British Armoured Regiment's Recce Component

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Petrus
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British Armoured Regiment's Recce Component

#1

Post by Petrus » 22 Dec 2004, 21:32

It is quite widely being known that the British armoured regiment besides its cruiser or infanty tanks had some light tanks, mainly the M3/M5s Stuart (aka 'Honey') and then the M24s Chaffee (very few). These light tanks were being used as the regiment's reconnaissance asset. Usually the subunit that they belonged to is referred to as the "recce troop" (see: http://www.bayonetstrength.150m.com/Arm ... giment.htm).
A typical recce troop had eleven light tanks.

Some sources however say there were armoured regiments that had separate recce squadron. For example at http://www.geocities.com/vqpvqp/nih/Articles/11.html (a site of the North Irish Horse) you may find info that this regiment fielded such a squadron during the Italian campaing. What is even more interesting, not only did the recce squadron have light tanks but the heavier ones (esp. Shermans) as well:
In Italy, Second Phase, July/December 1944
A & C Squadrons:
Troops HQF,1 & 2 - 3 6pdrs per Troop
Troops 3 & 4 - 3 Na75s per Troop

B Squadron:
Troops HQF,1-3 - 3 6pdrs per Troop
Troops 4 & 5 - 3 Na75s per Troop

RHQ Squadron: 6 6pdrs

Recce Squadron:
Squadron Leader - 1 Stuart
Troops 1-3 - 3 Stuarts per Troop
4 Troop - 3 Shermans
Reportedly there were other regiments that featured similar structure.

Does anybody here know perhaps more about the subject? Was the difference (troop vs. squadron) only a matter of nomenclature, or rather it reflected some tactical concepts for instance?

By the way, don't you think it was rather odd having three-tank troops in sabre squadrons and an eleven-tank recce troop in the regiment's HQ Sqn?

Best regards,
Petrus

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#2

Post by Ginko » 20 Sep 2006, 12:11

In their book on Allied tanks, Chamberlain and Ellis suggest that, despite M5 Stuart production replacing M3 Stuart production, most of the M5s went to the US forces and that even late in the war Britain was receiving M3s.

I am interested in the composition of British armour units in Normandy and my question is whether newly equiped British Armour units (with Shermans) would have M3s or M5s as their light tanks.

If anyone has any source information (or even an opinion) on this matter I would be very grateful.


RichTO90
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#3

Post by RichTO90 » 20 Sep 2006, 17:21

Ginko wrote:In their book on Allied tanks, Chamberlain and Ellis suggest that, despite M5 Stuart production replacing M3 Stuart production, most of the M5s went to the US forces and that even late in the war Britain was receiving M3s.

I am interested in the composition of British armour units in Normandy and my question is whether newly equiped British Armour units (with Shermans) would have M3s or M5s as their light tanks.

If anyone has any source information (or even an opinion) on this matter I would be very grateful.
Hi Ginko, that's a difficult question to answer. Basically the British unit reports only referred to the Stuarts as such, they did not usually distinguish between the different marks, unlike the way they normally reported Shermans. However, the best evidence is that the regiments that served initially in Normandy were all equipped with M3 Light Tanks, that at least appears to be what photos show. In fact I'm not sure I can recall seeing any pictures of British M5 Lights in Normandy? AFAIK the M5 Light Tank was not shipped as part of Lend-Lease to Britain until 1944, so it would have been unusual to find them in units deploying in the first six months of the year.

As far as the armoured regiments in Normandy go, all that I have found so far had the 11-tank recce troop at regimental HQ with 35 in the armoured brigade, which was also the numbere in the armoured divisions. 1st Polish Armoured Division appears to have been a little unusual in that in the reports I have seen so far only 6 appear, but that is late June so likely the division was still incomplete on the continent.

Hope that helps.

Rich

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Andy H
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#4

Post by Andy H » 20 Sep 2006, 18:51

Hi Ginko & Petrus

Rather than start a new thread I would tag this question onto yours since its related.

I'm looking for information conceerning ToE and formation numbers of British Armoured Delivery Regiments.

Regards

Andy H

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#5

Post by Brad Hunter » 21 Sep 2006, 13:51

British Divisional Reconnaissance Regiments and Armoured Reconnaissance Regiments did use the M3 Stuart (Honey), usually in a squadron of 11, BUT, especially in Italy, they liked to remove the turret, and add an MG or 2....

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#6

Post by Ginko » 21 Sep 2006, 17:01

RichTO90 - Thanks for that. I suspected it was M3s and the the British didn't use M5s much but wanted to make sure.

Brad Hunter - The book I mentioned has a picture of .30cal MGs being fitted to a Stuart M5 Recce. :-)

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#7

Post by RichTO90 » 21 Sep 2006, 18:00

Andy H wrote:Hi Ginko & Petrus

Rather than start a new thread I would tag this question onto yours since its related.

I'm looking for information conceerning ToE and formation numbers of British Armoured Delivery Regiments.

Regards

Andy H
Andy,

The Armoured Delivery Regiments were not formed until the Normandy Campaign was nearly over. Before that the units and their affiliations that I can identify were (I'll try to expand this later):

2 CAB - C Squadron, 25 Canadian Delivery Regiment
2 Canadian Corps - E Squadron, 25 Canadian Delivery Regiment
4 Arm Bde - 271 Forward Delivery Squadron (FDS)
27 Arm Bde - 266 FDS
1 Corps - 259 Corps Delivery Squadron (CDS)
8 Corps - 257 CDS
12 Corps - 258 CDS
30 Corps - 254 CDS
2nd Army - 256 Army Delivery Squadron

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#8

Post by gjkennedy » 23 Sep 2006, 16:33

A few Armoured Regiments do seem to have referred to their Recce element as a Squadron rather than a Troop, but as suggested this was purely down to nomenclature rather than signifying any change in the equipment or role of the unit. It was more likely a recognition of the size of the command, with the single subaltern responsible for over forty men, while a Tank Troop leader had closer to a dozen!

All three main types of Stuart light tank were with 21 Army Group in June 1944.

Stuart III (M3A1) - 4th Armd Bde, 8th Armd Bde, 27th Armd Bde, 33 Armd Bde (note, all the Indep Armd Bdes), plus 31 Tk Bde and 34 Tk Bde.

Stuart V (M3A3) - 7th Armd Div, 11 Armd Div, 4th (Cdn) Armd Div, 2nd (Cdn) Armd Bde.

Stuart VI (M5A1) - Gds Armd Div, Polish Armd Div. Both 6th Gds Tk Bde and the Czech Armd Bde were slated to have them, but had either few (Guards) or none (Czechs) in June 1944.

Those were from the 21 Army Group status reports prior to Overlord. The incomplete weekly reports from Jan to May 1945 show a mix, but for example there were 374 M5A1s in Jan 1945, compared to 33 M3A1 and 38 M3A3 Stuarts in 21AG.

Andy, if you're after War Establishments for Armd Del Regts, try an email to Mike at TruxModels.co.uk

He may be a while getting back to you, but I suspect he can give you a steer on the subject.

Gary

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#9

Post by Andy H » 25 Sep 2006, 01:24

Thank you Rich & Gary

Regards

Andy H

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#10

Post by JonS » 25 Sep 2006, 03:19

I'm 'reasonably' sure that the affiliations extended quite a way down the org chart, with each armd regt having it's 'own' affliated troop. Meh, sorry, not very definative. Note to self: look in South Alberta history.

On the subject of this thread, each armd regt also had a goodly allocation of scout cars, but I understand that these were largely used for liason, rather than recce.

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#11

Post by RichTO90 » 25 Sep 2006, 15:37

gjkennedy wrote:A few Armoured Regiments do seem to have referred to their Recce element as a Squadron rather than a Troop, but as suggested this was purely down to nomenclature rather than signifying any change in the equipment or role of the unit. It was more likely a recognition of the size of the command, with the single subaltern responsible for over forty men, while a Tank Troop leader had closer to a dozen!

All three main types of Stuart light tank were with 21 Army Group in June 1944.

Stuart III (M3A1) - 4th Armd Bde, 8th Armd Bde, 27th Armd Bde, 33 Armd Bde (note, all the Indep Armd Bdes), plus 31 Tk Bde and 34 Tk Bde.

Stuart V (M3A3) - 7th Armd Div, 11 Armd Div, 4th (Cdn) Armd Div, 2nd (Cdn) Armd Bde.

Stuart VI (M5A1) - Gds Armd Div, Polish Armd Div. Both 6th Gds Tk Bde and the Czech Armd Bde were slated to have them, but had either few (Guards) or none (Czechs) in June 1944.

Those were from the 21 Army Group status reports prior to Overlord. The incomplete weekly reports from Jan to May 1945 show a mix, but for example there were 374 M5A1s in Jan 1945, compared to 33 M3A1 and 38 M3A3 Stuarts in 21AG.

Andy, if you're after War Establishments for Armd Del Regts, try an email to Mike at TruxModels.co.uk

He may be a while getting back to you, but I suspect he can give you a steer on the subject.

Gary
Hi Gary,

Very interesting, none of the daily reports that I have found in WO 205/636 and 637 distinguish between different Marks of Stuarts. Of course those daily reports seem to end in August (only the daily status of the Armoured Delivery Squadrons appear to exist for August). And otherwise I've only found one January 1945 report that gives more details - and sadly that was a document found by another researcher who didn't bother to indicate where it came from (in the US National Archives SHAEF record group, about 600 boxes of poorly indexed records, over 60 of which just deal with ordnance matters - don't get me started on a comparison of the US with the UK National Archives :roll: )). Where did you find these weekly records? And have you run across the daily sitreps for August by any chance?

All the best,

Rich

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#12

Post by gjkennedy » 25 Sep 2006, 19:29

The figures for June 1944 (supposedly for 30th June, but it would appear they are actually for just prior to D-Day, as only a few units are below their UE) are from WO165/135. There is similar for end Dec 1944, but both the National Archives and the Tank Museum said they couldn't find it in their records.

The weekly 21AG reports are from WO219/3352-3353 and cover from mid Jan 1945 to May 1945. They begin 13th Jan 1945 and exclude weeks of 3rd, 10th and 17th Mar 1945 within that period. I got photocopes from TNA, and found some areas are simply unreadable, time has not been kind to the paperwork it seems, but there is some excellent info hidden in them.

Both types of report give the breakdowns of all tanks by types, but only assign them to formations, not unit level. So you know how many Fireflies of IC and VC types were with Guards Armd Div for example, but not how many were in each Armd Bn.

I haven't seen any of the records for June-July 1944, which I know exist in various forms (some more helpful than others it would appear), and nothing for the Aug period either I'm afraid.

Gary

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#13

Post by RichTO90 » 25 Sep 2006, 19:55

gjkennedy wrote:The figures for June 1944 (supposedly for 30th June, but it would appear they are actually for just prior to D-Day, as only a few units are below their UE) are from WO165/135. There is similar for end Dec 1944, but both the National Archives and the Tank Museum said they couldn't find it in their records.

The weekly 21AG reports are from WO219/3352-3353 and cover from mid Jan 1945 to May 1945. They begin 13th Jan 1945 and exclude weeks of 3rd, 10th and 17th Mar 1945 within that period. I got photocopes from TNA, and found some areas are simply unreadable, time has not been kind to the paperwork it seems, but there is some excellent info hidden in them.

Both types of report give the breakdowns of all tanks by types, but only assign them to formations, not unit level. So you know how many Fireflies of IC and VC types were with Guards Armd Div for example, but not how many were in each Armd Bn.

I haven't seen any of the records for June-July 1944, which I know exist in various forms (some more helpful than others it would appear), and nothing for the Aug period either I'm afraid.

Gary
Okay, right, I had forgotten about WO 219/3352 and 3353. I surveyed those files in 2004 but didn't copy any because I was concentrating on Normandy. And most of the daily records are available for June and July, beginning pre-OVERLORD, 29-30 May and 1-2 June (thus the strengths of units as loaded, very useful), then continuing with 6 June onwards (but nothing 7 June and a few other days missing). But those are only by generic types rather than by Mark and some - as you say - are in pretty poor condition and hard to read. Further, they are by brigade rather than regiment and a quick survey earlier this month indicated that the brigade and regimental records didn't add much (IIRC - I haven't combed the records copied yet - only 8 Armoured Brigade reported daily figures in it's War Diary and I only began my survey of the regimental records before I was forced to return to the states :( ). The daily sitreps may be found in WO 205/636-638 but end in August with only the FDS represented during that period. So August remains a black hole.

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#14

Post by JonS » 25 Sep 2006, 23:40

From MLU:
[The Elgin Regt] was divided into Squadrons and each squadron prepared vehicles for delivery to different units, i.e.,
F Sqn issued vehicles to First Cdn Army Troops
E Sqn issued vehicles to 2 Cdn Corps Troops
D Sqn issued vehicles to 4 Cdn Armd Div
C Sqn issued vehicles to 2 Cdn Armd Bde
E Sqn ended up driving the Kangaroos, at least for a while, while A and B Sqns were in Italy.

The Elgin Regt

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#15

Post by gjkennedy » 26 Sep 2006, 21:26

"But those are only by generic types rather than by Mark and some - as you say - are in pretty poor condition and hard to read. Further, they are by brigade rather than regiment and a quick survey earlier this month indicated that the brigade and regimental records didn't add much"

I've long accepted that 21AG AFV returns are best regarded as indicative rather than substantive, but at least it is possible to find someting. I need similar returns for Divisional anti-tank and light anti-aircraft weapons in 21AG, but haven't found anything beyond a single misfiled return for Feb 1945!

Gary

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