Merry Christmas everybody!

I was doing some reading about the composition of Canadian Armoured Regiments in NWE in 1944. I made a chart using information I found in Steve Guthrie's "The Sherman in Canadian Service" page 9.

But this gave way to a number of questions:
1: Where do the 105 mm Shermans fit in, and what "mark" would they be?
2: Would a Canadian Regiment be the equivalent of a German Abteilung? (Panzers in Normandy Then and Now, Eric Lefèvre, pages 8-17)
3: What kind, and how many support vehicles would an Armoured Regt. have?
4: What does the "C" in Sherman IC, or VC Firefly mean?

I got to reading all this because I promised an old cadet friend that I'd make a dio of his Grandfather's Sherman that got shot in Regalbuto on Sicily. His name was Learmonth, but it's misspelled several places as "Learmouth". I'm also trying to find the name of his tank.

Cheers,

John

Hi John ...I'm pretty sure the 105"s were more at the corps level and they would be Sherman IB (M4 (105) .
Yes, the regiment looks pretty much the same in make up as the Abteilung.
I can't tell you about the support vehicles (I haven't got a clue)
As for the letters ...A was a 76mm gunned sherman ...B a 105mm gunned sherman ,and C was a 17lber armed sherman.

>>1: Where do the 105 mm Shermans fit in, and what "mark" would they be?
The Shermans were usually doled out to the Squadrons, I seem to remember, two per Sqdn, for a total of 6 per regiment. As said above, they were M4 (105) or Sherman IBs.

>>2: Would a Canadian Regiment be the equivalent of a German Abteilung? (Panzers in Normandy Then and Now, Eric Lefèvre, pages 8-17)

An Abteilung, was a batallion, so yes, each field "Regiment" was equivalent to a batallion.

Technically speaking, each Canadian combat regiment was really the 1st Batallion, Such & Such regiment, in a similar manner to the other Brit Regiments which could have many, many Batallions formed under the same regimental banner, a practice that is still maintained today. In the Canadian armed forces there are currently 3 active service infantry regiments, The PPCLI, the RCR & the Vandoos, but each has 3 batallions.

This is unlike the American system, where there are always only three batallions in each regiment and the three batallions of one regiment always serve together much like a Brigade. Commonwealth batallions are plonked together irrespective of home regiment. So you get Brigades with different regiments in them. In a UK Brigade, you could have 5 Bttn Border's with 2 Bttn Fife & Forfar Yeomany & 3 Bttn Inniskillin's. In Canada, in WW 2, we only fielded the 1st Bttn of each of our regiments so it looked as if each brigade was made up of three entire regiemnts. Any 2nd Bttns were always either in Canda as replacement depots or in England as replacement depots.

>>3: What kind, and how many support vehicles would an Armoured Regt. have?

It has and had many support vehs. Take a look at the Armoured Acorn site to see a lot of OrBats (Orders of Battle, the equivalent of a TO&E)

http://armouredacorn.com/orbatsmain.html

These Orbats changes constantly over time as the war progressed & equipment & combat tasking changed.

>>4: What does the "C" in Sherman IC, or VC Firefly mean?

17 pdr gun.

HTH

Paul

A few comments and an answer. The "C" denotes the armanent of the vehicle in this case it equates to the 17 pdr. Similarly the 76mm armed Sherman was "a" and the 105 "b" in Commonwealth Service. All Commonwealth 1B's were on the M4 LateLarge hatch Hull
THe 105 mm vehicles were usually in Squadron HQ in the Commonwealth formations that used them (Almost entirely in Italy(. I believe that only the transferred AB's from Italy had 1b's and only very late in the campaign if at all. It is an interesting debate.
The Sherman Types are grouped within the BDE and tended to be either Sherman III or V in NWE although in Normandy there were some leftover Sherman 1 (ex DD?) as late as Sept. I'm sure one of our more knowledgeable Canadian Armour enthusiasts can give you the correct breakup. From Memory 2& 4 CAB had Sherman III. Unfortunately I am away from my refs at present
Al

Thank you all! Ask and you shall find!
I've picked up some good Archer transfers of the Trois Riviers Regiment, now all I need are some good paint schemes and the name of the tank and I'm set.

Thanks again,

john

John

The Trois Riviers Regiment is a post war name of the war time Three Rivers Regiment.

Anthony

John,

Very nice study. Thanks for sharing.

IRT your question about the Rgt. vs. Abt:

I would like to point out that even though the Ger. Abteilung and Can. Regiment (or US Battalion) were organizationally near equivalents (that is they fill the same positions at the same echelons on their organizational charts or orders of battle), the Allied units had considerably more combat power, especially by 1944. The Abteilung at best (i.e. full strength) would have only had about 45 tanks (or a mix of tanks and Jagdpanzers or Sturmgeschutzes), whereas your Canadian Regiment had around 75 tanks (sometimes even "plused-up" a bit more with the 105mm Shermans). Even allowing that neither unit was probably operating at full strenght, the Allied units had conservatively 50% more tank strength than their German equivalents.

If one factors in logistics and the ability to sustain their combat effort, then the Allied units had an even greater advantage. (This gets to your question of the numbers and types of support vehicles - the Allied untis had many many more trucks and other support vehicles than their German counterparts!)

When one gets to the level of comparing Allied Armored Divisions and German Panzer Divisions in 1944, the German divisions are only very rarely equal in strength to the Allied Brigades and were usually considerably weaker. And again, if logistics and sustainability are factored in, the German units fall even further behind at these higher echelons.

I only mention this because if your're equating the Regiment and Abtielung when looking at combat reports and the history of actions, then it's very easy to over estimate the relative combat power of the German units or under estimate the same for the Allied units.

Anyways, the distinction seemed worth pointing out when comparing the two units. A meaningful comparison is more than just a matter of translation.

Mike

Mike,

These are very good points and bear remembering when looking at combat reports.

John,

If you are looking at a Canadian armoured regiment in NW Europe in 1944, you can't do the Three Rivers Regiment as it was part of 1st Cdn Army Tank Brigade (renamed 1st Cdn Armoured Brigade later in the war) and served in Italy up to the point where Canadian troops left Italy & moved to NW Europe in March 1945. You can certainly do them in NW Europe in April 1945 where they would be equipped with the late war order of battle, but retaining their 105mm M4s unlike other NW Europe Commonwealth armoured units.

Paul

Thanks guys!!

This is one of the things I like about the modeling community. People helping people.
All your points are noted, and my research is expanding.

John