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Old 08-10-04, 16:35
Doug Knight Doug Knight is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Ottawa, Canada
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I checked the war diary for 11th field and there is no indication that they were anything but a towed 25-pounder regiment. They are still talking about trailers after the arrival in Germany.

Sexton - As far as Canada was concerned, the original intention was to equip one regiment in each armoured regiment with Sextons. McNaughton ordered 84 guns immediately after the Larkhill trials in January 1943 and before the Brits adopted it (24 guns per regiment plus war stocks and training). things are a bit vague, but I think that Canada eventually paid for about 34 (?) guns, most of which stayed in Canada, and the Brits issued Sexton's to the CAOS as agreed/necessary.

19th Field received their Sextons in Canada and went to the UK as the SP regiment in 5th Armoured. They were considered to be too inexperienced to go to Italy with the division and were replaced by 8th field as the division SP regiment. The 8th were equipped with Priests in Italy by the Brits and then reequipped with Sextons when they moved to NWE in 1945.

19th became an Army field Regiment vice 8th field, were reequipped with Priests for the invasion (as were the 3 Div regiments) and returned to Sextons in late August 44.

23rd field is the only "pure" Cdn Sexton regiment. They trained on them in Canada, went to CAOS as the SP in 4th Armoured and used them throughout NWE.

So far as I know, only 8th, 19th, and 23rd were equipped with Sexton. Information is based on files in the National Archives and War Diaries. Gerry Nicholson has it wrong in the Gunners of Canada, but he may have been using the same source as Stacy in the CMHQ report.

Hope this helps.

Doug
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