State of British Ground Forces, September 1940, Sealion

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phylo_roadking
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Re: State of British Ground Forces, September 1940, Sealion

#31

Post by phylo_roadking » 12 Jun 2014, 00:36

I would hazard the suggestion that a Big Bang was considered too provocative, and hence too risky
Hmmmm... I know we're going way off-topic now, so all I'll say on that is I wonder what happened then in the immediate aftermath of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, which to Hitler was the green light for setting aside Versailles...?
Clarke's thesis is a wonderful resource and a damn good read into the bargain. In a pre-internet age it would most likely have been published, if at all, as a hugely expensive, limited edition. But it's available free of charge right here: https://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/handle/1826/6164 (I don't get paid for advertising it, it's a public service.)
I have to say I've only ever found two minute quibbles with it, both to do with the Ulster Home Guard of the Royal Ulster Constabulary - but I wouldn't have known about them without David Orr's recent "Duty Without Honour", the history of the UHG of the RUC.
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Re: State of British Ground Forces, September 1940, Sealion

#32

Post by Knouterer » 15 Jun 2014, 23:27

For additional information on the equipment of the Home Guard, more specifically in the invasion zone, be my guest and have a look at this thread on sussexhistoryforum :milwink: :
http://sussexhistoryforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=4139.0
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Re: State of British Ground Forces, September 1940, Sealion

#33

Post by amcl » 16 Jun 2014, 01:55

Hello Knouterer. Thanks for the interesting link.

The equipment state you provided there for Home Guard in SE Command in 1942 is rather less tidy than the impression left by Clarke. The presence of a small number of SMLE & P14 rifles - along with the .22s - fits in easily with Clarke's comments on training weapons & substandard ammo, but nearly 7,500 Ross Rifles is a surprisingly large number. Have you come across any comment on this in your researches?

Regards,

Angus

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Re: State of British Ground Forces, September 1940, Sealion

#34

Post by phylo_roadking » 16 Jun 2014, 02:09

Hi Angus - David Orr's Duty Without Honour notes that some units of the UHG were intially isued with the Ross, eventually being replaced with the SMLE in 1942, including the Short Bros.& Harland (Aldergrove) detachment. HIS reference for a more "general" issue to units of the UK mainland Home Guard is Millar's The Illustrated Book Of Guns.

We also supplied the Ross to the Irish Defence Forces for use by their LDV...and I recently came across a comment in passing that UK coastwatchers and coastguards were issued with them during the war.

The Ross was an excellent long range rifle, compared to the SMLE's "wandering zero"...and as a target rifle was often used by British and Canadian Army shooting teams between the wars at Bisley etc.! 8O as long as...

1/ it was kept scrupulously clean; and

2/ attention was paid to progressive wear on the one of the locking lugs; the bolt stop bore on one of them, causing it to burr.

Both of the above problems caused the weapon to jam frequently - but there was also a problem with its ammunition...

The Ross had passed extensive testing prior to WWI in the land of its birth...and when the CEF arrived in Europe, it didn't experience ANY jamming problems as long as they used (and rapidly used up) their small stock of Canadian-made .303! :P The Ross was very much a "precision made" item, on a brand new production line....and so was its "domestic" .303 - but once the Canadians started having to use British-made .303 they started experiencing TERRIBLE problems with jams! 8O

The presses and machinery that British .303 was made on dated back to the Lee-Metford, and was pretty worn; it turned out .303 with non-uniform neck and taper dimensions. The Lee Enfield, with its "sloppier" breech, and headspace that could be adjusted by "tuning" the bolt head (an armourer's kit contained four different sizes of bolt head for the Lee Enfield to take up as much slop as possible behind the cartridge) could to an extent accomodate uneven cartridge necks and taper dimensions....but the precision-machined Ross couldn't If a British-made .303 cartidge, because of wonky dimensions, left any space in the Ross' breech around the neck of the cartridge - when it was fired the brass would EXPAND into the available space...and jam! 8O

The Canadians soldiered on for a while with the Ross...depsite coming under GREAT pressure from the British to re-equip on the Lee Enfield...but eventually they only moved when the British government PAID for them to, by buying up all the Rosses on issue and in stock, as a form of compensation. Which is how the BRITISH came to have the Ross .303 calibre P.O.S. in large numbers as of WWII, to use or pass on as we saw fit - we'd bought them! :lol:

(All the above from an early edition of Britain At War magazine)
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Re: State of British Ground Forces, September 1940, Sealion

#35

Post by Knouterer » 21 Jun 2014, 21:21

amcl wrote:Hello Knouterer. Thanks for the interesting link.

The equipment state you provided there for Home Guard in SE Command in 1942 is rather less tidy than the impression left by Clarke. The presence of a small number of SMLE & P14 rifles - along with the .22s - fits in easily with Clarke's comments on training weapons & substandard ammo, but nearly 7,500 Ross Rifles is a surprisingly large number. Have you come across any comment on this in your researches?

Regards,

Angus
Hello Angus,

As Clarke notes, the monthly return for 1st March 1941 does show 79,156 Ross rifles, more or less evenly scattered across the whole country:

14,065 in Southern Command
13,630 in Northern Command
742 in Aldershot Command
3,077 in Scottish Command
28,057 in Western Command
17,234 in Eastern Command
2,351 in London District

Within Commands, they were also to be found in (almost) all zones; in Eastern Command, there were 9,497 in II Corps, 3,795 in XI Corps, and 3,942 in XII Corps. As Clarke notes, numbers dwindled from then on (as for other .303 rifles):

.303 rifles Ross .300 rifles
(SMLE /P14)

March 1941 22,539 79,156 701,660
June 16,237 54,741 770,090
September 6,315 26,965 791,525
March 1942 8,078 22,032 832,667

A good part of the remaining Ross rifles were in SE Command; 984 in Aldershot, 3,741 in the Canadian Corps zone and 2,766 in XII Corps.

After that, the Ross in the HG seemed to resist complete extinction and there were still 19, 348 on hand as of 31st October 1942.
The War Office file I had copied (WO 199/3247) contains no further detailed breakdowns of armament.

Where the HG's Ross rifles went I do not know, possibly to the Merchant Marine, minesweeping trawlers and such, mainly for shooting at floating mines (Ross rifles had laraedy been used for that purpose in WWI I beleive).

You are probably familiar with the diary of Col. Rodney Foster, who commanded the Saltwood platoon of the Hythe Home Guard company in 1940. He notes that some of his platoon were issued P14s on 23 May, plus a few more in the following weeks, supplemented by “service rifles” (SMLE presumably) on 13 August, by which time the platoon was apparently more or less fully armed. They also received a BAR mid-September. Then on 24 November:
“I drove “Bone” Foster down to the Small Arms School, picking up prior on the way for the issue of our new rifles. We have received Ross rifles, clumsy weapons. I was able with Fuller’ help to return all but three of mine. (…) In the afternoon I went round Saltwood distributing the new rifles.”
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Re: State of British Ground Forces, September 1940, Sealion

#36

Post by phylo_roadking » 22 Jun 2014, 00:36

Where the HG's Ross rifles went I do not know, possibly to the Merchant Marine, minesweeping trawlers and such, mainly for shooting at floating mines (Ross rifles had laraedy been used for that purpose in WWI I beleive).
One possibility is back to the RN - who had been issued Ross MkIIIBs in place of their Lee Enfields 1914-18 to free up their Enfields for the Army, and to replace a number of Arisakas (!!!) that had previously been purchased for the RN!

Also, noting the 1941 dates...
March 1941 22,539 79,156 701,660
June 16,237 54,741 770,090
September 6,315 26,965 791,525...
...there was also a "very large number" (sadly unspecified) of "Ross Enfield" rifles captured at Singapore.
but nearly 7,500 Ross Rifles is a surprisingly large number.
As Clarke notes, the monthly return for 1st March 1941 does show 79,156 Ross rifles, more or less evenly scattered across the whole country
Hi Angus, it's not really a large number - the British government ended up owning c.161,000 Ross MkIIIs and MkIIIBs by the end of WWI! We actually ordered 65,000 Ross MkIIIBs for ourselves....same as the Canadian-issue MkIII but different fore- and rear sights...at the start of the war, and the rest we came by "second user" when the Canadians converted to the Lee Enfield as noted previously.
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Re: State of British Ground Forces, September 1940, Sealion

#37

Post by Sid Guttridge » 27 Jun 2014, 13:19

Hi Knouterer,

My father was an instructor at the Hythe Small Arms School in the early 1950s and again in the early 1960s, Some of my earliest memories are there.

One has to wonder if the proximity of the school and the enemy didn't make the Hythe Home Guard a little untypical of the country at large.

Cheers,

A nostalgic Sid.

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Re: State of British Ground Forces, September 1940, Sealion

#38

Post by phylo_roadking » 28 Jun 2014, 00:14

Hi Sid...
One has to wonder if the proximity of the school and the enemy didn't make the Hythe Home Guard a little untypical of the country at large.
Indeed. Especially with regard to the dates, and the availability of weapons...
You are probably familiar with the diary of Col. Rodney Foster, who commanded the Saltwood platoon of the Hythe Home Guard company in 1940. He notes that some of his platoon were issued P14s on 23 May...
Anthony Eden's speech was only on the 14th! 8O

Compare this early access to some of the anecdotes regarding the problelms and issues regarding the procurement of arms in sources like Norman Longmate's "The Real Home Guard...."
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Re: State of British Ground Forces, September 1940, Sealion

#39

Post by phylo_roadking » 05 Jul 2014, 01:11

Regarding the musings on the use of shotguns by the Home Guard in the Sussex History forum thread...
These 90,292 men had 44,271 rifles and 3,889 shotguns, somewhat short of the "close to 100%" mentioned above. It would mean that only 49% had a rifle, against fully 88% in II Corps and 83% in XI Corps. In London, only one man in four had a rifle at that time.
For 15 October, strength for XII Corps is given as 86,925 men with 47,745 rifles (a slight improvement to 55%), 71 private rifles, 3,698 shotguns and 1,459 machine guns.
It is noticeable that from the end of 1940 there is a steady decline of the number of shotguns all over the country (from a maximum of about 43,000 to around 30,000). Presumably military armourers or civilian gunsmiths finally got a chance to cast a critical look at the weapons pressed into service in the first hectic weeks, and found many of them unfit for service or even positively dangerous to the firer. The decline may also reflect the fact that the War Office provided 12-bore buckshot cartridges (marked with the Broad Arrow) but not in other calibres I imagine, so that those were gradually withdrawn, although the more detailed monthly returns of 1942 still show some 700-800 16-bore guns in service.
Having recently read through Norman Longmate's The Real Home Guard again, the number of shotguns in use may have dropped because the Home Guard using them reduced them to scrap! I.E. the weren't scrap or unfit for use when the LDV was formed - but they were not long after 8O The ineffectiveness of the vast majoirty of shotgun rounds in private hands or available to private users against man-sized targets led to many HG units with shotguns in use attempting to extemporize "man shot", and the government producing a limited amount of single-ball "man shot"...but this was in the view of many expert shotgun users in the Home Guard "a fine way to ruin a good weapon"! Firing just a few of these extemporized "man shot" rounds during training or excerise would ruin the bore of a shotgun, some of them quite expensive weapons to boot! This must have been a comforting thought to any collectors or sporting users who emptied their gun cabinets for the benefit of their platoon mates...

(even today, stopper slugs for very large vermin...foxes etc...for shotguns are plastic slugs rather than lead ball.)

Perhaps the most effective use of the Home Guard's shotguns was, as Longmate notes, to supplement the patrolling volunteers' Ration with any rabbits or hares encountered on night patrol!
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Re: State of British Ground Forces, September 1940, Sealion

#40

Post by amcl » 11 Jul 2014, 23:51

Belated thanks to all concerned for clearing up my mistaken impression regarding the HG & the Ross rifle.

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Re: State of British Ground Forces, September 1940, Sealion

#41

Post by amcl » 12 Jul 2014, 00:58

To return to the fate of the constituent parts of 12, 23 and 66 Divisions in the summer of 1940, I stumbled across Lord, Lord & Watson's Royal Corps of Signals: Unit Histories, which I have added to the to-be-ordered list.

This tells us that that 66 Divisonal Signals found a new home with 59 Division. The original duplicate-of-42-Divisional-Signals that was 59 Division Signals had been assigned to 4 AA Division in 1939. As for 23 Divisional Signals, they became a training unit at Harrogate. The source mentions 12 Divisional Signals as being destroyed in France, but since world+dog say that 12, 23 and 46 Divisions did not take their RA, RE or RSigs with them to France, this seems improbable at best.

So, one question remains - what really did happen to 12 Div Sigs? - and a new one arises - what did 59 Div do for signals in between times? - but at least we've made some progress.

Cheers,

Angus

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Re: State of British Ground Forces, September 1940, Sealion

#42

Post by Knouterer » 21 Dec 2014, 23:24

On the subject of rebuilding units after Dunkirk, some info on the 35th Inf Bde.

This Bde had been to France with 12th Division, one of the « digging divisions » consisting of inadequately trained and equipped Territorials, and without artillery, which were supposed to carry out labour duties and rear area security while continuing their training. Instead of which, they found themselves in the path of the Panzer divisions racing for the coast and were badly mauled.
The remnants of the division were evacuated from Cherbourg on 7 June, some men also escaped via Dunkirk.
According to Philson (Vol. 4 of the Order of Battle of the BEF, page 127), on its return the Bde had the following strength:
Bde HQ: 3 Off, 9 OR
2/5 Queens: 16 Off, 172 OR (over 400 dead, missing, wounded and/or prisoner)
2/6 Queens: 20 Off, 537 OR
2/5 Queens: 14 Off, 258 OR
The WD of the 2/5 Queens picks up again in July. The War Diarist of this bn (which was guarding the HQ of the 1st (London) Division in Kennington north of Ashford in Sept.) noted the strength of his unit with commendable precision at the end of each month.
At end of: Officers Warrant O. Sergeants Corporals Privates Total
July 26 7 25 59 843 960
Aug 31 6 28 54 909 1028
Sept 35 7 27 49 883 1001
Oct 37 8 25 61 791 922
Nov 36 9 25 55 753 878
Dec 35 9 26 53 735 858

So we see that from Sept. numbers gradually went down again to normal, which seems to have been the case in other infantry bns. too. The process seems to have been mostly one of “natural wastage”. Some men were re-examined and downgraded to a lower medical category, unfit to serve in the infantry, others perhaps volunteered for new types of units such as the Commandos or the Reconnaissance Corps (although that applies only from Jan. 1941), and some skilled workers were released from the services to work in the armaments industry.
Since the two other bns were supplied with men from the same regimental depot/ITC, it seems a reasonable assumption they were of similar strength during this period.
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Re: State of British Ground Forces, September 1940, Sealion

#43

Post by Knouterer » 15 Jan 2015, 12:11

amcl wrote:Belated thanks to all concerned for clearing up my mistaken impression regarding the HG & the Ross rifle.
I'm just going through War Office file WO 199/393 about the equipment of the Home Guard and it contains a letter from G.H.Q. Home Forces to all Commands, dated 19.6.1940, which states among other things: "A consignment of Ross rifles has been allotted for use of L.D.V. of which 30,000 will be available at an early date."

I doubt, by the way, that many were left in store in Britain by 1939 - it seems that after 1918 a considerable number were sent to countries that received British military aid, such as the newly independent Baltic states, and also to the White Russians during the civil war (Denikin). Some Ross rifles captured by the Reds/Soviets were later sold to the Spanish Republican government during the civil war there (1936-39).
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Re: State of British Ground Forces, September 1940, Sealion

#44

Post by Knouterer » 01 Feb 2015, 12:39

To sum up, the rifle situation in September 1940, as far as I have been able to find out:

The standard British army rifle in 1940 was the .303 Short Magazine Lee-Enfield (SMLE) rifle Mark III, introduced in 1907 (together with the Mk III*, a slightly modified version more suited to wartime mass production introduced in 1915).
In addition, there were still large numbers (about 700,000) of the American-made Pattern 1914, also in .303 calibre, in store.
Service nomenclature had changed on 31 May 1926 when the SMLE became the ‘Rifle No.1’, and the P14 the ‘Rifle No. 3’ (the ‘Rifle No. 2’ was a .22 training rifle).

A modernized Lee-Enfield, the No. 4 Mk I, was developed in the early thirties but only a trials batch was made. At the start of the war, new Royal Ordnance factories were set up to manufacture it, and large orders were placed in Canada (Long Branch) and the USA (Savage).
However, the new factories began production only in June 1941, and in the summer of 1940 new rifle production (of the No. 1) amounted to no more than a trickle. B.S.A., the sole producer, made less than 60,000 in the course of 1940, and production came to a complete halt in August and again in November when the Small Heath factory was bombed.

In mid-July, there were 1,023,000 service rifles (.303 calibre) in the hands of troops in the UK (according to data presented to the War Cabinet), plus another 75,000 in depots, which were being issued at a fast rate. A further 65,000 were under repair. As the armed forces required about 80,000 rifles per month just to arm new recruits, and in addition more than a million LDV/HG needed to be armed, there was a “rifle crisis” developing.

Relief came in the shape of the American .30 M1917 rifles: a first convoy with 250,000 arrived on July 9th, another 200,000 on July 31st. In total, according to the Official History of the US Army , 1,135,000 “surplus” rifles were sold to Britain up to Feb. 1941. However, the available amount of .30 ammunition was very limited. Canada sent 75,000 .303 Ross rifles.

At a meeting of the Chiefs of Staff (COS) on 30.9.1940 (doc. CAB 79/7-4), Brooke stated that on 21 Sept. “… the Army had been 146,000 rifles and 10,000 light automatics short. Considerable difficulty was being experienced in withdrawing the remaining .303 rifles from the Home Guard, but the arrival of the 250,000 American rifles (this apparently refers to a third or maybe fourth convoy - K) would be a great help. Until the Home Guard had surrendered all .303 rifles, the American .300 weapons would only be issued in exchange for a .303 rifle. When the Home Guard had surrendered all .303’s then the balance of the American rifles would be issued to them.”

(can't find my reference for that just now, but at an earlier stage (July-Aug.) an incentive was provided by giving the HG two American rifles for every .303 they surrendered)

Some army units, such as the new "Emergency" coastal gun batteries, also received (some) American .30 rifles, which were exchanged for Lee-Enfields and passed on to the Home Guard later in the war.

Sniper rifles: the design of the SMLE made it difficult to mount a scope on it, and few were so fitted. In 1940, there were some 2,000 scoped P14s in store which were reissued. In addition, from May 1940 some 1,400 No. 4 rifles of the trials batch manufactured a few years before were fitted with scopes.
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Re: State of British Ground Forces, September 1940, Sealion

#45

Post by Knouterer » 14 Mar 2015, 12:00

To return to the original question, generally speaking British units at home were by September 1940 up to strength and in many cases, infantry and machine gun battalions especially, well over - many battalions were about 1,000 strong. The state of their training and equipment is another question of course.

A while ago I tried to calculate how many troops there might have been in the actual invasion zone, on the basis of a R.A.S.C. War Diary:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... &start=795 (see my post(s) of 11 July 2013).

Needless to say, this provoked the usual endless and senseless bickering, which ultimately led to the thread being shut down, also as usual.

In the meantime, I have a little more hard info, namely WO 73/146, the Quarterly Return of the Strength of the British Army, a very interesting document - a whole book in fact - giving War Establishments, actual strengths, and locations of all units as of 30 September 1940.
According to this document, there were 164,507 troops in the Home Counties Area as of 30.9 (including 6,180 officers), plus 2,488 A.T.S., not counting the 6,000 New Zealanders.
Another 19,000 troops were in the Chatham area, some of which, especially those belonging to 1st (London) Division, might also have been involved in the initial fighting.
Map indicates the various Commands, Areas and Districts at that time.
Attachments
Areas 001.jpg
"The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man's observation, not overturning it." Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

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