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Churchills in Normandy 1944?


MagisterMan

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Hi everyone!
I am now building 1/350 Black Cat Models LCT (5) ship and want to add some tanks in - fortunatelly, there is a kit of four regular (with no huge air intakes on boards) Churchills Mk. VII in my hands.
The question is - was there any chance of regular Churchills participating in D-Day landings  and were LCT ships capable of transporting them to beaches? 

And if it actually happened, to which division did the tanks belong to?

I come from the maritime branch of the forum and know literally nothing about tamks, so help would be much appreciated 😅
 

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Churchil Mk VIIs would be very unlikely on D-Day itself, apart from a small number of Churchill Crocodile Flamethrowers with their disctinctive armoured trailers. Apart from the specialised Churchill AVREs used by the Armoured Regiment Royal Engineers (ARRE), the bulk of the standard gun tank Churchills were landed in the days after D-Day because they belonged to follow-up units rather than those taking part in the assault. They would have been of the Mk IV and (less commonly) the Mk III variants. The Mk VII was new at this point so numbers increased during the campaign in NW Europe as older vehicles were replaced.

 

Churchills were assigned to independent Tank or Armoured Brigades rather than armoured divisions. 'Tank' Brigades were equipped with 'Infantry' whilst 'Armoured' brigades operated 'Cruiser' tanks, By D-Day the difference was pretty moot with the introduction of the Sherman to most British armoured units and ultimately the Tank Brigades were redesignated as Armoured Brigades in late 1944. The only Churchill-equipped Tank Brigades in NW Europe were the 31st, 34th and 6th (Guards) Tank Brigades - the last one not to be confused with the Guards Armoured Division. None of these Brigades went into action in France until late June/early July 1944.

 

For a D-Day assault LCT, it would be feasible to tie down a specific load for a specific LCT for some of the beaches. The Landing Tables for Sword Beach for example define each load in detail, including the type of craft. Shermans would be a better choice for a generic D-Day 'load'.

 

I note that the Black Cat kit comes with 4 M7 Priests and 2 M4 Shermans - either type would be fine for a British themed load - for example, 7th Field Regt RA used Priests and landed on D-Day (Sword Beach as part of 3rd British Infantry Div). Whether they landed from LCT 5s is something I can't confirm.

 

Alternatively, look at the LCT (A) or LCT (CB) conversions - both based on the LCT 5 - that had raised platforms in the tank decks to allow tanks and SP guns to fire over the ramps during the run in to the beaches. There were only five LCT (CB) - one for Sword, two for Juno and two others assigned to the Western Task Force (Omaha and Utah) for which no detailed records exist).  The CB conversions were intended specifically to carry a pair of Sherman Fireflies which was the case for the Sword and Juno vessels but the two assigned to the WTF were probably used for something else. The LCT (A) were more common and would usually be carrying M7s.  Both conversions were top heavy due to the higher centre of gravity.

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Wading trunks get a mention at the top - or at least that what I presume that "huge air intakes" means.

 

Whatever you choose - and I suspect that will be guided by whatever is available in 1/350 - any AFV to be landed over the beaches on D Day or after would have been wading-equipped.  Black Cat seem to do M7s and Shermans.  AFV Club have some vehicle sets but they're very US-oriented.

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On 15/05/2022 at 14:34, John Tapsell said:

Churchil Mk VIIs would be very unlikely on D-Day itself

My goodness, that's the exact info I was looking for. Many thanks to you for your answer, John!

So, if I stick up to the D-Day itself, it would be better to use Shermans or Priests, and if using Churchills Mk.VII, it should be somewhat like deployimg reinforcements to the army already acting on a continent months after the landing, did I get you correctly?

And speaking again of the Churchills as the reinforcements to the army after Normandy (I do like immensely their square large hulls and really rather prefer to use them on a model): what was the chance that they would be delivered to the shore by LCT? Or they would rather be carried out and delivered by some bigger kind of a landing ship?

Best regards,
Mikhail

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18 hours ago, MagisterMan said:

My goodness, that's the exact info I was looking for. Many thanks to you for your answer, John!

So, if I stick up to the D-Day itself, it would be better to use Shermans or Priests, and if using Churchills Mk.VII, it should be somewhat like deployimg reinforcements to the army already acting on a continent months after the landing, did I get you correctly?

And speaking again of the Churchills as the reinforcements to the army after Normandy (I do like immensely their square large hulls and really rather prefer to use them on a model): what was the chance that they would be delivered to the shore by LCT? Or they would rather be carried out and delivered by some bigger kind of a landing ship?

Best regards,
Mikhail

LCTs carried a vast array of different armoured vehicles on D-Day - anything from homogenous loads of tanks belonging to a particular unit, to conglomerations of different vehicles belonging to several units. The whole landing/load schedule had been worked out to ensure that exactly the right vehicles landed at the point they would be most needed. Thus, a single LCT might carry an armoured bulldozer of the Royal Engineers towing a stores trailer, a medical half-track for an armoured regiment, a self-propelled anti-aircraft gun towing another aa gun, a couple of universal carriers, some despatch riders with their m/cycles and so on. A good example are the Beach Groups. Initially they wouldn't need vehicles, but as the beach was secured, their vehicles would start to arrive in pre-determined stages, allowing them to build up their capabilities to clear the beaches, recover vehicles, provide medical aid and establish command and control for the beachmasters. (despite all the chaos of the landings, the basic principle worked well).

 

If you are looking at tracked armour, Shermans, Priests, M10 SP guns, M3 Stuart light tanks, Universal Carriers and half-tracks would have been most common for the British beaches, but armoured cars, and construction equipment/recovery vehicles were also very common. Softskins (jeeps and trucks) were much less common initially during the assault phase.

 

The vast bulk of Churchills would have arrived in LSTs or cargo vessels, landed either directly onto the beach at low tide or offloaded via the Mulberry harbour complex at Gold beach. The LCTs were used primarily for the assault phase and many of them were damaged or sunk. Some shuttled back and forth across the Channel after D-Day but It's worth remembering that as soon as D-Day had been undertaken, many landing craft were being transferred to the Mediterranean to prepare for Operation Dragoon - they were a scarce resource and constantly shuttled across the globe to where they were needed (some LSTs used at D-Day had come from the Pacific for example and went back there afterwards).

 

You need to log in or register on the WW2Talk website to access the data attached to the link below, but it includes Excel spreadsheets covering the 'First Tide' landing tables for Sword Beach. It will offer you an immense range of data down to individual loads for each landing craft and time of arrival on the beach. From memory it also defines the pennant number and type of LCT.

 

http://ww2talk.com/index.php?resources/landing-table-3-british-infantry-division-group-first-tide.39/

 

Similar tables exist for all five beaches but not all of them are online.

 

Regards,

John

 

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