Belfast Gunners in Burma

Tribute to a fellow Irish Regiment; albeit (indispensable) Gunners:

The 8th (Belfast) Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery, was a Reserve regiment raised in early 1939, with recruiting mainly from the greater Belfast area. The Regiment was mobilised and manned its guns in readiness to defend Belfast before war was declared. Following deployment with the British Expeditionary Force, the Regiment returned via Dunkirk and was in action during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. In the spring of 1942, the regiment embarked for Bombay and then moved to Lahore to marry up with the guns that had arrived via Karachi. The Regiment drove some 2,000 miles to Calcutta and were later deployed into East Bengal.

Joining the XV Corps in Burma, the 8th Regiment spent two and a half years taking part in the Arakan and Burma Campaigns, in action against both the Japanese Air Force and the Japanese Army. Such was the Regiment's accuracy and effectiveness against ground targets at long range that the Regiment was soon known as 'the Twelve Mile Snipers' and took part in actions that included the Battle of Ngakyedauk or the Battle of Sinzweya (known as the Battle of the Admin Box), when the Japanese mounted a local counterattack on the southern front of the Burma Campaign from 5-23 February 1944.

At the end of the war, the 8th Regiment embarked in Madras for the journey home to Northern Ireland. The 8th (Belfast) Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment is an antecedent regiment for the current 206 (Ulster) Battery, a battery of the 5th (Scottish and Ulster) Regiment, a Reserve Regiment of The Royal Artillery.