Panzerwrecks 22 P42 – Unit marking

Paul Hocking dropped us a line recently with a correction for the unit insignia on page 42 of Panzerwrecks 22. Over to Paul:

“My reason for writing is to offer a correction again some insignia seen on page 42, that is German insignia on a US halftrack. It is captioned as the 7th Flieger Division, but it is nothing like their insignia, which is a diagonal arrow in a circle, see attachment of a Kettenkrad being unloaded on Crete in 1941.

In fact the Komet insignia was originally that of the Fallschirm Sturm Battalion, later increased to a Regiment by the time of Crete, but by the time Tunisia was happening both the 7th Flieger Div and the Sturm Regt had been broken up in Russia and their sub-units used to create the new 1st, 2nd, 3rd Fallschirmjager Divisions in France and the new 4th Fallschirmjager Division in Italy and the new Ramcke Fallschirmjager Brigade in North Africa, plus some other odds and sods.

The breaking up of the Fs Sturm Rgt also meant that their Komet insignia got seen all over the place in these new units, including later on in Normandy, as its ex-soldiers tried to keep the Komet for themselves.

And this is what you see with this US halftrack photo, one of the newly created units was Fallschirmjager Regt 5, which had the II and III Battalions of the original Sturm Regiment assigned to it. FsRgt 5 then got sent to Tunisia with four battalions, and a 1st Kompanie (do not know which 1st Kkompanie of which of the four Battalion this was, but most likely of course to be from either the II nd or III rd), used a white Komet outlined in black.

When the Sturm Regiment originally existed its HQ and its four Battalions used white, black, red, blue and yellow Komets, and these Komets and their colours later appeared all over other combat theatres as said above.

The second photo attached shows the black Komet of the Ist Battalion, Fs. Sturm Rgt, the letter K alongside stand for Koch its commander.”

Thanks Paul!

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