Grabners Humber

[wargameroz]

Not sure how we got onto 6 pounders and H E at Arnhem but I’m guessing that there is no really definitive answer as to whether it was a Humber Mk IV or LRC or the parent unit, if he even had one.

Personally I have a Mk IV in my unit as per the original MG supplement, from Don’s comments elsewhere we hopefully will see the unit in the new revised book when it comes out

[Nickdives]

So no evidence that 6 Pdr HE arrived at Arnhem. However it would appear to have been loaded onto some of the air transport, shot down, captured? Surely then as wargamers there should be an option to allow it, or do all of our games work on the principle that only those aircraft/gliders/supplies that arrived on the day can be used?

meanwhile I keep thinking of the "little tank' from Allo Allo!

[Alanmccoubrey]

Not sure how we got onto 6 pounders and H E at Arnhem but I’m guessing that there is no really definitive answer as to whether it was a Humber Mk IV or LRC or the parent unit, if he even had one.

Personally I have a Mk IV in my unit as per the original MG supplement, from Don’s comments elsewhere we hopefully will see the unit in the new revised book when it comes out

Simon, we got onto the 6 pdr by reading the information posted as evidence of Gräbner's vehicle, this led us to discuss the 6 pdr ammo, it often happens in research that we find out things that we weren't looking for.

Don, the three Hamilcars with "Bulk Stores" were Chalk numbers 913 - 915 from Tarrant Rushton and according to "GP at Arnhem" they all arrived.

As for the matter of whether the HE rounds in the resupply ever arrived that is immaterial, the point of the inclusion of HE rounds in the resupply is that it indicated to us the proportion of HE that they carried since the resupply will have been in that same proportion. The resupply is irrelevant to the action at the Bridge in anycase as it wasn't aimed at there.

[Alanmccoubrey]

Don, The two Hamilcar loads are indeed included on Page 35 but you have gone OTT there, two Hamilcars carried 14 tons between them not 60 ! You might have been looking at the percentage of load recovered and of course they listed the two out of three as 66%. In total that page list 106 tons officially recovered and mentions that it is believed a further 100 tons was recovered by troops "unofficially"

[wargameroz]

Not sure how we got onto 6 pounders and H E at Arnhem but I’m guessing that there is no really definitive answer as to whether it was a Humber Mk IV or LRC or the parent unit, if he even had one.

Personally I have a Mk IV in my unit as per the original MG supplement, from Don’s comments elsewhere we hopefully will see the unit in the new revised book when it comes out

Simon, we got onto the 6 pdr by reading the information posted as evidence of Gräbner's vehicle, this led us to discuss the 6 pdr ammo, it often happens in research that we find out things that we weren't looking for.

Don, the three Hamilcars with "Bulk Stores" were Chalk numbers 913 - 915 from Tarrant Rushton and according to "GP at Arnhem" they all arrived.

As for the matter of whether the HE rounds in the resupply ever arrived that is immaterial, the point of the inclusion of HE rounds in the resupply is that it indicated to us the proportion of HE that they carried since the resupply will have been in that same proportion. The resupply is irrelevant to the action at the Bridge in anycase as it wasn't aimed at there.

Alan

Ok, fair enough, sometimes one subject leads to another, I’ll have to have another read of the Glider Pilots book, it’s been awhile

In the meantime is my statement about the actual vehicle a fair one, i.e. that nobody really knows.

[Alanmccoubrey]

Indeed we can't know until something new turns up. I had high hopes for that German forum but it really gave no clues, calling it a Panzer meant nothing and neither did calling it a Fahrzeug because sadly the Germans called their armourcars both. And the mention of Gräbner throwing out the vehicle commander doesn't help either, unless we want to say that the Humber Scout Car was the only candidate which did in fact have room for an extra body and that act removes it from contention ?

[Alanmccoubrey]

I have now read the entire report on the German Forum, the writer is one Adolff Weimann who was the gunner of an SdKfz 250/9, the commander was Hausi and driver Wilfried Carstofferus , the turret number being 23. He says that Gräbner travelled in his vehicle and was wounded in the hand, after bandaging him Reimann left Gräbner in one of the rooms under the bridge with some nurses. He gives the time as 1600 but even allowing for the large difference between Allied and German times this seems a bit late in the day. Regardless Reimann says that later on he returned to the room and found Gräbner beheaded and all the nurses dead, claiming that the Germans believed that the American Secret Service had teams of head hunters out looking for Knight's Cross Holders with a bounty of $3,000, oh well.
Reimann makes no mention of a captured vehicle but then again he doesn't tell us how they got their own vehicles back, the first part of his story being about how they loaded them onto a train and with the crews being driven away in a truck.
Reimann is definite that he was fired on by an anti-tank gun using HE and that this gun was high up in a church. Did the Para manage to get a gun high up beside the Bridge ?
So if Reimann is to be believed Gräbner crossed the Bridge in an SdKfz 250/9, number 23, was wounded in the hand and left with some nurses in a room under the Bridge where he was killed . This at least would explain why no wreckage with him in was even found and the lack of a head might explain why his body was never identified. "23" survived the crossing and operated north of the Bridge, Reimann describes the landing of several gliders on Groessbeeck later on in the day.
I guess that we have to decide how reliable Reimann is, in his story he does describe various buildings, the forum writer having added photographs for each one, so he was at least accurate with those.

[Don McHugh]

Maybe an easier question would be to find out where the account of him first having a Allied vehicle came from?

Don

[Alanmccoubrey]

Maybe an easier question would be to find out where the account of him first having a Allied vehicle came from?

Don

Don, I've looked online today and cant find the first person to call it an armoured car but I did find that David Bennett in "A Magnificent Disaster: The Failure of Market Garden, The Arnhem Operation ..." of 2011 calls it a Humber Staff Car.
Perhaps everyone could look I their book collections and find the earliest books on the Operation and see when the Humber first appears.
I'll start us off with "The Devil's Birthday" by Geoffrey Powell, written in 1984 with no mention of a Humber, Powell's account is used almost word for word by Harcelrode in his 2000 book "Arnhem, A Tragedy of Errors."
Middlebrooke in his 1994 "Arnhem 1944, the Airborne Battle" has no mention of a Humber.

Does anyone have the German history of 9th SS ?

[wargameroz]

So if a Humber Staff car that would be something like the Snipe that Monty used?

Thanks for all the info, very interesting and useful, personally I’ll probably stick with the mkIV I already have as per the original MG supplement, but it does show you almost need to read every units war diaries, at least on a weekly basis if not daily just to see who was using what, after all scrounging stuff that is not necessarily in the official TO&E seems to be a habit of all armies for a long long time.

To that end when I commissioned the Wartime Americans I had a pack done with an MG42, panzerfaust, M40 and 44

[Alanmccoubrey]

I have "spoken" to Marcel Zwarts about REIMANN and while REIMANN's account will be mentioned in his new book Marcell believes that in the case of Gräbner he is totally wrong.
On a second reading of REIMANN I have to say that what I first took to be partly confusion of REIMANN's part about the location of an AT Gun in a Church tower and partly my rusty German, now seems to be just bad memory from REIMANN. He described this as being on the Bridge at Nijmegen while also mixing in details of Arnhem and given the lack of anti tank guns and fighting on Nijmegen Bridge. I have to put my hands up to missing the fact that he did say that after crossing the Bridge they watched gliders landing at Groesbeek. That is a US LZ and I even used the name in my original post and no one corrected me
All in all I think it best to ignore REIMANN's account in our search for Gräbner's vehicle but it was a fun sidetrack, especially in that it led to all that HE talk.

[dadlamassu]

I remember seeing in several books a recce photo of the bridge and the wrecks on it. All are quite small but if someone has access to the original at the museum I think a good look at it might help solve the riddle. I think the original came from IWM.

[Alanmccoubrey]

Alan, there is no Humber of any kind in the photographs of the Bridge. Marcel Zwaarts has done an extensive search into all the available photographs without finding such a thing , in his book each identifiable wreck is noted.