Survey of Australian 25 pdrs

[Tony Wheeler]

Originally Posted by Keith Webb

Here's one for starters, freshly painted in Sussex Inlet RSL in NSW.

Freshly painted indeed, with colour patches and all! Nice to see 2/14 Regt remembered, I developed an interest in this unit as a candidate for my FGT8, because the front shell has NT Force markings, and the 2/14 Regt was in Darwin. However it turned out they were there much earlier, equipped with Marmon-Herringtons. Most likely it belonged to 2/11 Regt, who relieved them in Jan '43.

What interested me about the 2/14 was that they were 8th Div, which I had previously thought was entirely wiped out or captured when Singapore fell. However it turns out they never got away from Darwin. It's quite an interesting story - they received a warning order on 6 Dec '41 to "Be Ready to Move in 10 Hours" with their battalions to Ambon, Timor, and Rabaul (one battery to each). Rather a coincidence on the day before Pearl Harbour....or perhaps not!

Anyway the infantry got away but the artillery didn't, and there followed massacres on Ambon and Rabaul, with only elements of Sparrow Force on Timor surviving. Meanwhile 2/14 Regt remained in Darwin for the next year to meet the expected invasion, then went to NG after re-equipping with No.8s, and thence to New Britian where they subsequently garrisoned Rabaul - discovering in the process the mass graves of their executed former 8th Div comrades. Note the vertical line on the colour patch on the 25pdr, which is explained below:

[Mike Cecil]

Tony,

The 'broken Eighth' grey 'frame' sorrounding and crossing a Unit colour patch was adopted by several units that 'survived' the decimation of the 8th Aust Inf Division. However, it was never an officially recognised form of the Unit colour patch, and was adopted more or less at the whim of each Unit's CO. The form is not listed in official orders, and does not appear in the Army Colour Patch Register, but is mentioned in 'Color Patches and Ribbons of the Second World War' published in 1946.

Regarding 25-pdrs, the problem of identification is in which number do you use as the identifier? Until the registration scheme for artillery was introduced post-WW2 (and I'm yet to find a comprehensive list of these numbers!), each major part of a gun was identified by a number, eg barrel, breech, carriage (on a plate rivetted to the saddle), saddle, and so on: all parts that could and were changed when worn out or damaged. Barrels, for example, were routinely changed each time the requisite number of EFCs were reached. Breech blocks like wise at each third barrel change, and so on.

In the case of a saddle, a worn saddle, following refurbishment, could end up on another carriage. The gun log book can give a clue or two, but the majority were destroyed when the weapon left service.

So I suppose the best way is to register what is on each gun now, in the knowledge that this is most unlikely to have been the original factory assembly.

I wrestled with this 'problem' many years ago (when I was working on 'Field Artillery 1939-1945') but never really solved the dilemma satisfactorily, finding it well nigh impossible to trace a particular gun's lineage from factory to present day. I still collect the data, but drawing meaningful conclusions is the problem.

Comments??

Mike C

[Mike K]

The Warragul RSL has one . Its in light stone livery . The RSL moved to a site in Albert st about ten years ago. I heard that they were going to sell off the 25 pndr , but they kept it .

Info from the GMH war record

The barrell

[Mike K]

Scans from the GMH record

[Mike K]

more scans ................