Partly, yes! But your post has actually helped a lot This, for example... .....being unable to get to Bovvie - and them not answering my pre-xmas email! - this is more regarding their allocations than I've had so far - apart from something I'll come back to below ... ...in that Peter Brown's recent set of articles on the MkI in three editions of Military Modelling last year have given me a "better" view of the dribblesome way they actually reached units! And thankfully where SOME of the above did indeed go. What I need to do now is sit down and match all that I have together - not unlike the Vickers MkVIC question! - and see where I'm left. In the meantime I've found out with Peter Brown and MarkN's help a lot more about how the remaining MkIs in the UK after Dunkirk were used...I.E. how they were divided up among squadrons in 8RTR....at least until the last week of August where there appears to have been a major organisational change reached the battalion downwards via 1st ATB. At the minute however I'm concentrating more on the history of 8RTR from the start of August until the end of September 1940 than the actual tanks. I'm trying to find out what generated that change in organisation and distrubution of I tanks in the battalion....and what they were slated to do before and after that change, as well as confirming if the change fully took place. The first week of September, with the confirmation that the Germans were heading for Kent/Sussex not East Anglia, and the putting of 8RTR under 2 NZEF's command seems to have changed their orders...and locations!...considerably (of course) as well as parts of their previous task(s) possibly being incorporated in turn into 2 NZEF's orders...
Interesting you should bring that up again. I was wondering whether to mention that my earlier post in this thread forgot to account for the 2 in Malta. As of 31 Dec 1940, the totals appear to be:- 62 : Lost BEF France 57 : 1 Armoured Division - 4CLY (38), 2RGH (1) & unknown (18) 16 : 1 Army Tank Brigade - 8RTR (7), 44RTR (7) & HQ 1ATk Bde (2), 15 : 21 Army Tank Brigade - 42RTR (7), 48RTR (7) & HQ 21ATk Bde (1) 7 : 4RTR in/enroute/departing for ME (or 8 possibly) 2 : Malta ----- 159 Thus, only 7, 8 or 9 AWOL from the list depending on whether 166,167 or 168 is your target number. And remember, some people claim 7RTR went to Egypt with 7 (or 8) VIc. :wink:
....which, some have ALSO said, didn't necessarily arrive Ending up on the bottom of the Med instead...
Resurrecting an old post and noting that the pamphlet 8th Battalion Royal Tank rRegiment in World War 2 is still not in the Tank Museum catalogue prompts me to ask if some kind soul has a copy of same they would please be prepared to share. The time frame of interest in Jun 1941 (arrival in N Africa) to Jun 1942 when the subject of interest was captured so that part alone would be sufficient. Max
