Chebucto Head Battery
The cliffs of Chebucto Head stand just over 8 miles (13.5 km) south of the southernmost tip of the Halifax peninsula. They form the most seaward extremity of the mainland on the western side of the approaches to Halifax Harbour.
For the first two centuries of Halifax’s existence after being founded by the British in 1749 there were no fortifications at Chebucto Head. Defences for much of that time focused on preventing enemy warships from entering the harbour itself and were therefore located around the harbour and its inner approaches west of McNab’s Island. However, from the end of the 19th century the range of new naval weaponry began to increase dramatically, which raised the possibility of enemy warships being able to stand offshore and bombard Halifax from a distance. The First World War (1914-1918) saw large and powerful coastal defence batteries mounted at Fort McNab and Sandwich Point to keep enemy warships at bay. When the Second World War broke out in 1939, additional defences were deemed necessary to counter the increased gun range capabilities of the battleships and cruisers of the German Kriegsmarine. It was during this conflict that two new coastal defence outer batteries were constructed on the two headlands furthest to seaward from Halifax Harbour: Devil’s Battery at Hartlen Point near Eastern Passage; and a second one, Chebucto Head Battery.
Chebucto Head had been the location of a lighthouse and an accompanying fog signal station for many years – the first lighthouse was constructed there in 1872 and a second one replaced it in 1928. When work on the gun emplacements for the battery began in 1940, destined to occupy the same site as the lighthouse, the 1928 lighthouse was demolished, and not immediately replaced. A third lighthouse was built in 1941 in a new location nearby, about 700 yards (640 metres) north of the new gun battery, with that lighthouse being in turn replaced by the current one in 1995.
Chebucto Head Battery consisted of three reinforced concrete emplacements arrayed in a semicircle, with associated magazines, stores and crew shelters for each blasted out of solid rock, and a Battery Command/ Fire Control Station located near the cliff edge. Each emplacement mounted an Elswick 6-inch Mk 24 rifled breech-loading (B.L.) gun on a 45-degree Mk V high angle mount, giving a maximum range of 24,500 yards (13.9 miles or 22.4 km). This was a significant improvement over the older 6-inch Mk VII guns found at Sandwich Battery and Fort McNab, which were on 15-degree Mk II mounts giving a range of just 13,000 yards. Made by Vickers Armstrong Limited at the Elswick Works in Newcastle, England, all three guns were in place by the winter of 1941-42, and fully operational by the summer of 1943. They were manned by soldiers of the 54th Battery of the 1st (Halifax) Coast Regiment.
Additional associated features included a 70-foot-tall wooden tower erected in 1941 near Duncan’s Cove, which supported a large 200 MHz CD (Coastal Defence) surveillance radar array developed by the National Research Council (NRC) in Ottawa. This was replaced shortly thereafter with a four-story concrete director tower in about the same location, roughly 700 yards (640 metres) south-west of the guns, which mounted a Depression Range Finder (DRF). That concrete tower also housed a more accurate and effective 3,000 MHz (S-band) CDX (Coastal Defence Fire Control) radar, also developed by the NRC and manufactured by Research Enterprises Limited (REL); an experimental version having been installed and successfully tested at Duncan’s Cove earlier, in October 1942. The CDX set comprised two 4-foot diameter dishes, and stood just over 8 feet tall. In production from the summer of 1943, there would eventually be a total of three CDX radars as part of the defences of Halifax: at Fort McNab on McNab’s Island and at Devil’s Battery on Hartlen Point, as well as the one at Duncan’s Cove. Additional CDX radars were constructed to defend Sydney NS, Saint John NB, Victoria BC and Prince Rupert BC. The radar was capable of detecting large vessels at a maximum range of 23 miles (38 km) and could spot shell splashes out to 13 miles (21 km); it was therefore useful as both a search radar for locating and tracking enemy shipping and as a fire control radar for correcting the fall of shot from shore batteries onto the target. Tracking information (range and bearing) was sent from the radar site to the Battery Fire Control Station via an electronic transmission system known as a magslip indicator. The CDX was one of the first radars developed that was capable of shell splash spotting and thus a significant historical development for coastal Fire Control.
Two concrete searchlight emplacements were constructed during the Second World War at the water’s edge in front of the Chebucto Head gun emplacements - searchlights 1 and 2 of the network of 17 searchlights defending Halifax. Manufactured by Canadian General Electric, these used concentrated beams to search, locate and fix moving targets at sea, for use as “Fighting Lights” for night gun engagements. In operation by December 1941, each searchlight was 6-feet in diameter and the emplacements had iron shutters in front to protect them. They were powered by three 50 hp Gardner diesel engines in a separate concrete engine room at Chebucto Head, backed up by emergency standby compound-wound General Electric generators, requiring a crew of four men. The searchlights were operated by remote control from the concrete Command Post located on the cliff edge above.
There was also a Depression Position Finding (DPF) structure, part of the Halifax Fortress optical system, located beside the repositioned lighthouse some 700 yards to the north of the battery. Frame buildings for use as quarters for the battery’s personnel were constructed on the landward side of the emplacement.
The battery remained active after the Second World War ended in August 1945, although it had been relieved of its Coast Defence role a few months earlier, at the end of May that year. It was finally deactivated in the mid-1950s. The 6-inch guns were removed and shipped to Portugal in 1956 under a NATO mutual aid program. The concrete emplacements, the battery command post and the four-story director tower have all been incorporated into private residences, the grounds of which include the two crumbling searchlight emplacements on the shoreline. Trespassing is strongly discouraged. The range-finding structure by the current lighthouse however still stands and can be visited today.
References:
Doug Knight The 9.2-inch Coast Defence Gun in Canadian Service Ottawa 2020.
William D. Naftel Halifax at War: Searchlights, Squadrons and Submarines 1939-1945 Formac, Halifax 2008.
National Research Council of Canada CDX Radar Tests: Devil’s Battery, Halifax, N.S. April 1943 NRC Publications Archive