page_title: Z Battery
section_title: Service
hierarchical_section_title: Z Battery / Service
caption_attribution_description: English: The Home Guard 1939-45 Anti-aircraft rocket or 'Z' Battery manned by the Home Guard on Merseyside, 6 July 1942.
context_page_description: The Z Battery was a short range anti-aircraft weapon system, which launched 3-inch diameter rockets from ground-based single and multiple launchers, for the air defence of the United Kingdom in World War II.
context_section_description: The first Z Batteries were equipped with a single-rocket launcher, the Projector, 3-inch, Mark 1. It was soon found that the rockets did not perform as accurately as the trials had suggested and that the proximity fuses were rarely effective. Therefore, the technique of firing the rockets in large salvos was introduced, and projectors capable of firing an ever-larger number of rockets were developed. The Projector, 3-inch, No 2, Mk 1 was a twin launcher and the No 4 Mk 1 and Mk 2 fired 36 rockets at a time in a "ripple" firing sequence.
  During the Battle of Britain in an attack on RAF Kenley by Dornier 17 bombers, AC2 David Roberts, RAF Regiment, downed one of the two attacking aircraft destroyed using the RAF's newest anti-aircraft weapon, a line of twenty-five rockets that deployed a barrage of 500 foot cables suspended by parachutes. This weapon -  the naval version of the Z Barrage - was symptomatic of the hodge-podge of weapons issued to the RAF Regiment in the early war years, The other Dornier 17 was shot down by Corporal John Miller of the Scots Guards, using a Lewis gun. For this action both men received the Military Medal.
  From early 1942, the manning of Z Batteries began to be transferred to the Home Guard, as the equipment was comparatively simple to operate and the rounds were lighter. (The age limit for Home Guardsmen to work on Z Batteries was 60, whereas it was 40 for those posted to conventional anti-aircraft guns and coast defence batteries, because of the heavier ammunition.)
caption: A Z Battery manned by the Home Guard on Merseyside in July 1942.
exif: {}