British Machine Guns in Hong Kong

[Fatboy Coxy]

Re-reading through the report from Gen Maltby regarding the British defence of Hong Kong, I came across this paragraph.

In the North West sector was Z Company 1 Middlesex Regt., consisting of spare men of machine gun companies plus battalion cooks, storemen, bandsmen, etc, manning forty machine guns from Fortress reserve stocks. This Company constituted a valuable fighting force enabling inter alia the 1 Middlesex Regt to man the pill boxes on the entire perimeter of the island from 11th to 13th December.
Operations in Hong Kong – Major General Maltby – London Gazette

Now a British MG Battalion was organised as 4 companies of 3 platoons of 4 Vickers machine guns each, totalling 48 in all. Another 40 MGs in one scratch company seems suspicious to me, can anyone shed any light on this

Steve

[mariandavid]

Perfectly normal - the same happened with the MG battalion stationed in the Singapore Fortress. Quite apart from the 'cooks' normally there was a transport element that was not needed in fixed positions. Pulling the 6 men together for each of 12 Vickers would be no problem. Incidentally Maltby's Gazette of 1946 is not to be relied upon - his account in the Official History is more accurate.

[Fatboy Coxy]

Thank you for your reply Mariandavid.

I agree it could be done, numbers wise, if the guns were deployed in static positions, and each location was stocked with provisions and ammunition. And if this was, it suggests to me that this must have been part of the pre planned defence of Hong Kong. I wonder why the temporary company "Z" would contain 40 guns, while the regular 4 companies still retain only 12 each. Maybe the 4 regular companies were to be used as mobile units, given "Z" was deployed in the north-west, the least likely area to receive a landing attempt.

Re Maltbys account of the campaign, do you mean "The war against Japan, Vol1 The Loss of Singapore" by Woodburn Kirby as the official history.

I'm interested by what you say about the defence of Singapore. The 1st Manchester Bn was the machine gun battalion, again with 48 guns, organised into 4 companies of 12. In addition thee was a company of the Straits Settlements Volunteer Force equipped as a machine gun company although these might have been issued Lewis guns. Can you or anyone else give any more detail on any of this?

Steve

[AllanThomson]

Maltby won't have mentioned this but the Middlesex were trained in the use of the machine gun by the Royal Scots who had been trained as a machine gun regiment pre war.

Source: Reg Shore (Middlesex) a friend of my Grandfather's who told my father that he thought my Grandfather was Middlesex when infact he was Royal Scots and had served in both the 1st and 2nd btn's of the 1st prior to the battle of Hong Kong.

[Fatboy Coxy]

Hi Allan

Thanks for that. I first thought those memories may have been clouded with time. Certainly I could imagine Royal Scots explaining fields of fire and ranges to the Middlesex, as they handed over pill boxes and machine guns, but The Middlesex were supposedly trained as a machine gun battalion before they were posted to Hong Kong, and Royal Scot machine gun skills would have been restricted to a few soldiers.

However I have now read (Wikipedia) that briefly one of the two Royal Scot battalion may have been trained as a machine gun battalion, and therefore the Middlesex could have received its training in Hong Kong from the Royal Scots.

Regards