3 inch (76.2mm) guns.D Horner, The gunners, a history of Australian artillery, St Leonards NSW, Allen & Unwin, 1995, p.197.Horner, The gunners, a history of Australian artillery, p.198 By the beginning of WWII in September 1939, four more batteries had been raised, and, by the end of 1940, Australia's anti-aircraft units were also equipped with 3.7 inch (94mm) guns, introduced in Britain in the late 1930s. Australia had manufactured 165 of these guns at Maribyrnong, Victoria, by November 1941. The 3.7 inch gun could fire a 28-pound [13 kg] shell to a maximum altitude of 30,000 ft (9 km), at 10–20 rounds per minute. The Australian 3.7 inch guns were manufactured with static mounts, rather than the mobile version (wheeled, with folding outriggers) produced in Britain and Canada.Horner, The gunners, a history of Australian artillery, pp. 211, 212, 219, 238.Horner, The gunners, a history of Australian artillery, p.210
In 1942, Brisbane's HAA defence included US and Australian units, utilising both 3 inch and 3.7 inch guns, while Australian Light Anti-Aircraft (LAA) units were armed with 40mm Bofors. A Bofors 40mm gun could fire a 2-pound (900g) shell, at 120 rounds per minute. The US 94th Coast Artillery Regiment arrived in Brisbane on 29 March 1942, and sited its 3-inch guns at:
Heath Park (in East Brisbane) Hendra Holy Cross laundry in Wooloowin Amberley airfield Archerfield airfield Cannon Hill
Machine guns and searchlights were deployed at multiple sites around Brisbane. The 94th CA Regiment left Brisbane in June 1942. Australian HAA units later replaced the US units at Amberley, Archerfield and Heath Park, but Australian factories were not able to produce enough heavy and light AA guns for Brisbane to receive an allocation of weapons until May 1942.
The AA guns were sited to defend Brisbane's airfields (Eagle Farm and Archerfield), the US Navy's submarine base at Teneriffe (established April 1942), and any other shipping on the river. As Japanese aircraft were likely to use the Brisbane River as a navigational aid, guns were sited near the river. By July 1942, the Australian Army controlled three 3.7 inch gun stations, located at Colmslie (GS 385), Victoria Park (GS 386), and Hendra (GS 389), forming a triangle roughly centred on Hamilton; plus two 3 inch gun stations, at Amberley (GS 391) and Archerfield (GS 392). In July 1942, Australian Army units within the Queensland Line of Communication Area included the Brisbane AA Group and the 2/2 HAA Regiment, along with the 113th and 114th LAA regiments.Horner, The gunners, a history of Australian artillery, p.312
A map of gun stations in the Brisbane area, circa December 1942, shows there were five active 3.7 inch gun stations by this time. Three were located north of the Brisbane River, at Victoria Park, Hendra, and Pinkenba (GS 388); while two were south of the river, at Heath Park (East Brisbane), and Colmslie. A 3-inch gun station was shown as active at Archerfield, while Bofors guns were deployed, close to both banks of the river, at 11 sites between Teneriffe and Pinkenba. Locations for 3.7 inch gun stations "under construction or construction about to commence" included Balmoral Park (GS 387), Lytton (GS 385), and Hemmant (GS 390) - all south of the river. Notes indicated that the Colmslie gun station was to be moved to Lytton; and that Pinkenba was a mobile gun station, with a "static" site to be built (where the guns would be bolted to a concrete base). Positions for four guns at Heath Park are visible in an aerial photograph.Aerial photograph, dated 4 August 1942 (DNRME, MAP317423001). The Colmslie gun station was located southwest of the Commonwealth Acetate of Lime Factory, part of which was used by 6 HAA Battery during 1942–43.Undated overlay sheet (designed to be used with a map) of active gun stations, Brisbane Area, in NAA Series AWM54, Item Barcode 459270, "[Defence Schemes - Australia:] "Defence against air attack, Brisbane area", 1942-43" (non-digitised, held at AWM). A related document, an "appreciation of the situation", dated 6 December 1942, noted that three of the five 3.7 inch gun stations were mobile.(accessed 5 April 2019)NAA series J1018, Item barcode 1694271, "Bulimba - Proposed Civil Construction Camp Site Plan" 1944 (shows four extant gun positions)
During the war, other 3.7 inch gun stations were constructed in Queensland: at Townsville and Cairns, as well as at military airfields at Mareeba Airfield; Iron Range (now Lockhart River Airport); Jacky Jacky (now Northern Peninsula Airport); and Horn Island Airport. In late 1942 Townsville was the principle port for those Allied troops serving in the New Guinea campaign. Townsville had 3.7 inch gun stations at Aitkenvale, The Strand, Jimmy's Lookout, Mt St John, Pallarenda, and by the Ross River mouth. There was also a 3.7 inch gun station at Nelly Bay, Magnetic Island. The airfields each had two gun stations, each with four 3.7 inch guns.National Archives of Australia, Series BP1/1, Allied Works Council - Queensland - minutes of meetings: Volume 2, Meeting 87, 5 October 1942, Minute 1686 and Volume 5, Meeting 235, 10 May 1943, Minutes 6635 and 6636 (Nelly Bay and Ross River). Although Brisbane's gun stations never fired at enemy aircraft, Townsville's guns engaged Japanese aircraft in May–July 1942 during the bombing of Townsville. Horn Island was attacked a number of times between March 1942 and June 1943. Japanese aircraft carrier losses at the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942 and the Battle of Midway in June 1942, prevented any Japanese carrier-borne air attacks on Queensland.