Wasp etc.
Thank you Colin.
The source you give also answers another question I had as to why 141 RAC was not in 79 Armoured Division on D-Day.
Nigel.
When I made the statement that the wasp was only a carrier, I was conscious that my wife was in England burying her uncle. He was an anti-tank gunner in 43rd Wessex Division travelling in a Carrier towing a 17-pdr in the Geilenkirchen area around Christmastime 1944. A mortar bomb landed in it. He spent four years in hospital and emerged minus his ears, an arm and a leg, and with his face looking like all those veterans who have been burned alive. He proceeded to live until he was 92 years old. His argument was that his heart had only half a body to service so it wasn't likely to wear out prematurely. He climbed ladders and drove a car. He refused to discuss the war with me or with anyone, except as he lay dying he asked to speak to a curate. She told my wife that he spoke about the war for over an hour, but of course what he had to unburden himself with was between the two of them.
The driver of a wasp risked being killed either by an AP round that would barely slow down as it went through the carrier's minimal frontal armour like a knife through butter, or a mortar bomb that would land in it and set off the flamethrowing fuel. The crew of a Crocodile by contrast was in a Churchill VII that was the most heavily armoured tank in the world at that time and was vulnerable only to a Panzerfaust that the infantry would ensure didn't get near, or to an 88-mm. They were immune to mortars.
Carriers needed overhead armour in 1944 given the German reliance on mortars, rather than the canvas covers on the Lloyd and Windsor Carriers.
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