Knowledge of the Canadian Army on 6 June, 1944

[John McGillivray]

Dose anyone know what happen to the 24 M7 Priests that were turned in by the 19th Army Field Regiment on the 24th of August?

I don’t think that the M7 gums used in Normandy were that badly worn. They did not run up that much mileage, maybe only a few hundred miles. Also the gun barrels were designed to be quickly replaced when worn. An extreme example of this occurred with the 5.5in guns. These guns only had a barrel life of 2400 EFC. In August 1944, 1st Cdn Army was replacing an average of eight 5.5in gun barrels a day.

Also if you look at the M7s of the 8th Field Regt RCA in Italy; these were already well used when 5CAD took over these guns from the British 7th Armoured Division in early 1944, but they continued in use until they were replaced by Sextons in April 1945, in NWE.