between 1935 and 1937 consisting of three 9.2 inch?
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As part of a colony-wide reorganisation and modernisation programme of the armament, a new battery was constructed at Stanley with three 9.2 inch calibre Mark X guns mounted on Mark VII mountings. One of these guns came from the battery at Devil's Peak and the other two came from Mount Davis, as both of these batteries were being modernised. The gun shifts were difficult and complex operations as the guns were very heavy, the barrel and breech assembly weighing 28 tons. Everything was done by hand and the pieces, and all their mountings, were transported to Stanley by sea. The two lower guns (No. 2 & No.3) were situated on concrete emplacements now occupied by parabolic antennae dishes in the Cable and Wireless Ltd. Satellite Earth Station complex. These two guns could only fire out to sea and were later encased in concrete gunhouses or casemates by the Japanese who seemed to have kept them in service during the Occupation. The gun houses were demolished and the guns were cut up for scrap in 1952.
The No. 1 9.2 inch gun mounted on top of "Gun Hill" was equipped with all-round traverse, that is, it was able to engage any target, for it was mounted on a circular platform which was rotated mechanically. It was this gun which bombarded the Japanese almost continually from the 14th to 24th December, 1941, firing at the rate of three rounds per half hour at targets as far away as Kowloon City. The shells weighed more than a hundredweight each. The gun was able to fire at this great range due to its mountings which gave a thirty-five degree angle of elevation.
After the completion of the new Stanley Battery, two 6 inch naval guns were installed on the Bluff forming a second emergency battery known as Bluff Head Battery. These smaller guns had an effective range of 9,500 yards and also seem to have been equipped with all-round traversers as they could engage land and sea targets. These two batteries were reinforced in December 1941 by two 3.7 inch howitzers in a position in Stanley Village with an observation post in the Officers Mess, and an anti-aircraft battery at Tai Tam Tau. The Japanese reported that "long-range fortress artillery bombardments were extremely effective." Targets were engaged with clock code observation by the Infantry and also where possible by direct observation. In addition, many targets such as road junctions and bridges had been registered and carefully tabulated in the months leading up to the Japanese attack so that direct observation was not really necessary to know that the shells were on target. Japanese artillery set up at the captured