"Guards armoured division 1944" Topic

Aside from Shermans, Fireflies and Cromwells what other vehicles would have been used by the Guards division in NW Europe in 1944/45?

For example what would the main infantry transport vehicle of the 32nd Guards Infantry Bde. have been? M3 Halftracks or Bren Carriers?

1st Grenadier is Mechanized. Again, what vehicle was mostly used?

2ns Welsh Guards are noted as Recce. Did they use Cromwells? Or ACs?

Thanks very much for any help!

From the top….

Infantry brigade – Bedford QLT 3 ton trucks for the rifle companies – lorried to the battlefield rather than mechanized as it were. Support platoons mainly in carriers.

1st grenadier – M5 or M9 half tracks (not sure which offhand sorry) with one platoon per company in Universal carriers. (Motor battalions had three companies of 4 platoons rather than the regular four companies of 3 platoons.)

2nd Welsh – Cromwells, with Challengers added later in '44; early on troops were just 3 Cromwells; no Firefly.

Generally lots of M5 Stuarts too; each armoured regiment had a recce troop of 11 of them, as did the Welsh Guards. (Yes British armoured recce regiments had a recce troop; in practice they were more or less used as a fourth armoured regiment.). Each regiment also had an AA troop of 6 Crusader AA with twin 20mm, but these were phased out quite quickly, as the Luftwaffe was a no-show and replacement crews in demand.

Armoured cars were in the Household cavalry, which were corps troops in '44, but worked closely with Guards armoured.

Dom.

Thanks very much Dom!
Will be needing a lot more decals from you soon :-)

One more question if you allow me.
I read that the 6th Guards Armoured Bde. had Churchills. Is that correct, and if so which type of Churchill would it have been?

PS – Great link; click on the "arms" tab at the top for a menu of ridiculously detailed organisations taken from the official War Establishments. For recce there were several types of regiment in the British army; armoured reconnaissance regiment applied to the 2nd Welsh Guards, armoured car regiment the Household cavalry.
truxmodels.co.uk/index.html

Wow,

That link is pure gold!

Thanks again very much Dom!

Willie

M5s for the Honeys, or M3A3s?

Dom, on the subject of recce regiments, there are three main types:

Recce regiments -- usually from the reconnaissance corps -- one per infantry division, typically equipped with a/cs or LRCs.

Armoured recce regiments -- usually from the RAC -- one per armoured division, typically in proper tanks.

Armoured car regiments -- usually from the cavalry -- as the name implies, equipped with a/cs, and normally corps troops or higher.

All the best,

John.

Stuart VIs in june'44 by december probably a mixture like most regiments.

and you might find that the stuarts were the cut down version without a turret. more scoot than shoot.

and just looking at that link above on page 35

- The Carriers soon acquired heavier armament. At least one carrier had three Browning machine guns fitted
- The Carriers were eventually replaced by sawn off light tanks. These were turretless Stuarts. These gave a better cross country performance and better armoured protection while still allowing easy dismounting for reconnaissance on foot.
- Later the troop officers also received light tanks. Eventually these were Chaffee.

"I read that the 6th Guards Armoured Bde"

6th Guards Tank Brigade.

It was an independant tank brigade equipped with Churchills, but apart from the tank regiments being drawn from various units of the Brigade of Guards, it was nothing to do with Guards Armoured Div.

IIRC they had the usual mix of NWE Churchills, Marks IV-XI depending on when you look at them.

Thanks Martin,

Of course I meant the 6th Armoured Tank Brigade, my bad.
In fact the only reason I want to include them in my (model) army is because of those Churchill tanks.
I'll probably go for a few Mk IVs combined with the newer Mk VIIs. Somehow those cast turrets look much more imposing.

6th Guards Tank Brigade had very few Mk VIIs. The usual practice in Churchill regiments was to equip squadron and troop commanders with the more thickly-armoured Mk VII, but the Guards never managed to achieve a full allocation of one Mk VII per troop.

Mk VIIs remained very rare beasts throughout the NW European campaign. Aside from the Crocodile-equipped 141 RAC, the first Mk VIIs did not arrive in front-line Churchill units until 13th July 1944, when 7 RTR and 9 RTR recived ten each as partial-replacement for the losses suffered on Hill 112. The reason for this shortage was that Mk VII production was chiefly directed toward providing Crocodiles (the single Crocodile regiment in Normandy was expanded to a full Crocodile brigade soon afterwards, plus a squadron in Italy).

The majority of Churchills in 6th Guards Tank Brigade therefore were 75mm-armed Mk VI, with roughly one or two 6pdr-armed Mk IV (or the odd Mk III) per troop. One of the Guards regiments massed its 6pdr tanks together, creating 3x 75mm troops and 2x 6pdr troops in each squadron, though this was most unusual. Each Squadron HQ aso had a pair of 95mm howitzer-armed Mk V close support tanks.

I've never seen any evidence that Mk VIII, IX, X or XI ever made it into active service during WW2.

Coming back to the original subject: the main form of transport for the infantry of Guards Armoured Division was usually the tanks themselves – they rode on them.

The division formed an unusual (and unofficial) organisation in Normandy that remained in place for the rest of the war: The two brigades were mixed up and the 2nd Welsh Guards (armoured recce) were also thrown into the mix. Each Guards armoured battalion was then paired with an infantry battalion from the same regiment to form four mixed battlegroups – Grenadier, Coldstream, Irish and Welsh. Each armoured squadron was paired with an infantry company, to form Squadron/Company Groups. Support elements were split equally between the groups. The spare fourth infantry company in the Irish, Coldstream and Welsh Groups formed a truck-mounted reserve, though these were soon disbanded due to losses. Command and control was complicated to say the least, as each Battlegroup and Squadron/Company Group had dual armour & infantry commanders. the idea was that the armoured commander would command while the battlegroup was on the move, while the infantry commander took over in defence and in the assault.

Note that the Grenadiers, due to the fact that they had halftracks and Carriers, did not get into the tank-riding game.

Thanks very much Mark.
Even more variety than I thought (hoped)

I have nothing to add on the original question, which I think Mark has covered off extremely well; but I would recommend taking a gander at the old black & white film "They Were Not Divided" for a bit of Guards Armoured atmosphere. I can't recall another war film where you see tanks making sensible tactical use of their smoke mortars.

All the best,

John.

"I can't recall another war film where you see tanks making sensible tactical use of their smoke mortars."

Plus one which shows how manouverable a Tiger 1 actually was (when it worked).

wrt Mark VIIs, I'm fairly sure that famous photo of US paras on the 6th GTB Churchill are on a Mk VII. 6th GTB also famously had one Panther on strength, for a while anyway.

No it's not, the side hatch is clearly square, on the VII it was round

link

link

John, that's a great film. Another fave of mine from that era is 'Left of the Line', which covers 21st Army Group's operations in Normandy and has some stunning footage.

Re that photo: 'Bandit' belonged to 11 Tp, 'C' Sqn, 4th Coldstream Guards and was either a Mk IV or a Mk VI.

Regarding the 'cut down' Stuarts, with the turret removed and machine guns sometimes added, I have seen no evidence that Guards Armoured followed this practice, I think it was more those vandals in 11th Armoured!

John

Well sometimes I wonder whether the phrase 'every Panzer was a Tiger', could be adapted to read as 'every Stuart was a sawn off'. Sadly the AFV returns I've seen don't differentiate between standard and convertible types for Stuarts, but I'm pretty sure there were a 'handful' of ones where the local REME didn't take the turret off like the top of a boiled egg!

Gary

I've not seen 'jalopied' Stuarts for the Guards either.

7th Armoured Division landed in Normandy with a proportion of their Stuarts already jalopied and 11th Armoured Division did likewise after Operation 'Epsom'.

2 HCR did jalopy a proportion of its Daimlers though.

Mark,

Do you mean that in spite of having many more Daimler(Dingos) than Daimler Is, the 2nd HCR removed the turrets of some Daimler Is?

Would make an interesting model!

Yes, it's mentioned in Roden Orde's 2 HCR history. One per troop, if I remember correctly. It's been a long time since I read it though.

At least one other regiment also used Daimler Sawnoffs – Inns of Court I think? There's a photo somewhere of two Sawnoffs accompanied by a turreted Daimler. The Sawnoffs look doubly strange as they've also had their large wings/mudguards removed.

I'm not sure what you mean by 2 HCR having lots more Scout Cars than Armoured Cars though. They had the usual arrangement of 2x Armoured Cars and 2x Scout Cars in each troop and five such troops per squadron (plus Heavy Troops and Support Troops). The totals for the regiment remained fairly constant 1944-45, with about 42x Daimler Armoured Cars and 55x Dingos throughout (the extra Dingos belonged to the HQs and/or Heavy Troops).

Yes Inns Of Court for the other sawn-offs – I believe it was them that coined the SOD (Sawn-Off Daimler) acronym. I seem to recall a really good piece by an Inns Of Court veteran in an early SOTCW Journal?

"No it's not, the side hatch is clearly square, on the VII it was round"

You are quite right, in my mind I'd conflated it with the coloured illustration in the Osprey on the Churchill which shows a Guards Mk VII – both are pictured from the same angle.