Hello. I saw this beautiful artwork yesterday but it raised a question, it shows. What I tjnk is C Troop of the 13th/18th Royal Hussars havibg landed at Arromanches, which is Gold Beach. I was always under the impression that they landed on Sword Beach? In the background one can see the Mulberry harbour, so it can't be D-Day but a while after, if this scene is accurate and C Troop did land on Gold Beach some time after 6th June, does anyone know what date that was? Thank you so much for your assistance!
Just a thought but there could be conflation going on. I frankly don't know. What I do know is that they didn't join 8th Armoured Brigade until August 1944 when they replaced 24th Lancers (my late father's Regiment as per my current avatar). As you state, I also understand they landed on Sword during the initial assault. Edit:....and the markings on the tanks depict HQ Squadron not C Squadron...and their initial Brigade (the Seahorse) and not the Red Fox mask of 8AB.
"beautiful" is clearly a matter of taste This is an entirely imaginary work, where just about every detail of the tanks is wrong. This does not augur too well for the accuracy of the book, unless the cover (and its no less imaginary caption) was imposed to the author by a clueless editor... Just for fun, here are few of the errors on this cover page (some of which already pointed by Steve above), which rightfully belongs to the "Blatant errors" thread: - the driver and co-driver hoods on the "Firefly tanks" are horribly misshaped and resemble none of the many variants seen on Sherman tanks - I suppose that the artist wanted to depict Sherman Vc Fireflies, but failed to reproduce the wider spacing between the bogies of this particular model - the diamond squadron symbol (wrong size, wrong location) means Regimental HQ, which did not have Fireflies - turret number 62 belonged to Sqn HQ, which did not have Fireflies - the "Pregnant Pilchard" Formation Sign is that of 27 Armd Bde (not 8 Armd Bde as labelled) and is looking the wrong way - stowage has nothing to do with the very specific one as used by 13/18 H - etc. etc. I find no excuse for so many errors in one single painting, because so many photos of actual 13/18 H tanks exist and are readily available at a click. A history book illustrator should do a minimum of homework before starting his artwork
Just realised this was not a book cover but a standalone "artwork" trying to cash in on the 75th anniversary: The world's leading specialist in Aviation and Military fine art I still hope no author will be tempted to use this as a book cover
Hi SDP and Michel Sabarly. Thank you for your replies. Firstly, my apologies, I incorrectly referred to "C Troop", meaning "C Squadron" and I completely missed the diamond HQ insignia. I haven't been looking at British armour subjects for a long time and have never been very au fait with British Army units so got the nomenclature completely wrong. The print is, as you mentioned, a standalone piece. I personally do find it attractive despite the inaccuracies in stowage, hatch shape etc. This is probably because I love Arromanches and find the armoured campaign in Normandy very interesting, despite not having a depth of knowledge on the subject. My only question is did any elements of the 13th/18th Royal Hussars land at Arromanches at any time during the Normandy campaign? I thought the entire unit landed on D-Day on Sword Beach? I must agree that if you are going to produce an artwork on a specialist subject, accuracy and research are extremely important.
You are correct. 13/18th Hussars landed on D Day on Sword beach. 75mm as DD Tanks, and their Firefly later the same day. Any late arrivals also landed on that beach, a week or so before Mulberry Harbour had been completed. Its an impossible image. The 13/18th landed on D day so how could they arrive via Mulberry harbour? (Though maybe mulberry harbour have been completed by the Germans under direction from Quenitin Tarantino's Inglorious bastards... ) This is an artistic interpretation of D Day, by artist with little interest in accuracy of British equipment or units. Judging by his other work for sale his target customers don't care. Its a form of collectible cashing in on the 75th anniversary of D Day.
Thank you Sheldrake, that is exactly as I suspected. It makes no sense to go to all the effort of painting a picture like that if it is completely unresearched and inaccurate. What a waste of effort!
I totally agree albeit the artist might not: depends on whether he made an acceptable profit or a loss. Not really for us to ponder: he has to fight his own Wars even if his tanks are in the wrong place at the wrong time!
Sword beach - landing of 13/18th Hussars (Courtesy: History of the 13/18th Hussars (1922 - 1947)) 13/18th Hussars A & B Sqn were DD RHQ and C Sqn landed in LCT's Below section of the Regt.History of the 13/18 Hussars concerning the D-Day landing (please note that p. 99 is at the end of the attachments)
No it makes perfect sense to paint a myth if if you are interested in making money and developing a commercial reputation. It worked for Sebastian Faulks who was all over the C100th commemorations of the Great war. His Birdsong is a literary version of that painting. Superficially accurate detail to tell an un-historic story that ends with the trenches still in place in November 1918.
I wonder how many of those Victorian artists who painted battle scenes went to that amount of work to get the fine details right? Exactly the right lace regimental colours on all those redcoated soldiers for example.
Lady Butler staged an imaginative reconstruction of the Charge of the Scots Greys at Waterloo. She captured the movement of men and horses in one of the most exciting depiction of a cavalry charge. Uniforms correct. But almost all of the rest of the history is nonsense. Where is the terrain around Mont St Jean? What happened to the friendly forces? (The charge took place in an area where thousands of British and Belgian troops were fighting off tens of thousands of Frenchmen) Oh and where are the enemy? How could the horses have reached full gallop? So when they made the feature film Waterloo they staged lady Butler's version of the charge - hence the continuity issues of the vanishing French formation. Maxwell Scott: "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."
