Zimmerit on British Cromwells... or Rubber strips

As is usually the case I was spinning through the film footage on the IWM site when I stumbled upon a little clip which appeared to show several Cromwells, at the beginning of Op Epsom, with Zimmerit on their Turrets. When I first spotted this I thought, 'eh up lad, did they over-run a German Maintenance battalion and grab some Zimmerit for their own use, or was this some attempt to replicate Zimmerit. I posted this up on HMVF and was provided a link to a website which had similar info but claimed that it wasn't Zimmerit-type affair but rubber strips.Trouble, is I'm not convinced it is Rubber strips, I concede that in one or two places it could be interpreted as such but in other frames it does look more like Zimmerit. At any rate I'll let you lot have a looksee and you can make-up your own minds.

The film clip linked below shows several Cromwells from, what I believe to be, C Sqn, 2nd Northants Yeomanry, Troops 1 and 2. All of them are sporting some form of Zimmerit (or Rubber Strips) on the Turret.

There are at least three indentifiable Cromwells; Achilles T187676 and Agamemnon T187714 (from 1 Trp) and Galahad from 2 Trp (no Census #). Seems as though naming their tanks after ancient warriors was a thing for C Sqn and 1 Troop appears to be all names beginning with A so we can probably assume 2 Trp had a Cromwell named Gwain.

Link below...Have grabbed some stills from this and will try to upload them to the post. Lookout for the ant-magnetic wainscotting in the last couple of frames,

OPERATION EPSOM - 8TH CORPS' FORMATIONS IN ACTION (PART 7) [Allocated Title]

The web address for the site which claims this as Rubber strips is here:

British work on Zimmerit


First Still, not sure which Cromwell but from 2 trp



Second Still shows Achilles



Third Still Shows Agamemnon



Last two stills show Galahad

 

Anyone got access to 2nd Northants War Diary for this period? Any mention of this at all?

 

Not sure, but I know the British did experiment with anti-magnetic paste. May I repost this on missing-lynx.com? The scale modelers there might know.

 

Hi,
Links to some of the threads on the website Chris mentioned covering this.

Regards

Danny

Cromwell with rubber strips on only part turret... pic

Allied Zimmerit??

Any Allied AFV use of Zimmerit?

 

Just looks like that turret has been 3d printed to me...