155th (Mixed) Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery
155th (Mixed) Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment was an air defence unit of Britain's Royal Artillery formed during World War II. Around two-thirds of its personnel were women from the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS). After defending the West of Scotland and later London, the regiment was heavily engaged in Operation Diver against V-1 flying bombs, and later was deployed to Antwerp to carry out anti-Diver duties there in the closing stages of the war. Organisation By 1941, after two years of war Anti-Aircraft Command, tasked with defending the UK against air attack, was suffering a manpower shortage. In April its commander-in-chief, Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick 'Tim' Pile, proposed to overcome this by utilising the women of the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS). The ATS was by law a non-combatant service, but it was decided that Defence Regulations permitted the employment of women in anti-aircraft (AA) roles other than actually firing the guns. They worked the radar and plotting instruments, range-finders and predictors, ran command posts and communications, and carried out many other duties. With the increasing automation of heavy AA (HAA) guns, including gun-laying, fuze-setting and ammunition loading under remote control from the predictor, the question of who actually fired the gun became blurred