Apostle Battery Table Bay Fire Command

Abstract

Although it had been agreed at an Imperial Defence Committee meeting in London in June, 1933, that South African coast defences should be modernised at a cost of £130 000 – which today seems a quite ridiculous amount - none of the recommendations had been completed when World War II broke out more than six years later.

The recommendations included the conversion of two 9.2-inch guns at Simons Town and two at Cape Town on 15-degree mountings to 35-degree mountings, which would greatly increase their range, and the emplacement of two 35-degree 9.2-inch guns to replace the two obsolete 6-inch quick-firing guns in a so-called state of care and preservation, unmanned and gathering sand, on the Bluff at Durban.