Grabners Humber

[wargameroz]

Someone has asked this on my Facebook Rapid Fire Page, can anyone help?


any ideas to which unit Graebner's Humber belonged to before it changed sides?

[Greebs]

I'm under the impression there was some dispute as to which Type of Humber Graebner was even running around in, never mind where he got it?

[mausmann]

Was it even a Humber? I remember this coming up on the old forum when I did one for our Arnhem bridge game.....

[wargameroz]

Yes, I vaguely seem to recall that it may have been a Humber Ironsides

[Alanmccoubrey]

It was a Humber but whether the Scout Car or the Armoured Car will probably never now be known. If it was a Scout Car it could have belonged to just about anybody while if the Armoured Car then that at least narrows it down to a British Infantry Divison . However since there doesn't seem to be any information as to when or where it was captured we can't realy do any better than that.

[Forrester]

I can't remember where I read it, but it was something about Graebner leaning forward and banging on the driver's hatch. That suggests a scout car?

Didn't he get his Knights Cross for an attack on a British infantry division in Normandy? A good chance he got his Humber-whatever from the divisional recce regiment. Not that we can ever know for sure.

Maybe anyone making a force for Arnhem should build two models and let the player choose...

[Nickdives]

Found this, possible as accurate as someone's opinion!

https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=15157

[Nickdives]

To add to the confusion mention of a "Tank"
https://www.forum-der-wehrmacht.de/inde ... et-garden/

[Alanmccoubrey]

To add to the confusion mention of a "Tank"
https://www.forum-der-wehrmacht.de/inde ... et-garden/

I shouldn't pay too much attention to that because several paragraphs later he refers to it as simply a vehicle, he calls HAUSI first the Panzer commander and then the Fahrzeug commander. Given the fact that we know the unit didn't own any tanks and that the German for Armoured Car started with Panzer it can easily be put down to lazy writing by him.
It is interesting to see that the vehicle, whatever it was, was NOT Gräbner's personal vehicle since he threw out its commander and left him standing by the road !
Something that will tickle Don's fancy though is that the writer specifies that the British 6 pdr was using HE.

[sandsmodels]

To add to the confusion mention of a "Tank"
https://www.forum-der-wehrmacht.de/inde ... et-garden/

Something that will tickle Don's fancy though is that the writer specifies that the British 6 pdr was using HE.

not unusual for 6pdr to fire he

[Don McHugh]

To add to the confusion mention of a "Tank"
https://www.forum-der-wehrmacht.de/inde ... et-garden/

Something that will tickle Don's fancy though is that the writer specifies that the British 6 pdr was using HE.

not unusual for 6pdr to fire he

Well the Airborne troops never had HE for their 6pdrs up to and including Arnhem.

Don

[Don McHugh]

Seems a lot of posts for a 'we don't know' answer

Don

[Alanmccoubrey]

not unusual for 6pdr to fire he

But that isn't the point, the point is finding any references to them actually firing HE. Don and I have been looking for just such references for years now and in particular trying to find the actual proportion of HE carried by the Airborne's AT guns. The normal proportion for a "land" 6 pdr was 25% HE of its 96 round front line load but I have yet to see anything for the Airborne.

[Don McHugh]

not unusual for 6pdr to fire he

But that isn't the point, the point is finding any references to them actually firing HE. Don and I have been looking for just such references for years now and in particular trying to find the actual proportion of HE carried by the Airborne's AT guns. The normal proportion for a "land" 6 pdr was 25% HE of its 96 round front line load but I have yet to see anything for the Airborne.

All the loading list I have seen never mention it.

Don

[dadlamassu]

Piers Brand has sent me this info and suggested it would inform this discussion.....

The information is quoted from http://arnhemjim.blogspot.com/2016/12/t ... at_10.html

[Alanmccoubrey]

Piers Brand has sent me this info and suggested it would inform this discussion.....

The information is quoted from http://arnhemjim.blogspot.com/2016/12/t ... at_10.html

And is therefore a load of bollocks. Can you really imagine a Jeep, TWO Trailers and the gun in ONE Glider ? A Horsa carried either a Jeep and Gun, or a Jeep and two trailers.
Sadly "Glider Pilots at Arnhem" only gives the loading for an Airlanding Bn, the AT Group of said Bn had four Gliders per Platoon with each Glider carrying a Jeep and Gun along with the Jeep Driver and one Gun Number with the GP expected to help serve the gun until the rest of the crew arrived from other gliders. Interestingly they have only a single Jeep and Trailer for the ammunition of the entire Group.
The only information about the RA AT Batteries is the total number of Gliders required, for example HQ, A, B, C and Z Troops of 1 Bty with their 16 guns had a total of only 17 x Horsa. 2 Bty landed in the second lift but had a total of 21 Horsa for its 12 guns, indicating perhaps a lot of ammunition was landed in the second Lift.

[Alanmccoubrey]

To make it clear, it is the Blog which is bollocks not Piers. Other errors in said Blog include a pic of a Morris Bofors SP in a Hamilcar captioned as a Morris 17 pdr Tow.

[Bob_Mackenzie]

Here you go - whopping 70 6pdr HE were dropped as part of the resupply effort, though the day of the re-supply is not specified



From here

http://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/ ... l8/id/3377 - which is about as official as it gets

Cheers

Bob

[Don McHugh]

Here you go - whopping 70 6pdr HE were dropped as part of the resupply effort, though the day of the re-supply is not specified



From here

http://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/ ... l8/id/3377 - which is about as official as it gets

Cheers

Bob

That's all very good, but how much of the resupply actually got to the airborne troops, we are lead to believe very little.

Don

[Don McHugh]

Thanks for posting that link, I have now downloaded and saved.

There is some very interesting info in there, but I think you need to be careful what you pick out and how you assess it.

I have found the page you quote, but would draw your attention to these previous pages.

Page 29 - At Arnhem it was decided to load three Hamilcar gliders with stores as resupply drops were 'Somewhat chancy business'.
Of these three Hamilcars all landed safely and two were cleared of all their stores. The other was captured before it was fully unloaded.
No 6pdr HE rounds are listed within these loads.

Page 35 - There is talk of a total of 100 tons of stores reaching the airborne troops but it looks as if this figure includes over 60 tons of stores brought in by the three Hamilcars. so less that 40 tons received by resupply. At the bottom of the table on this page it talks about a percentage of 7.4% in total of all stores sent reaching the airborne troops.

Not sure any of this is sound evidence of the use of 6pdr HE being used at Arnhem.

I will read the document fully when I get a chance.

Don