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Maritime RA

Operational Organisation

The 6 regimental HQ’s in the UK were located so as to serve the 6 main shipping areas:

Clyde, Forth, Tyne & Tees, Mersey, Thames and Bristol Channel.

Each RHQ was responsible for administrating and training its personnel. For training purposes they had at least one of each gun in use and a dome trainer. They also had use of the naval gunnery schools and firing ranges in their area.

RHQ

Port Detachments

Port detachments allocated men to ships, arranged leave and refresher training for disembarking crews, made up any kit deficiencies and dealt with their pay and any welfare matters.

The Crews

The numbers on board any individual ship varied from up to 30 on the large vessels down to 2 men in a small coaster. The average detachment on a Liberty ship was 7.
The gun crews could be a mix of MRA, Royal Navy or Royal Marine personnel but the Bofors guns were always a solely MRA responsibility.
As the number of men on any one ship was small they all had to be capable of handling every weapon on board. This could range from a 6 inch Naval AA gun down to balloons and rockets. Many MRA NCO’s proudly wore the Naval Gun Layers badge qualifying them to take charge of a detachment at sea along with all naval stores on board.
Along with their normal service equipment, men were issued with naval sea kit, tropical kit, a set of civilian clothes for use in neutral ports and special arctic kit for ships on the North Russia convoys. When embarked the men came under the provisions of the Merchant Shipping Act as well as the Army Act.
For gallantry and service at sea personnel were awarded Naval decorations and the MRA got a good share of these. Many of course lost their lives at sea. Despite the risks, service in the MRA was popular even though they were doing it for less pay than their RN counterparts who, in turn, were getting considerably less than the merchant seamen.

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