AA Battery Wemyss Plantation

AA Battery Wemyss Plantation was a Cold War anti-aircraft battery located near Wemyss Bay on the Clyde coast. Site number CD58a, part of the Clyde postwar AA defences.

Wemyss Bay appears to have been the site of two anti-aircraft batteries, the postwar defence described here, and a World War II defence listed by the Royal Artillery Association as site number AS7,^[1] AA Battery Wemyss Bay, which would have formed part of the wartime Clyde AA Defences. The later postwar battery was reportedly built on the same site as the World War II battery.

Subsequent housing development in the area means there are no surviving remains of either battery, razed to make way for the later buildings.

Cold War

One of five such Cold War installation reportedly built around Glasgow, the battery was built between 1951 and 1952, and equipped with four emplacements mounted with 5.25-inch guns which would have been fully automated and radar controlled.

Records show the guns were disposed of for scrap in July 1956, to McConnells of Coatbridge.

First hand examination of aerial photographs from 1955, held by RCAHMS, confirmed that the battery was of Cold War Type S construction, and that the inner arc of the emplacements faced northeast, with ancillary buildings also to the northeast. No evidence was seen in any of the photographs of the presence of the World War II battery, suggesting that information regarding its demolition and the reuse of the site are probably correct.