Manx Regiment

The Manx Regiment - the 15th (Isle of Man) Light Anti Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery - was raised in 1938 as a Territorial Army unit of the British Army. It recruited on the Isle of Man and was attached to 53rd Light Anti-Aircraft Brigade in Anti-Aircraft Command.

World War II
The Regiment, consisting of 41 and 42 Batteries, was mobilised shortly before the outbreak of World War II and sailed from the Isle of Man to Liverpool to take up air defence of the River Mersey during the Liverpool Blitz. A further Battery - 129 - was raised to take the Regiment to its full complement of three Batteries.

In November 1940 the Regiment was sent to Egypt, with 41 Battery being deployed to the Sudan, 129 Battery with 11 Bofors guns to Crete (where it was to be overrun by German forces in 1941) and 42 Battery remaining in Egypt. In August 1942 the regiment joined the 7th Armoured Division (the Desert Rats), and fought with it at the Battle of El Alamein.

The Regiment continued with 7th Armoured Division until the end of the war, in the invasion of Italy and returning with it to the UK in January 1944 in time for training for the invasion of Normandy (D Day) on 6 June 1944. Thereafter it saw action in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and finally in the Hamburg area.

Postwar
After World War II the Regiment was placed in suspended animation, and reformed in the Territorial Army as 515 (Isle of Man) LAA Regiment. When Anti-Aircraft Command was disbanded in 1955, the regiment was reduced to a staff troop in 42nd (East Lancashire) Infantry Division.

Museum
Until 2005 the Old Comrades of the Regiment ran a museum at Tromode, but their exhibits are now displayed at the Manx Aviation and Military Museum at Castletown.