Operation Infatuate II: Sherman tanks at Westkapelle

[Jakko Westerbeke]

Thanks, but it’s one I already knew about This is one of the wrecks on Liebertsweg just outside Vrouwenpolder, next to what is now Hoevehotel Hof Christina. If you’ve got my book, Tanks at Westkapelle, it’s the LVT that’s just visible in the background of the third photo on page 49.

Some online photos of this vehicle are mirrored, BTW, making it seem like it’s yet another one.

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally Posted by Jakko Westerbeke

Thanks, but it’s one I already knew about This is one of the wrecks on Liebertsweg just outside Vrouwenpolder, next to what is now Hoevehotel Hof Christina. If you’ve got my book, Tanks at Westkapelle, it’s the LVT that’s just visible in the background of the third photo on page 49.

Some online photos of this vehicle are mirrored, BTW, making it seem like it’s yet another one.

Thanks, figured you knew everything about it. Is it the same one as shown in the background of this photo? (I'm too lazy to get your book off the shelf... )

NL-HaNA_2.24.01.03_0_934-9747-klein.jpg
Source: http://hdl.handle.net/10648/ad851fc8...8-003048976d84

[Jakko Westerbeke]

Yep, that’s the photo I put on page 49

[Jakko Westerbeke]

I’ve now found the other photos I have of this LVT:

LVT Vrouwenpolder 1 (col. J.C. van Winkelen).jpgLVT Vrouwenpolder 2 (col. J.C. van Winkelen).jpg

These are scans of photos from the collection of local amateur historian J.C. van Winkelen; since he had multiple copies of many photos like these, I suspect some enterprising photographer made and sold them in the 1940s — or perhaps he took the photos himself and printed a bunch of them, of course. On the back of one of these, he had written:

LVT Vrouwenpolder uitleg (col. J.C. van Winkelen).jpg

That is:—

Vrouwenpolder 1945
(gedeeltelijk door personeel van RAF
gedemonteerd, voor reparatie van
een ander [sic] Buffalo op het dorp)

In English:

Vrouwenpolder 1945
(partially disassembled by RAF personnel,
to repair another Buffalo in the village)

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally Posted by Jakko Westerbeke

I’ve now found the other photos I have of this LVT:

Great, only I now I notice the second LVT had its top deck lifted off and engine taken out.
Used to repair the first LVT "3B" or was there another one in the village?

[Jakko Westerbeke]

I wish I knew, but the caption on the back of the photo is the only time I’ve ever heard of an LVT having had to be repaired in the field on Walcheren … I doubt they tried to repair 3B, though, since it obviously also didn’t go anywhere when the war moved on. There are more photos of LVTs in this part of Walcheren, though (including one of a number in Veere¹), so these two were clearly not the only ones. I wonder what caused them to be abandoned in the first place.


¹ This picture:

LVTs in Veere.jpg