Operation Infatuate II: Sherman tanks at Westkapelle

[Jakko Westerbeke]

Originally Posted by MicS

Back to the Memorial tank T148656, I am wondering about a marking which appears to be on the transmission housing.

Now you point this out, I seem to recall noticing it before as well but for some reason not digging deeper into it. Chances are I forgot due to having all kinds of other stuff to figure out as well

Originally Posted by MicS

I think I have seen examples of the Reg No being painted in large numbers in this location, but naturally I can't find them right now...

Luckily you remembered, because I was about to go and find the one posted the other day

Originally Posted by MicS

if this marking was indeed the WD No. and given the size of the digits, it must have been written in two lines:

148
656

I’m not sure. In this photo:



I’m not convinced the character left of the 5 is a 6. It seems to be missing its left-hand side and the remaining part appears too angular to me. I also can’t really make anything of the markings in the 1958 photos, as they’re really just a blur.

On the other hand, I have no idea what else could be painted there that would have the number 56 in it … AoS number 56 seems unlikely, and why would it be on the tank? (A replacement transmission salvaged from another tank is about the only reason I can think of, but see above.)

The 5 is a fair deal larger than the 6, as is most obvious in the photo with all the people posing in front of and on the tank. This seems to suggest it’s hand-painted.

[Jakko Westerbeke]

I spent much of the afternoon today at the Polderhuis museum in Westkapelle, looking through photo albums and binders with photos. Here are the more interesting ones I found for the current topic.

Zuidstraat with tanks, from the collection of one J.C. van Winkelen. I don’t think I’ve seen this particular one before, but it caught my eye mainly because the number 10 on the left side of the turret of Wolf of Badenoch is clearly visible here, when it’s usually obscured by the engine deck if the turret’s left side is visible at all:

Zuidstraat AVRE A3 & Sherman %22Wolf of Badenoch%22 (col. J.C. van Winkelen).jpeg

More importantly, it also shows this on the AVRE’s air inlet:

Minotaur.jpg

Front view of “Cock o’the North”, from Willem D. Passenier, who is also the man in the photo:

Sherman %22Cock o'the North%22 (Willem D. Passenier).jpeg

And that same tank with an unknown woman next to it, again from the J.C. van Winkelen collection:

Sherman %22Cock o'the North%22 (col. J.C. van Winkelen).jpg

This is very similar to another photo of that same tank, which shows it closer up. That photo was next to it in the binder, but they seem to be two different photos, rather than the other one being a cropped version of this.

[Jakko Westerbeke]

A photo I don’t think I’ve ever seen of the tanks at ’t Stort:

Tanks in 't Stort.jpg

The front-most Crab from LCT 1005 (the one on the extreme left in the photo above), with some British soldiers on it:

Crab S52 (Reg Bennett).jpg

This photo comes from one Reg Bennett, who, according to the letter his photos were with, was a member of a British DUKW company that transported supplies from Middelburg to Westkapelle.

The two LVTs that were on the landward side of the remains of the old dyke, with some sand for the new dyke already piled over one of them:

Buffalos E13 & E14 (Reg Bennett).jpeg

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that photo before, but I could never find it again when I was looking for it earlier this year. It’s also from Reg Bennett.

And Willem D. Passenier again, on an LVT that has clearly been stripped of some of its useful bits:

Buffalo (Willem D. Passenier).jpeg

I also came across this, in a picture frame:

Medium M4 Power Train plate.jpeg

I’m assuming this is from a Chrysler-built Sherman …?

[MicS]

Thanks for these new photos and the beautiful view of the MINOTAUR marking Jakko!

Your pic is a (much) better version than the old Beeldbank.zeeuwse (now digitaal.dezb) FO052990:
Street view - AVRE A3, No.10, No.M Crab (left); No.11 (right) - FO052990.jpg

which confirms that when one can get to the original print (or better still, negative), chances are that many more details will appear than on the often poor scans originally posted. I downloaded this particular photo over 10 years ago, and it has not been updated for a better version since...

If the original pic of Dozer 'D' (FO039987) could also be located, we might find out its WD number and/or other markings.

Michel

[Jakko Westerbeke]

Thanks for posting that one — so I had seen it before, but not realised it because of the poor quality! The ladder along the AVRE looked familiar, but because I couldn’t recall a photo that actually shows the 10 on Wolf of Badenoch I thought I hadn’t seen this one before.

I’m not sure where that photo comes from, though. It’s in a binder with what seems to be someone’s collection of photographs relating to the war on Walcheren, and a lot (perhaps even most) photos are in it more than once — as in, two or three identical ones stuffed into a single pocket. I have no idea if he took them himself and printed multiple copies, or if they’re all published photos that he collected doubles of and put into a binder together. No negatives to be seen, but of course, if they were his own photos, chances are he (or his heirs) hung onto those and donated only the prints to the museum.

As for the bulldozer: I didn’t come across that photo in the albums and binders. I did find an original print of this one:



in a photo album put together by the photographer, and she captioned it as being exactly where I thought it was, so at least that suspicion is confirmed.

I also found an original print of:

Bij Erika (via Piet van Rooijen).jpg

in an album from the captain of the suction dredger that was used to build the new dyke, who appears to have made that photo. However, something went wrong scanning it, so it’s become far too pixellated to be useful. I’ll have to go back and try again.

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Great to see this subject being researched in-depth. I hope to free up time sometime soon to add more to the discussion.

Lest we forget:

Yesterday 76 years ago, the Allies landed on Walcheren island in an effort to free up the Scheldt estuary. Free access to the Scheldt was needed to enable the use of the port of Antwerp to supply the Allied armies. After a series of harsh battles the German Army was rooted out.

Major Wilfed Sendall was one of the soldiers landing at Westkapelle. His words give an insight into how fierce the German response to the landing was: "Most of the Marines landed early in the assault on Normandy and all of them thought that this little D-Day was far more terrifying than the big one".

Today, all that remains is one Sherman tank as a memorial to this small but hard-fought battle. This thread, the Sherman Register FB album, and Jakko's book show most if not all known pictures of the Sherman tanks which landed during Operation Infatuate II.

See this short video about the commemoration in Westkapelle this year:
https://youtu.be/gW5KGVKcxcQ

[Jakko Westerbeke]

In related news: the municipality last week decided to budget €75,000 for the tank’s restoration. Earlier, I had been told 20,000 by someone more closely involved than I am, so this is good news, and there was talk of the Army lifting and transporting it — though I also know there have been talks with a local crane company to do that, so which it will be, I don’t know yet. I do intend to be there when that happens, though