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| The 9.2 inch gun preserved and displayed by the Imperial War Museum at Duxford Airfield was recovered from Spur Battery, Gibraltar in 1981. By then the 9.2 inch guns at Gibraltar were the only surviving examples of this type of weapon, which had been installed around the turn of the century at strategic points throughout the British Empire. The Museum wished to preserve one of these guns, both as a symbol and a relic of the British presence on Gibraltar dating back to 1704, and because they represented what had been, for over sixty years, Britain's premier coastal defence gun. The 9.2 inch gun at Spur Battery was selected as the most suitable for preservation.
The history of 9.2 inch guns goes back to 1879 when a Committee on Ordnance composed of senior army and navy officers was formed to consider the future of British artillery. The Admiralty submitted a request for a gun which would match a design then being produced by Krupp of Essen in Germany. The resulting 9.2 inch breech-loading gun was quickly seen to be superior to traditional muzzle-loading cannon and taken into Land Service for use in coastal defence batteries. The primary role of coastal defence was to protect naval bases, strategic harbours and commercial ports from attack by hostile warships, as well as to deter any attempt at invasion. The development of ever larger iron-clad warships on the one hand and fast-moving torpedo-boats on the other in the late nineteenth century presented a grave threat to all countries with sea-coasts and especially to the British Empire. While 'quick-firing' guns were installed to deal with torpedo-boat at tacks, the 9.2 inch gun was selected as the principal means of preventing long-range bombardment by enemy warships. Although at the beginning of this century battleships mounted far more powerful guns, artillerymen in coastal defences had the advantage of a stable platform from which to fire. By 1914, over one hundred 9.2 inch guns had been mounted in every part of the British Empire. The 9.2 inch gun retained its premier position until the dissolution of Coast Defence as a separate arm of the services in 1956, when it was finally decided that air power and guided missiles provided a far more flexible and effective answer to long-range naval bombardment or invasion. 'Project Vitello' recovery and re-erection of the 9.2 inch gun from Gibraltar
Access to Spur Battery and working space around the gun were extremely restricted, and the major components had to be removed by traditional methods, using jacks, skates and winches.
The components, weighing some 140 tons in all, were then transported down narrow roads with hairpin bends and gradients of 1 in 5 to the Gibraltar dockyard.
Project Vitello 2 began in August 1981 when the gun arrived at Portsmouth on board the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Vessel Bacchus. It was moved to Duxford in eleven loads by 56 Motor Transport (training) Squadron Royal Engineers. The gun was reassembled by 34 Field Squadron of 39 Engineer Regiment, Royal Engineers. In September 1981 the Squadron constructed the concrete plinth in the former airfield rifle range on which the gun is now mounted. The most difficult phase of the operation, the reassembly of the gun, was completed in five weeks in November and December 1981. In February 1982 the Squadron constructed a section of parapet in front of the gun and a shell pit underneath it, simulating as far as possible its appearance in its original emplacement at Gibraltar. The Trustees of the Imperial War Museum owe a great debt of gratitude to the Royal Engineers for their part in Project Vitello. The display of the gun was inaugurated on 4 June 1982 by the Chairman of the Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir John Grandy, who had been Station Commander at Duxford in 1942 and Governor and Commander-in-Chief, Gibraltar from 1973 to 1978. |
