cab 12 FAT in Normandy

[Alex van de Wetering]

Sylvain,

In short....no, I haven't found photographic evidence of Cab11/12 FATs in Normandy, but in my opinion that doesn't mean there weren't any. Every pic I do find of Monkey face CMP's in NW Europe, I always upload to the thread Niels posted.

I had a look at the pictures of the ones in Holland.....well, at least the ones that have unit signs that are readable. They show AoS "42" and "43", 3rd Canadian Infantry Division, so those would be "12th Field Regiment Royal Canadian Artillery" and "13th Field Regiment Royal Canadian Artillery".

The LMH archive has the war diaries for these regiments for the Normandy campaign. Sadly this reads that both regiments used SPs (Priest and Sexton) on D-day, but they changed back to tractors and towed 25pdrs early august (1/2 august for 12th Field reg. and 1-7 august for 13th Field reg), when still in Normandy. The Priests went to the "old vehicle parc" in Ryes, which meant the start of the Kangaroos.
Of course the war diary is not that detailed that it lists what type of tractors were used from early august onwards.....cab 12? cab 13? Morris?, but I think it's more than likely that they were the cab12's we see in Holland a few months later.
So, you could take a little gamble and mark up your cab12 as a 3rd Canadian Division early agust 1944 vehicle.....or you could investigate more by checking the war diaries of other Field artillery regiments that were active in Normandy, hoping to find any details of the vehicles they used. The LMH does have quite a few of the war diaries available online.

http://lmharchive.ca/canadian-divisi...andy-campaign/


Alex