Operation Infatuate II: Sherman tanks at Westkapelle

[Alex van de Wetering]

Jakko,

Great to see you here!

I’m greatly puzzled by the pronged thing on the edge of the water, by the way. I first thought it was a bulldozer chassis or the arms of the dozer blade, but on inspection of the parts in the Resicast armoured dozer kit, I found it to be the wrong shape for either.

I do think they are the arms of a dozer.....but maybe not D7, but D6. I think you see the arms and the two smaller arms that connect to the corner of the blade, that alows it to set the blade at an angle. I can see that someone salvaged the crawler part of the dozer leaving the blade, winch and armor at the beach.

[David Herbert]

Jakko and Alex,

I have to agree about the cab and winch, having now seen the photo in post 71. I am sure that the pronged thing is the blade frame with the blade still attached. It is up side down and with the blade angled away from us - to the left if it was still on the tractor. The sharp 'prong' pointing to the left in the photo is the lower corner of the blade. I suppose that the guy that dismantled the tractor may have come back for the remaining bits the next day - he may not have had the ability to recover the tractor in one piece given that the tanks and tractors could not move on that beach.

David

[Alex van de Wetering]

I am sure that the pronged thing is the blade frame with the blade still attached. It is up side down and with the blade angled away from us - to the left if it was still on the tractor. The sharp 'prong' pointing to the left in the photo is the lower corner of the blade.

David, that's the odd thing.....it does look like the blade is upside down, but the arms are definately not upside down. They have a kink upwards to clear the dozer suspension, so the arms face the normal way up. Maybe the thing we thing is the point of the blade is actually some other piece of steel laying a few feet away from the dozer(?)

The armour lying on it's side identify the dozer as a D6; The D6 was the only one that had the sides completely parrallel, while the D7 had the armor slightly sloping outwards.

The one on the left is actually just the armoured cab and the winch.

Do you mean the one in the picture Hanno posted in post 64 ? Than I would have to disagree. The armour and winch are still the right side up, and you can see the left and right track next to the dozer and I think I even see the edge of the blade. To me it looks like the dozer has completely sunk in the beach, as Hanno also mentioned, in which case the picture predates the picture you posted yesterday.

Alex

[Jakko Westerbeke]

Originally Posted by Alex van de Wetering

Do you mean the one in the picture Hanno posted in post 64 ? Than I would have to disagree.

You’re right, I was confusing two pictures.

Originally Posted by Alex van de Wetering

the picture predates the picture you posted yesterday.

Most are hard to date accurately anyway

[David Herbert]

Originally Posted by Alex van de Wetering

David, that's the odd thing.....it does look like the blade is upside down, but the arms are definately not upside down. They have a kink upwards to clear the dozer suspension, so the arms face the normal way up. Maybe the thing we thing is the point of the blade is actually some other piece of steel laying a few feet away from the dozer(?)

Alex

Sorry Alex but I think that you are wrong. When viewed from the side of a complete dozer, the braces that set the angle of the blade are parallel to and lower than the top edge of the blade frame as seen in Michels photos. That fits in with the whole assembly being upside down on the beach. Also in the zoomed photo you can see the circular saucer shaped depth plates just behind the blade that help to control depth of cut.

In Michel Saberly's photos you can see that he has highlighted that these dozers has their Cat works numbers painted onto the front of the armour. These are in the 1T series which denotes that they are tractors built under licence from Caterpillar. A Cat built D7 would be a 7Mxxxx and a D6 would be a 4R or 5Rxxxx depending on track gauge. Cat works numbers, for say 7M D7s, started at 7M1 and ran to 7M9999. The next D7 would be a new prefix, in this case 9U1 which ran to 9U9999 and then another new prefix. Changes were brought in as required and a new prefix did not necessarily mean a new model but often did. There are a lot of 3T and 4T D7s about which are post war license built 7Ms.

David

David

[MicS]

Originally Posted by David Herbert

In Michel Saberly's photos you can see that he has highlighted that these dozers has their Cat works numbers painted onto the front of the armour. These are in the 1T series which denotes that they are tractors built under licence from Caterpillar. A Cat built D7 would be a 7Mxxxx and a D6 would be a 4R or 5Rxxxx depending on track gauge. Cat works numbers, for say 7M D7s, started at 7M1 and ran to 7M9999. The next D7 would be a new prefix, in this case 9U1 which ran to 9U9999 and then another new prefix. Changes were brought in as required and a new prefix did not necessarily mean a new model but often did. There are a lot of 3T and 4T D7s about which are post war license built 7Ms.

There were reportedly 138 D7A and 45 D6A armoured angle dozers built. They were numbered 1T1xxx and 1T3xxx respectively. I have found evidence of the following extreme numbers:

D7A : 1T1007 & 1T1111, so the numbers presumably ran from 1T1001 to 1T1138

D6A : 1T3034 & 1T3060, which may mean that the actual total number built was over 45, or that there were unarmoured dozers within the 1T3001-1T3060 range, and/or that the armoured series started after 1T3001...

I'd be very interested to see evidence of numbers outside the above ranges

In addition to this manufacturer's serial number, armoured dozers also sported the War Department Registration Number, apparently nearly all starting with E243xxx (I only know of one clip showing a D7A E244xxx).

Michel

[Jakko Westerbeke]

FWIW, I make the WD number of one of the dozers at Westkapelle, E234?85, with an unreadable fourth digit. This for the only one I’ve seen in a photo with this number visible at all, the one Hanno labelled “D”, and which I call E32:

Voertuiglocaties 't Stort 2010-06-14.jpg

[MicS]

Originally Posted by MicS

There were reportedly 138 D7A and 45 D6A armoured angle dozers built. They were numbered 1T1xxx and 1T3xxx respectively. I have found evidence of the following extreme numbers:

D7A : 1T1007 & 1T1111, so the numbers presumably ran from 1T1001 to 1T1138

D6A : 1T3034 & 1T3060, which may mean that the actual total number built was over 45, or that there were unarmoured dozers within the 1T3001-1T3060 range, and/or that the armoured series started after 1T3001...

I'd be very interested to see evidence of numbers outside the above ranges

In addition to this manufacturer's serial number, armoured dozers also sported the War Department Registration Number, apparently nearly all starting with E243xxx (I only know of one clip showing a D7A E244xxx).

Michel

I've just found one which was hiding in my hard drive: 1T3008 E243x63 RAT RUFF:

D6A - 1T3008 E243x63 RAT RUFF - A70 124-4 - 480 - 1944-08-15 - Grant - 00.44.jpg
Source: IWM A70 124-4 around 00:44

Michel

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Some more footage of the wrecks after the war, not sure if this link was posted on here before. "Walcheren 44-45.mp4" is a hidden file on Youtube so worth boookmarking:

https://youtu.be/uVRD0GK_THs?t=119

safe_image.jpg

[Jakko Westerbeke]

Now you point it out, yes, it does look like that This would probably mean that this dozer (S11 using my numbering, “A” by Hanno’s) was a D6A, right? I’ve not been able to find a photo of it that shows the exhaust pipes clearly enough, but if, as Alex says, this is the arm type used on the D6 then it probably came from this dozer.

The other option is the dozer at the far side of this group (S53/“C”), which was a D6 if I’m not mistaken (though I only learned how to tell them apart by reading this thread ). On the other hand, if that had been disassembled, why would they drag the blade all the way here?

[Alex van de Wetering]

I have been meaning to post some pictures of D6 and D7 dozers to show how one can tell them apart, but looking for pictures I noticed that Michel Saberly has already done that a few years ago.

Attached pictures are by Michel Saberly.

[Jakko Westerbeke]

Originally Posted by David Herbert

I suppose that the guy that dismantled the tractor may have come back for the remaining bits the next day - he may not have had the ability to recover the tractor in one piece given that the tanks and tractors could not move on that beach.

It looks like the winch was left on the beach:

Tanks in 't Gat vanaf strand.jpg
(source)

This is a photo from 31 July 1947, and the cab and winch are there but the arm isn’t. It still surprised me that the tractor would still have been operational, but maybe the winch wasn’t and so it was left behind, while the blade was salvaged for re-attaching to the tractor?

[Alex van de Wetering]

Sorry Alex but I think that you are wrong. When viewed from the side of a complete dozer, the braces that set the angle of the blade are parallel to and lower than the top edge of the blade frame as seen in Michels photos. That fits in with the whole assembly being upside down on the beach. Also in the zoomed photo you can see the circular saucer shaped depth plates just behind the blade that help to control depth of cut.

Hi David,

I see what you mean....the blade and arms are indeed upside down and I was wrong. But, has the whole assembly been cut from the dozer with a torch maybe? As there seems to be something odd with the shape...(last kink towards the pivot point seems missing)

The arms actually pivot from the brackets that you can see from the outside of the tractor at a point about midway between the top rollers but quite low down. The weight of the tractor is carried by a big leaf spring pivoted to the sump on a normal tractor (I am not sure if it is a solid mount on these) which is higher than the blade arms so there is no need for the arms to avoid it. The underside of the arms are sloped upwards at the ends to give better ground clearance when the blade is up. In the zoomed photo you can see the circular saucer shaped depth plates just behind the blade that help to control depth of cut.

That's what I don't agree on; the arms on an Armoured dozer are shaped over the transverse leaf spring, as they would otherwise interfere with the spring. You can't curve the arms under the leaf spring, as that would very much limit the up and down movement of the arms and blade. The shape might be a bit different between D6 and D7, but you can see the idea here on the surviving D7 dozer.
Dozer blades that attach to the ouside of the dozer suspension don't have this problem obvisously, as there is no spring, so the arms can be straight.

Picture source: https://www.militarymodelscene.com/d7-rmoured-dozer

[David Dunlop]

Jakko.

Can you clarify something for me?

In your colour aerial photo with the wartime overlay of the location outlined in white, there is what now appears to be a large, white sand public beach in the area marked “t’ Gat”. In the Northwest corner of this photo you can clearly see the cluster of assorted armour that never made it ashore and the outer white lines of what appears to be the original wartime shoreline pass roughly North/South down through that area before swinging off to the East at the bottom of the photo.

Was the land flooded out subsequent to the wartime landing, never diked back off and reclaimed, or am I just getting the information wrong from the two photos? I was so interesting in tracking the postwar movements of some of the armour, I only just noticed this possible loss of land mass.

I cannot help think some of that armour did more travelling in town after the war than they managed during the landing.

David

[David Herbert]

Hi Alex,

After I typed the second part that you quoted in your last post # 80 I realized that it didn't add up so deleted it and replaced it with the first part that you have quoted. Well done for getting both !

However you have shown that the arms do indeed go over the suspension spring (sorry) so I think that the explanation is that the arms on the beach have had the pivot points cut off them where the arm bends down to the pivot - so about 30" removed. Looking at the zoom of the beach photo one can persuade oneself that one can see a cut box section.

For the benefit of others the suspension spring is a massive transverse spring the ends of which engage with the track frames just in front of the forward top roller. The track frames themselves pivot on the shaft that goes through the sprockets which also rotate around that shaft.

David

[Alex van de Wetering]

Hi David,

so I think that the explanation is that the arms on the beach have had the pivot points cut off them where the arm bends down to the pivot - so about 30" removed

I agree......it does seem they took the easy way out, by just cutting the arms off!

Well done for getting both !

I pressed the quote button, but it took me a while to find a picture to display what I meant. When I did find a picture and posted, I noticed the original text was missing! I did however post, as I think it help us learn more about these Armoured dozers, vehicles I have always found very fascinating.

Alex

[Jakko Westerbeke]

Originally Posted by David Dunlop

Was the land flooded out subsequent to the wartime landing, never diked back off and reclaimed, or am I just getting the information wrong from the two photos?

You’ve got it exactly right: the old dyke ran as the pale lines show, then curved more to the southeast just below the map until it got to the dune now known as Erika; from there it continued on to the southeast. When the dyke was reconstructed after the war, it was built in a big curve the other way — the footpath along the top is clear on the aerial photo, and pretty much follows the curve of the new dyke — to connect the remaining part of the old dyke to Erika. A sandy beach then formed at the foot of the new dyke. (The lake marked “De Kreeke” at the lower right also didn’t exist before 1945 — that area was farmland back then.)

If you want to see how the coastline changed because of the RAF’s actions, http://topotijdreis.nl is a good resource: type “Westkapelle” into the search box at the top right, then play with the date slider along the left.

“’t Gat”, BTW, translates as “the Gap” — the reason for that name is probably obvious

Originally Posted by David Dunlop

I cannot help think some of that armour did more travelling in town after the war than they managed during the landing.

Crab T148656 certainly did