humbers
About the Humbers:
Blackburn is said to have "scrounged up" some armour (including a "considerable" number of armoured cars and bren carriers that had arrived on Java). These were probably manned by Australians from his own force.
I belieive the Humbers had come directly from England and were meant for the reinforcement of Malaya/Singapore. They arrived too late and were diverted to Java. There is no word on crew: these could have been on another ship and arrived possibly somewhere else (possibly ending up in Japanese captivity-there were more such cases). The MG battalion arrived btw without their MG's, these were also on a different ship.
As the cars were probably meant for a full Recce regiment the number may have been the normal number of cars in such a regiment (how many? 48?).
The Hussars had 16 Vickers Mk VI B's. They had briefly been in Oosthaven (Sumatra) and then were redeployed to Java where they served as Blackburn's tank company, seeing some fighting in Western-Java. You can find pictures of them on the AWM site: type in Oosthaven.
Greetings
Nuyt
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