Hello all,
Everyone on this site has been extremely helpful, and I ask for some assistance with some items.
I am making plans and getting items together for a diorama I'm making concerning Operation Market Garden. (While I'm still waiting for my LVT to come in.) I've done alot of searching and got together the vehicle markings that should go on a Cromwell.
My question is if I actually have it right, here are the specifics;

Cromwell Mk IV
XXX Corps
5th Guards Armoured Brigade
Coldstream Guards
A Squadron
3rd and 4th Tank

(Stars are for the box that seems to be mounted on the rear of each turret)

Hope you can see this layout


Any help would be great,
Thanks,
Bob

Nobody?

The only one of these I'm not sure of is the AOS sign - Cromwells were usually marked with a blue over green AOS with white '45' on it - the red with '52' shown in your pics is for an armoured regiment. You certainly have the "30" bridge class sign and the Guards Armored Div badge ok.
The squadron sign / tank number info I have somewhere, when I can find it I'll check that out for you.

PS - don't be too impatient when waiting for an answer to a question - some members only access the site whilst at work, and others only at weekends etc; and not everbody has reference books etc to hand all the time!

Yep, your right about haveing some patience, my wife jumps me all the time about that.

I thought Coldstream Guards was an armoured regiment. I also thought the eye badge was for XXX Corps.
Man have I got this confused.
Coldstream Guards Was were I got some info. Various Market Garden sites was another. I always thought the 2 color signs were for artillery RA

From all that I thought since they were attached to XXX Corps they were just showing their own with the half red 52 and white with red stag

Maybe someday someone will have a site search where you can input the veh, date and area or operation and it will spit out everything you need to know. Yea, that'l happen.

Thanks Dave, I guess I'll just wait and keep looking things up. I was starting to sweat it a bit.

Bob

From "Armour in Profile" No5 "Cromwell MkIV":

Armoured units in NW Europe equipped with the Cromwell:

Guards Armoured Div: 2nd Battallion Welsh Guards

7th Armoured Div: 8th King's Royal Irish Hussars

22nd Armoured Brigade: 1 RTR; 5th RTR; 5th Royal Iniskilling Dragoon Guards (from July 1944); 4th County of London Yeomanry (sharpshooters) (to July 1944)

11th Armoured Div: 2nd Northamptonshire Yeomanry (to Aug 1944); 15th/19th Kings Royal Hussars (from Aug 1944)

6th Airbourne Div: 6th Armoured Reconnaissance Regt.

1st Polish Armoured Div: 10th Mounted Rifle Regt.

The insignia for a tank of the Welsh Guards ( Commanding Officer, 2sqdn):

AOS = Blue over green with white '45'

Bridge class = yellow outline '26' on black circle with yellow outline

Divisional sign = Guards Armoured Div 'Eye on shield'

Tank sign = white 'A' inside white square on the tanks front an rear plates, and the tank sides (not the usual turret sides)

The name 'Blenheim' appeared in white on the tank's glacis plate. There was also a square of yellow/green gas sensitive paint above the name.

Hope this helps.

I beleive, if memory serves me correctly, that a vehicle of this unit appears on Tamiya's decal sheet for the kit.

Thanks Dave. It helped a lot. I hope you didn't have a lot of searching to do. I really appreciate all your time and effort.

I really didn't want to go with the Tamiya suggestion, maybe I'll check out the other units you mentioned and come up with something. It's just running down all those units on the web, my reference library is a might small.

Thanks again Dave,
Bob

They were, which is why they would _not_ be equiped with Cromwells. Only divisional armoured _recce_ regiments had Cromwells. The Welsh Guards was the divisional recce rRegiment for the Guards Arm's Div.



Even though the division was assigned to XXX Corps, they would only wear the Corps formation sign if they were directly Corps level troops, like the corps arty & AA regiments. Troops belonging to the divisions retained their divisional signs.



Commonwealth markings have a habbit of doing that.



This page ahs at least a couple of errors that I can see right off. The Welsh Guards tac sign is shown as a 41 on a red background. 41 was the number for an infantry division recce regiment. The Welsh guards used the armoured recce regiment sign of 45 and all the recce regiments had the green over blue sign.




The Commonwealth used a lot of multicoloured tac signs.
-Recce was, as we have seen, green over blue.
- Arty was red over blue
- REME blue over yellow over red
- Signals was white over blue with red numbers
- Service Corps was red over green diagonally split
There were even more but I can't remember them all (and I might have the order of a coulpe of these wrong as well, but you get the idea).



It was uncommon, but not unknown for there to be brigade formation signs and for these to be retained even when a brigade has been assigned to a division. I'm not entirely sure in this case whether retaining the stag is accurate for the Coldstream Guards. The 52 indicates a line armoured regiment.

HTH

Paul

The red stags head is the brigade emblem of 22rd Armoured Brigade, part of 7th Armoured Division. The 52 represents the 5th RTR, according to my refs. The 7th Armoured were the only formation to use the Cromwell as their main equipment.

Hmmmm in the topic's title I read "Market Garden", so I thought "let's take a look inside that topic"....

well guys, I'm sorry to admit, but you lost me :-) .... about from the first reply that is :-)


boy oh boy...this is some confusing stuff.... I guess that's why I'm modelling british airborne troops.... a lot of infantry without too many tac markings

See what I mean, very confusing.

Ok, I think I have it pretty much figured out as to what goes where but now I have to also add in a location and who was there. Combine the two and I should have everything I need.

Thanks Paul and Geoff, you also helped out alot.

And Danny always nice to hear from you. This topic goes along with the chicken ad.(You ever get that Mars Bar?)

So 1st Polish Armoured Div: 10th Mounted Rifle Regt.
AOS = Blue over green with white '45'
"30" bridge class sign
?(Prob the winged helmet)
?(PL Sign?)
I'll figure uot those others unless someone has an idea.

Thanks again everyone,
Bob

See? I didn't know that. Learn something new every day. Thanks!

Paul