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11th Met Section RCA in the Battle of the Scheldt

By September, it had become critical for the Allies to secure good ports for their logistics and supply. The British 2nd Army had captured Antwerp with its port intact, which would be ideal, except that the Germans still controlled the Scheldt River Estuary that provided Antwerp's access to the sea. The new critical objective thus became to clear the Scheldt. The Canadian 1st Army was given the lead in this in early October, but unfortunately the Germans had had time to dig in defensively in their positions and to flood the estuary making waterlogged terrain that slowed the Canadian advance. The 5-week effort had a high casualty cost, but ultimately succeeded in clearing the estuary so that Antwerp could be used as an Allied supply port. A central part of the effort was Operation Switchback, an action to take the German-held area known as the Breskens pocket on the south bank of the estuary, above the Leopold Canal.

The 11th Met Section coordinated meteor reports for the artillery in this operation, both surface track and anti-aircraft, using a new method that required extensive coordination with other units. Two GL-3 radar sets operated by joint Army RAF personnel were positioned at two remote sites in Bruges and Sint-Niklaas, one on either flank of the gun area. Both units would make hydrogen balloon ascents every 2 hours, using radar equipment to track the range, bearing, and elevation. They would report their wind speed and direction readings back to the control computing center at 11th Met Section who were stationed at Rear Corps HQ in Ghent. The 11th would calculate smoothed windspeed and direction estimates for the gun area every 2 hours, which would be relayed by wireless telegram to the forward-deployed Met Sections with the Divisions and AGRAs.

When the Section first set up at their Ghent position on 30 Sept, they were in an orchard, sleeping on the ground in tents, and working out of their truck and its "penthouse" (a canvas tent extension off the side of the truck). After the first week, they found an abandoned German camp from which they appropriated some lumber for floorboards and some beds to get off the cold ground. "All ranks are living under canvas. We are working in our lorry and penthouse. It must be admitted that conditions are not ideal. However since we obtained flys for the tents and sufficient floorboards things have been much more comfortable and everyone in the section realizes how much better off we are than the poor infantry. We have been very busy and contrary to last summer we now feel that the section is making a contribution to the war effort. It sometimes seems very interesting to think that whereas the phone is now a part of our Office and used over and over throughout the day - not so long ago we were not allowed one. Everyone finds the civilians very friendly and many friends have been made. We are attracted by the cleanliness of the people compared to the people we saw in France."

Image license: The base map for this image was taken from the Wikipedia article on "Battle of the Scheldt". The low-res 4 colour map was donated to Wikipedia and released to the public domain by the author and webmaster of www.canadiansoldiers.com. A full colour version can be found at that website. The annotations to the map indicating the locations of the 11th Met Section and the remote GL3 sets were made by Tom Chatt, and are donated to the public domain.

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• (del) (cur) 03:39, 11 August 2014 . . TomChatt (Talk | contribs) . . 800×381 (57,056 bytes)
• (del) (rev) 03:20, 11 August 2014 . . TomChatt (Talk | contribs) . . 800×381 (22,937 bytes) (==11th Met Section RCA in the Battle of the Scheldt== By September, it had become critical for the Allies to secure good ports for their logistics and supply. The British 2nd Army had captured Antwerp with its port intact, which would be ideal, except tha)

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