1 R.H.A

[David W]

If & when did 1 R.H.A get its third battery of 25 Pdrs? As far as I can tell, it was operating on 2 Batteries of 8 guns, as late as April 1941.

[JonS]

It did get a 3rd bty, and all RHA regts ended up on the same org as the fd regts.

I'll see if I can fix a date, but it's likely to be approximate.

[JonS]

Comment here about an ad-hoc 3rd bty in Tobruk, Jul 41

[JonS]

Since they were in Tobruk I would be rather surprised if they re-orgged before the end of CRUSADER, so say no earlier than Jan 1942. OTOH, Niehorster has them with the 3 x 8 org on 23 Oct 42 (start of El AL 2) here.

[JonS]

Now this is a bit helpful, and a bit odd too. I says that 1 RHA (re)joined 4th Armd Bde in early '42 (after 1 RHA was released from Tobruk), and that the first part of '42 was taken up with training and re-equipping in Cairo. Then in April'42 hte Bde moved fwd to the Sidi Azeiz area. I would expect that 1 RHA was re-orgged from 2 x 8 to 3 x 8 during these four months in Cairo.

However, that history also contains this line:

1 RHA's anti-tank battery was being equipped with the new 6-pounder guns.

Which would seem to indicate a very odd mixed organisation of fd and a-tk guns. It's tempting to say that the writer is displaying the usual armoured ignorance of the rest of the military universe, and meant to write '1 KRRC's anti-tank pn was being equipped with the new 6-pounder guns,' except that I find it unlikely that those guns were being distributed to the infantry that early. I'd expect the inf bns a-tk pn to have 2-pr at that date, but not 6-pr. OTOH, if 4th Armd were indep at this point in time, it's possible that 1 KRRC were given 6-prs since they wouldn't have had div-arty to call on.

Then again, maybe the author was right, and 1 RHA did have a 6-pr bty.

[Michael Emrys]

My source, which unfortunately is not very helpful on this point, does say that for the Gazala Battles that the 4th. Armd. Bgd. is subordinated to 7th. Arm. Div. In fact, it is listed as that division's only brigade, although there are also listed two armoured car regiments. The trouble with my source is that it only deals with armoured units, which limits its utility. I gather from Jon's post that 1 KRRC was part of either the brigade or the division. According to another source, at this time the British armoured divisions were replacing one of their armoured brigades with a motorized infantry brigade, but I notice that 1st. Arm. Div. still retained two armoured brigades under command, the 2nd. and the 22nd. and with no mention of its infantry establishment. As you see, Eighth Army was in something of a state of organizational ferment at the time.

I need a better source.

[JonS]

My source, which unfortunately is not very helpful on this point, does say that for the Gazala Battles that the 4th. Armd. Bgd. is subordinated to 7th. Arm. Div.

Cheers for that clarification.

I gather from Jon's post that 1 KRRC was part of either the brigade or the division.

An inf bn that was part of the bde. From mid- to late-war the British had two basic bde-level tank units; the tank bde and the armd bde. A tank bde consisted of 3 regts (bns) of tanks, which were quite often 'I' types, especially the Churchill. An armd bde consisted of 3 tank regts (bns) plus a bn of infantry, and quite often a regt of fd arty would be semi-permanently attached.

Then, of course, were all the exceptions ...

[JonS]

Some more info on 1RHA here, including bty names before and after the re-org. Unfortunately it's rather vague on when that happened. 7th Armd Div org here.

[David W]

Thanks folks. You have been very busy on my behalf, especially Jon.
Jan - Apr 42 looks favourite, in the absence of anything concrete.
6 Pdr Battery smells of a typo, wouldn't you agree?

[Michael Emrys]

6 Pdr Battery smells of a typo, wouldn't you agree?

It would be a long shot. I think there were a few 6pdrs begining to make it into the ME at that time and 1RHA might have got them since they had been pulled out of the line and reorganized about then, but absent hard evidence, I wouldn't put any money on it.

[JonS]

Yeah, by the time of Gazala there were a reasonable number of 6-pr around, but as I posted above I personally don't think they would have been part of 1RHA.

Oh, one thing just occurred to me: they may have been from an A-Tk regt that had fully or partially re-equipped with 6-pr, then split off a bty to operate with each bde in 7 Armd Div (decentralisation and bde-gps being de riguer in 8th Army at the time). So, this stray 6-pr bty may well have come under 1RHA operationally and administratively while with 4 Armd Bde since, well, they're all gunners after all.

102nd Anti-Tank Regiment, RHA (The Northumberland Hussars) was the divisional a-tk regt at the time.

[David W]

It's not so much the presence of the 6 pdrs (as opposed to 2pdrs) that makes me think that it is a typo, as it is the artillery/anti tank mix within the regiment.

[David W]

Now the same question (see beginning of this thread), but for 104th RHA.
Anybody?

[David W]

Do we know when the 1 RHA first arrived in North Africa?