Hello, i'm trying to find if the Inns of Court armoured car regiment had a different squadron organisation during the Northwest Europe campaign. Here is the link of the website talking about the different organisation : Hobby Hope you got serious info, thanks !!
I do recall hearing of the sawn-off Daimlers a long time ago, and thinking it would need the War Diary to put their use into perspective. The authorised org for an Armoured Car Regiment (WE III/236/2 of Nov43) was based on RHQ, HQ Squadron and four Squadrons. Each of the four Squadrons was built around five Troops, each of two Daimler armoured cars and two Daimler scout cars. Also in the Squadron was a Support Troop (a small rifle element for dismounted duties), a Heavy Troop (two AEC armoured cars or two halftracks mounting 75-mm guns), with both of these Troops also having a scout car. Squadron HQ was to have four armoured cars (one Daimler and three Staghounds) and a scout car. The outline given in the FOW blurb suggests a shift to six pairs of scout cars and three pairs of armoured cars, the latter also with a scout car per pair. Assuming all other elements of the Squadron were left unaltered, that would need 15 scout cars and 6 armoured cars, against a WE of 10 scout cars and 10 armoured cars. It would be interesting to know if this was a temporary change in unit org, or whether it was continued after Normandy. If anyone can have a look in the War Diary without needing a trip to Kew, they probably post here... Gary
I think this organisation was the same from Normandy to Berlin, the first unit to do this was the Inns of Court Regiment (Ist Corps armoured car regiment) but I don't now if other units used the turretless Daimler
I have a number of SODs in my 44-45 British force. I don't think they were limited to any particular Regiment. As the campaign progressed Recce units began to value concealment rather than firepower. Rather than aquire large numbers of Dingos the simplest expedient was the Sawn-Off Daimler.
There is some discussion of Inns of Court and turretless Daimlers including a relevant page from their war diary in July 1944 on the Missing Lynx modeling site Oddities on Op Goodwood film:
This is from the war diary regarding Inns of Court Regiment organization. Dated 11 July 1944 in diary:
Good links above, thanks for posting them. I had a quick look around last night, and most references to SOD conversions seem to be related to tabletop gaming and model making. There's a brief reference on the www.daimler-fighting-vehicles.co.uk site in the PDF documents on the Daimler armoured car, with the seemingly universally repeated photo of a SOD on page 12; http://daimler-fighting-vehicles.co.uk/DFV-File Part Af - DAC Design & Development.pdf Same one over on www.warwheels.net WarWheels.Net-Daimler Mark 2 Armored Car Index And a bit of background by Peter Brown in a post on missing lynx; Inns Of Court Gary