1st British Armoured Division disbanned?

[scarecrow]

Is it true that the 1st British Armoured Division was disbanned in Italy?
If yes, then why was it disbanned

Thanks

[jon prince]

Disbanded in September 1944 apparently. Don't know why, one source I have on 'Queens' Bays' says it was due to lack of available reenforcements within 8th Army after the breaking of the Gothic Line. 14,000 casualties had apparently been taken and there just wern't men avavilable to rebuild units, so some were broken up and disbanded to consolidate/rebuild others, 2nd Armoured Brigade became independent for example. the same thing was happening in n.w Europe at this time, accute manpower shortage in front line units.

[Martin_Schenkel]

I believe it was mostly due to a shortage of infantry in Italy. It was felt there were too many Commonwealth armoured divisions, all of which had been reinforced by an additional infantry brigade. Rather than use more valuable infantry to prop up yet another armoured division, one had to go and the 1st was chosen, apparently because it had not preformed quite as well as the 6th British Armoured in Italy.

[scarecrow]

thanks guys

but if they wanted more infantry in italy, why not exchange the 1st armoured for an infanty division from france? surely they would have been glad to have one more armoured division in normandy?

[Martin_Schenkel]

The British were short of infantry in a strategic sense. Two infantry divisions had been removed from 21st Army Group at the same time as 1st Armoured (50th Highland in Dec/44 was sent back to UK, 59th Staffordshire in Aug/44 was disbanded) in order to reduce the strain on infantry replacements. Perhaps due to the continuous influx of US Army divisions to Europe, it was felt that these British divisions could be safely removed from the OOB.

Sending an additional British infantry division to Italy would have made the problem worse, since an infantry division will suffer far more infantry losses than an armoured division. It seems that much of the infantry strain in Italy was made up by co-belligerent Italian forces, who raised 5 large Infantry Brigade-Groups for service with the Allies.