"Panzer-Lehr-Regiment 130 Markings" Topic

I recently bought a sheet of Panzer Lehr decals from Mustang Game Systems listed on Ebay. The sheet includes some white and red striped diamonds which I believe are battalion markings for Panzer Regt 130. Does anyone have an idea where to place them? If I recall correctly these were only used on the units Pz IV's. Thanks in advance and salut y'all!

Bruce the Texas Grognard

From the pics I have seen they are on the turret skirts. The Balkenkreuze should be first, followed by the tank unit numbers in 3 digits followed by the diamond with stripes. Remember that the order above starts at the front of the skirt. So on one side the diamond will be last looking left to right, while on the other side it will be first looking left to right if that makes sense.

Here's a few pics I found on a quick Google. I can't find the pic from the war right now.

Hmmm… Second guy today. Did you not put them in the box, or in the directions for the build. "Under a box, to keep them flat".

The Panthers in Normandy would not have had them as they were on loan from PZ Regt 6, IIRC.

They were only painted on the PzIVs of the 2nd Battalion, as it was a simplified version of the coat of arms belonging to the battalion commander (Major, Prinz Wilhelm von Schoenburg-Waldenburg), being a white shield with two diagonal red lines.

This was painted in a number of different ways; the 'proper' way was as a square, with the red lines diagonal, as per the armorials. However, some tanks had it stencilled on as a diamond, so that the red lines were horizontal. The prince's own tank (and possibly some others?) apparently had a proper heraldic shield (with lance-notch in the top-left corner).

The location for this marking varied – some had it painted on the turret rear, some had it painted alongside the tactical numbers on the turret side and some had it painted on both sides and rear.

In this famous photo you can see it painted on turret sides and rear, but note the sloppy application – the marking is painted at a different angle in each case. As mentioned above, the 'correct' positioning was for it to be painted as a square, with the red lines at the diagonal (the rear marking is closest):

I knew about the insignia as the heraldry of the Prinz Wilhelm von Schoenburg-Waldenburg, though I didn't know it was supposed to have been as a square. The Prince died in battle, the victim of a hidden British 6lber ATG outside of Tilly Sur Suelles. I ran a scenario of that at a Historicon a few years ago, giving the Prince a fighting chance against the Brits this time around. Hunting hidden 6lbers can be dangerous…though the British player didn't know which one was the prince until after the game (he survived, though others in the unit were not so lucky).

One version of the Schoenburg-Waldenburg family arms look like this:

Yes, it's certainly an interesting scenario and 'Death of a Prince' is on my scenario-writing 'to do' list. It's also a very interesting spot to visit, though annoyingly they stuck four wind-turbines on the spot last year, which spoils the ambience slightly.

I'd love to go there and see the ground. Do you have any pics from the spot? I'd love to see them. I used this old map to do the table layout:

But I was never quite sure of the exact route the Prince took or the exact position of the 6lber.

I don't think the exact position of the Prince or the 6pdr is recorded anywhere, but II./Pz-Regt 130 was attacking across the open valley from the Fontenay-le-Pesnel area towards a point just to the west of Point 103 (the high, egg-shaped contour on your map) and partially succeeded in inserting itself between the SRY and 24th Lancers.

The 6pdrs of 238th Anti-Tank Battery, 102nd Anti-Tank Regiment RA were deployed along the lane leading west from the Tilly to Audrieu road (that's the red line running east-west just to the south of Point 103), where they had good lines of fire dow the slope, toward St Pierre.

Annoyingly, I've got no photos of that area, even though I spent a couple of hours there with Mike Hickling of AB Figures, plus a few cadets, searching for the spot where the poet Keith Douglas was buried. I'm back there in a few weeks and will be staying at Martragny, just off the north edge of your map, so I'll try to get soe photos for you.

R Mark Davies: Ok, cool. I was thinking I was just unable to find it. It looks like I was pretty close on the area of the map I used for my table then. I think I had zoomed in a little closer to Tilly though.

If you can snap some pics from the area next time you are there, that would be awesome! I really appreciate the times you have shared your scenarios and pics from the actual sites here on TMP. They give some great insight to what the men in the action saw.

I was just doing some Google Maps "scouting" and it looks like right in the area you are talking about, you can see a nice clear field of fire down towards Hauts Vents (not on the map) between Cristot and Tilly with Hill 103 between. Some of the fields look to have been made larger and there are more buildings in the area, but it seems to match up pretty well :)

Keith

That's it. If you stand on that lane and face south towards St Pierre and Tilly, Les Hauts Vents is behind you, over your left shoulder, about 250m away. The hedges have now gone from that end of the lane, but as you go west a few hundred yards, it's virtually unchanged – small, hedged-in fields (apart from the great windmills!).

There are now a few less hedges between Point 103 and St Pierre, but it's pretty much as it was. Even then you'd have a good view as far as the northern edge of St Pierre, though there were far more orchards surrounding the village then (all Norman villages used to be surrounded by orchards, but the vast majority have now gone). A chap I knew was wounded by a PzIV's hull MG in the middle of St Pierre village and his opinion after re-visiting in 2004 was that it was essentially unchanged.