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Thread: WW2 searchlight

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jul 2008
    Location
    near Warragul, Victoria
    Posts
    3,718

    Default WW2 searchlight

    Hi

    Something unusual last weekend. I attended the military vehicle rally at Corowa, NSW. They had a large ( at least 150 cm )1943 carbon arc searchlight running. The light is powered by its original trailer with a 2 phase AC generator driven by a side valve V8 Ford. He had it running on reduced level so not to disturb the locals . I have a video but not sure how to attach it. He said the carbon rods last for one hours use .

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Sep 2019
    Location
    Newcastle, AU
    Posts
    238

    Default

    Well that sounds darn interesting. If you have trouble with the video you can always email it to me and I'll put it up on Youtube and you can share it from there.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jul 2008
    Location
    near Warragul, Victoria
    Posts
    3,718

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Oct 2008
    Location
    Cairns, Q
    Posts
    666

    Default

    FWIW I did my three months compulsory military training in 1954, and after this was posted briefly to a CMF searchlight unit at Watsons Bay in Sydney before a work transfer to North Queensland. I don't remember the details of the British built lights we had, but they were probably a bit bigger than the one you saw. They were mounted on four short crawler tracks, and were very heavy to move around.

    The power unit was a 4LW Gardner Diesel engine driving a large DC generator on a four wheeled trailer. The engine did not have the benefit of a self starter. The crank handle had a very long handle. Each crew had four members. To start the engine two crew members would stand shoulder to shoulder with their hands on the handle. A third crew member would stand on the opposite side of the handle with his hands on the handle between his opposite numbers' hands. The fourth crew member manned the decompression levers on the engine cylinders.

    The crankers would get the engine spinning at about 30 RPM, then the man on the decompression levers would drop the decompression lever on one cylinder. If you were lucky the engine would start to fire on one cylinder before the crankers ran out of steam, helping the crankers a bit. Once the engine was firing regularly on one cylinder the remaining compression levers could be dropped in sequence until the engine was running evenly on all four cylinders. On a brisk Autumn night in Sydney it required a fair amount of effort to start the power unit from cold. It must have been a very heavy task indeed to start them on a freezing English winter night during WW2 when the engine oil was thick from the cold.

    If the light "accidentally" picked up a commercial aircraft flying over an official complaint was sure to follow!

    Frank.

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