page_title: 7th County of London Brigade, Royal Field Artillery
section_title: Home Defence
hierarchical_section_title: 7th County of London Brigade, Royal Field Artillery / World War II / 56th Heavy Regiment / Home Defence
caption_attribution_description: THE BRITISH ARMY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM 1939-45 9.2-inch Mk II howitzer of 56th Heavy Regiment, Royal Artillery, Hastings, Sussex. Comment&#160;: The IWM caption incorrectly identifies this as a 9.2 inch gun. NOTE&#160;: This version of the photograph has brightness and contrast artificially increased to highlight detail.
context_page_description: The 7th London Brigade, Royal Field Artillery was a new unit formed when Britain's Territorial Force was created in 1908. Its origin lay in Artillery Volunteer Corps formed in West London in the 1860s, which had later been incorporated into a larger London unit. Together with its wartime duplicate it served on the Western Front, at Salonika and in Palestine during World War I. It formed several units for service in World War II, when they were in action in North Africa, Italy and North West Europe. The unit continued in the postwar Territorial Army until 1961.
context_section_description: 56th Heavy Regiment was formed at St Leonards-on-Sea, near Hastings, on 2 January 1940 from the cadre provided the previous month by 64th (7th London) Field Rgt. It was formed of four batteries, A, B, C and D, which were redesignated P, Q, R and S respectively on 11 March 1942. The regiment never received the '7th London' subtitle, but was included on the 7th Londons' regimental war memorial after WWII. In May 1940 it was photographed at Hastings manning 6-inch guns and 9.2-inch howitzers of World War I vintage. The 9.2-inch was an effective but relatively immobile siege gun. The regiment was serving in Eastern Command of Home Forces, and transferred to South-Eastern Command when that was split off in 1941.
  The 7.2-inch howitzer (a relined 8-inch howitzer from World War I) began to be issued to heavy regiments in 1942, and by then the regiment had its own signal section of the Royal Corps of Signals and Light Aid Detachment of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, ready for mobile warfare. In October 1942 the regiment was assigned to First Army preparing for the landings in North Africa (Operation Torch). On 1 January 1943 the four batteries were redesignated 15, 17, 18 and 19 Hvy Btys.
caption: Gunners of 56th Heavy Regiment manning a Mk II 9.2-inch howitzer at Hastings, May 1940.
exif: {}