Other than the M3 Lee, which other AFVs were used by the Indian Army in Burma during World War 2? Photographs of the Lee suggest that they were modified by removal of the turret cupola.
Paul
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Also Grants and Stuarts, and late in the war also Shermans, and even some quite rare stuff.
A number of Stuarts were used initially during the retreat back to India, which off the top of my head were all eventually left behind. There’s also this photo, that I kind of want to build in 1:35 one of these days:
That’s the back cover of a book titled The Campaign in Burma, published by HMSO in 1946. (I just discovered there’s a scan of it on the Internet Archive, after taking the photos below from the copy I have on my shelf.)
The other photos of tanks in it are:
Left a Sherman V (with the rare exhaust deflector in place), right a Lee.
Another Sherman V with exhaust deflector.
I think this is also a Sherman V, but it’s hard to be sure from this angle and in the haze caused by the rain.
This is a Sherman III DD.
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Are you specifically looking at the Indian Army or would you include British Armoured Regts that served in Burma too?
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Thanks to you all for your responses … most interesting.
John, the reason I asked was that I have a pair of Indian Army tank crew figures, and am looking for a suitable vehicle. I also have an unbuilt kit of an M3 Grant, which guess would be appropriate.
Paul
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According to David Doyle’s M3 Lee Grant, the 50th and 254th Indian Tank Brigades had Lees, but it doesn’t mention any units equipped with Grants — though it could be “Lee” is shorthand for “Lee or Grant” here. Nearly all of the photos from Burma in the book show Lees, not Grants, and all of them seem to have British rather than Indian crews.
Looking up the tank brigades on Wikipedia, 50 Brigade had 25 Dragoons and 146 RAC while 254 Brigade had 3 Carabiniers, 149 RAC and 150 RAC, all of them equipped with Lees, Grants, or both. However, all of those regiments were British Army, rather than British Indian Army, and so their tank crews would have been ethnically European rather than South Asian. (That is, I assume that with “Indian Army tank crew figures” you mean figures that are recognisably Asian even when unpainted, like the crewmen in the photo of the Stuart that I posted above.)
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19th Lancers were a Indian Armoured Regt and they operated the Sherman V in 1944/45 as part of 14th Army.
Indian Army units were deliberately mixed, with (in Armoured Regiments), each Squadron being recruited from a different part of British India. Thus you could have a Bengali Sqn, serving alongside a Jat Sqn and maybe a Rajput Sqn as well.
Indian Army Regts were commanded by British Indian officers (including Squadrons and Troops). There was a parallel level of Indian Officers (VCO, or Viceroy’s Commissioned Officers), but they did not have the authority to command units and were considered to be of lower rank than equivalent British ranks.
In 1947, when Partition created India, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and West Pakistan as independent states, this system became unworkable and all the regiments were reorganised into homogenised national units, swapping squadrons back and forth to achieve that aim.
19th Lancers for example, exchanged their Squadron of Sikhs for a Squadron of Muslims in Skinner’s Horse (who remained as part of the Indian Army).
The Indian armoured units serving in Burma appear to have gained a good reputation for their fighting abilities. It’s a subject that is rarely covered in depth in English-language sources, but many of the current Indian and Pakistani cavalry regiments retain their ‘British’ names and remain fiercely proud of their heritage, their traditions and the exploits of their forebears.
19th Lancers during the Arakan campaign
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In a nutshell. . .
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Other examples:
9th Royal Deccan Horse - Sherman V
7th Light Cavalry - M3 Stuart (not to be confused with the British 7th Armoured Brigade)
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