I was researching the movements of the British 33rd Armoured Brigade around S’Hertogenbosch and was trying to find evidence of whether they had Achilles tank support and from what units. I found that they were often supported by the 51st Highland Divison’s 61st Anti-Tank Regiment Royal Artillery (RA) but I was never able to find any concrete photographs for what markings this regiment would have used.
I did find a monument to the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry (the senior regiment in the 33rd) at La-Roche which honors their liberation efforts with the 51st Highland Division. The monument has an Achilles in the markings of the Northamptonshire Yeomanry though I’m fairly certain this configuration never existed.
This got me thinking of what other anti-tank support they would have had at this time. I’ve found plenty of information on the shermans of the 33rd but very little on their anti-armor support. I figured someone would have more information and wanted to reach out, thank you!
What are the markings for equipment from the Divisional Anti-Tank Regiment of 51st Highland Division?
What anti-tank assets did 33 Armoured Brigade have?
I’ll answer the second question first: the Brigade was purely an armoured brigade equipped with tanks. It had no integral dedicated anti-tank capability. After all, a school of thought is that the best anti-tank weapon is another tank. It was not structured to have any Royal Artillery anti-tank capability. The purpose of the Brigade was to enable the Army Commander/Corps Commander to apportion extra armour - ie in addition to the Armoured Divisions - wherever he so chose. A menu if you like for the Commander to allocate what-to-where depending on what he was trying to achieve in a particular operation. To identify what RA assets were to be used to provide a dedicated anti-tank capability is impossible to ascertain unless you have access to the respective unit/formation war diaries. And good luck with that!
The first question is a little simpler, but even then, the bespoke, almost arcane organisation of the British Army in the Second World War contains many Pooh-Traps. I regret I do not have a definitive answer.
The Regiment consisted of 4 x Gun batteries (sub-units); these were 193, 241, 242,and 243. As at Jan 1945, the regiment had a mix of SP 17 Pdrs (probably Archers), towed 17 Pdrs, and apparently towed 6 Pdrs.
Achilles were normally allocated to the Armoured Divisions, and I believe the Anti-Tank units assigned to the Infantry Divisions had towed 17 Pdrs until Archer came into service (Autumn 1944 I think). This really means that the question re markings for Achilles is dead in the water. It is possible that Archers were present at 's-Hertogenbosch in 1944.
So let’s assume that the Regiment had an SP battery in Autumn '44 – probably Archer (the markings would also apply to any SP Artillery); looking at the front of the vehicle left to right:
Red/Blue square (red on top) with white “46”. On the right hand side the Divisional emblem of 51st Highland Div. These markings would be replicated on the rear, on the same side.
A vehicle serial number would be on the vehicle’s side in white. A bridge classification plate – black on yellow would be somewhere on the hull front. Allied white stars painted somewhere to show from above (I’m not too sure where this would be on Archer). Sub-unit markings would probably be somewhere but I am unsure if the RA used the same symbols as RAC units. The RA did have a complex Battery indicator in the form of red and blue squares – with white lettering super-imposed) so this may well have appeared somewhere.
Just to add to Brian’s information above, I did a little bit of digging around and this is what I dug up on the 33rd Armoured Brigade.
Their first battle in Normandy was around Caen between 4 and 18 July. On 8th August 1944 it was involved in Operation Totalize, a planned breakout from the Caen Salient. Heavy German counter-attacks prevented exploitation of the early successes and tank losses were heavy.
The Brigade consisted of:
1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry (Sherman I & Firefly VC)
144th Battalion Royal Armoured Corps (Sherman I & Firefly VC)
148th Battalion Royal Armoured Corps (Sherman I & Firefly VC)
Now this below gives a typical organisation of a late war British Infantry division, you’ll notice under Royal artillery, 46 Red over Blue is the divisional towed anti tank gun Regiment. That’s not to say that they didn’t have SP A/T guns, may be assigned from higher up but you’d need to look into the history of that battle and the war diaries if you can find them. The fact the 33rd Armoured had Fireflys in each troop sort of begs the question why assign more A/T.
51st advance on Hertogenbosch, you can just make out the trail of an A/T gun being towed by the nearest universal carrier, as the universal couldn’t tow the heavier 17lb this must be a 6lb A/T gun which it could tow.
Sorry just a little off topic: Just an observation for those who model universal carriers fully laden note how the carrier sits right down on its suspension, seen so many otherwise very nice models of fully laden carriers sitting up high.
And RA markings. The pattern of the marking denoted the battery to which a vehicle belonged, with one quarter being coloured, starting with the upper-right for the first battery and rotating clockwise for subsequent batteries. Field, Medium, Heavy, AT and AA regiments all used a red corner, while Survey regiments used yellow, and added a yellow flash to the HQ marking.
Thank you so much both of you! This has been very useful, this actually explains much of the confusion I had earlier. I was wondering what the division anti-tank structure of the 51st was, especially because there was this video of an archer vs panther duel. It now makes sense though how archers were distributed and markings were applied, though you’re both right, this seems to be even more in-depth and obtuse than I first thought. I was able to find some IWM footage of the 61st in action with Archers but this explains why I didn’t see any Achilles vehicles.
I was able to find this website which has annotated versions of certain war diaries, but unfortunately the 61st is not included. I am putting it here though in the hopes that some of you find it useful!
The correct spelling is ’s-Hertogenbosch with the apostrophe before the s (which is always lowercase) and a hyphen between the s and the H. This is because the ’s is an elided form of des, which is the genitive form of the masculine article de, “the” — the town’s name means “the Duke’s Forest”. This also means calling it Hertogenbosch (as I saw in a reply above) is incorrect too, as that would translate as “Dukes (plural) Forest".
You mean to say a 17-pounder M10 or some variation on that “Achilles” was not a nickname in common use in the war, but seems to have gained traction only after it.
You’re right, I made a mistake — the official spelling is with a hyphen, not a space: ’s-Hertogenbosch. The main problem with writing it correctly is that nobody calls it this in daily life — the more usual name that people actually use is Den Bosch (pronounced variously [dɛm ˈbɔs], [dəm ˈbɔs], [dən ˈbɔs]). I’ve corrected my previous post to reflect this
Spelling of place names in war diaries is very hit and miss, I’ve noticed
