Another one in my Kindle... this site is bad for my visa card...There’s an interesting (and short) psychological description of why you buy Kits so that you can turn them into something else in Harry Pearson’s great little book about being a boy in the 60s/70s:
Achtung Schweinehund!
This is a book about men and war. Not real conflict but war as it has filtered down to generations of boys and men through toys, comics, games and movies. Harry Pearson belongs to the great battalion of British men who grew up playing with toy soldiers - refighting World War II - and then...books.google.co.uk
Scratch building eh? Soon to be a thing of the very distant past.....
Cracking job there old son! Well done.
Point/Question, the bulls head in the yellow triangle. That’s the Tac badge for Hobart’s 79th Armoured isn’t it?
Most definitely. If you look at the Division Orbat, you'll see it's heavily subscribed with Engineers and Recon units.
The 79th Armoured weren’t in Sicily/Italy were they?
Interesting. Close to zero infantry assets, pretty useless formation for anything but the intended purpose.
The one on the left is HQ 79th Armoured Div, though I've never seen it in that format, with the div sign on a white rectangle above the AoS sign.
The fellas on the right are unbrigaded RAC units rather than recce (Kangaroo APCs and Armoured Delivery). The green-over-sky-blue AoS sign was often allocated to recce units, as they too were unbrigaded RAC units.
79th Armoured Division wasn't a division in the traditional sense and was completely incapable of independent action, as you say. It's best to think of it as a 20th Century Siege Train. It had stacks of armoured engineering assets and specialist armour that would be attached to other formations for specific tasks. Crocodile flamethrower tanks and Buffalo amphibious vehicles were also brought under the division's umbrella, as were Sherman DDs for a time.
