"Royal Artillery Vehicle Markings" Topic

Morning all.

Could anyone point me to a decent guide for Royal Artillery vehicle markings?
I'm working on 15mm 11th Armoured Division models at the moment, and I've got the hang of the markings for the armoured brigade.
What I'm wondering is this: To identify batteries and troops, did the RA use the same style of tactical markings on their Sextons as the armoured regiments used on their Shermans, or did they have their own system?

No, they used their own RA tactical marking scheme.

The most obvious are the various combos of red/blue square tactical markings.

There is a decent site here which explains them:

link

That's great, thanks.
Just hope someone does decals in the right scale.

One more thing: Would towed guns have the battery markings, or just the tractors?

They do. Dom's Decals does some amazing sets for Northwest Europe 44-45 in 15mm. Very high quality, great selection and VERY reasonably priced. The icing on the cake for you is he is in the UK so no wait for the overseas post for you!
link

Dom's Decals do them:

link

The markings could appear on the gun shield:
link
link

Personally I tend to leave the guns plain and just put them on the tractors, but as John says, there are cases where the gunshields were marked.

Awesome, thanks chaps.

Can't recommend Dom's Decals highly enough – accurate, easy to use and very reasonably priced.

Must say I'm very impressed with the range and the price.

Martin's link shows you all you ever needed to know about RA battery markings.

Dom's Decals, while excellent, doesn't do battery markings – only regimental Arm-of-Service signs.

Markings on the gunshield were very rare and were more of a post-war thing (note that one of the links above is from Korea, not WW2). However, one or two units did put the battery marking on the shield and sometimes also the AoS sign, but I've never found a WW2 example of the formation sign being applied to the gunshield.

Turns out I already have some battery markings on a sheet I bought from Skytrex a while ago.
But I've gone and ordered a load of other stuff from Dom's Decals anyway.

Oh, something else that's come up – did the observer/spotter Sherman tanks retain their main gun, or did they just have a dummy barrel?

Each SP Field Battery (and quite a lot of towed Medium batteries) received three OP tanks. The Battery Commander had one (usually a Sherman, or in some cases a Ram) with a dummy gun, which left room for a map-table in the turret. The Troop Commanders, who did the lion's share of the FOO work, had OP tanks that retained the main armament, but had a reduced ammo load, to allow for an extra radio in the turret.

So for example, in the famous sequence of photos taken at Villers-Bocage, we see the 5 RHA Battery Commander's Sherman OP with a shattered (wooden) dummy gun and two Troop Commanders' Cromwell OPs with 'live' 75mm guns.

Armoured Regiment HQs also had armed OP tanks and these could be utilised by attached FOOs.

Note the battery marking on the Cromwell above – 'RD' indicates the commander of D Troop (i.e. the 2nd troop of the 2nd battery). The other Cromwell OP's markings are burnt off or obscured, but it would have had 'RC', indicating the commander of 'C' Troop. If it was in colour, you'd see that the lower-right quarter of the battery marking was red, while the rest was blue. Unusually, this unit (5 RHA) has painted a narrow white outline around some of the markings, which was very much non-regulation.

Note also the '76' (which is on a red-over-blue square), indicating the division's SP Field Regt.

Here's a better shot of the battery commander's OP Sherman, with the battery marking again clearly visible – the 'X' indicates the battery commander and the colouring would again be blue with a red lower-right corner, indicating the regiment's 2nd battery:

Good stuff, many thanks.

I'll post up some pictures of the my OP Sherman once it's done

Well, you learn something new every day, I didn't realise so many OP tanks were armed.

Neither did I until I spoke about it to Patrick Delaforce, who was a Troop Commander/FOO in 13th RHA (11th Armoured Division). He was adamant that they were armed and everything I've found since also points to that fact.

There's an interesting account from the Lincolnshires at Herouville, during Operation Charnwood; their armour support failed to turn up, so they had to make do with the attached Gunner's OP tank (from one of 3rd Division's Priest-equipped Field Regts). The OP tank KO'd a Pz IV at point-blank range when it had a close-encounter on the corner of a very narrow street next to Herouville Church.

There's another interesting account by a FOO of 86th (Hertfordshire Yeomanry) Field Regiment at Tilly-sur-Seulles; he got fed up with calling down 25pdrs inaffectually on to disappearing targets – the target would disappear by the time the rounds came in. Consequently, he took it upon himself to engage the target with direct 75mm pin it down and THEN call down the 25pdrs, which proved much more effrective! :o)

There are also plenty of other anecdotal accounts of FOOs calling down fire and then 'joining in with 75mm'.

One other interesting OP tank that often gets overlooked was the 75mm-armed Valentine Mk XI, which was used as a command/OP tank for Valentine SP 17pdr Troops in AT Regts RA and may also have been used as an artillery OP tank. Again, there was also a dummy-gunned version for battery/regt HQs.

link