Chromed Royal Armoured Corps

[rac1944]

Originally Posted by KLR

Good to see the proper details.
Do you know whether the Kings Regt (Lpl) wore (chromed or not) badges when in the RAC ?????
thanks

152RAC (Kings) are one of the very tricky ones to pin down conclusively. Overall evidence suggests they wore the RAC badge, certainly to start with. The stongest evidence is Donald Sutherland's memoirs where he writes '152RAC bereft of their King's Regiment badges'. However, Militaria Magazine showed an RAC Training Regiment photo with one chap wearing the King's badge on his black beret, sadly no date to the photo. Without further photos showing the wearing of the King's badge we're in 'one swallow does not a summer make' territiory. The more I read the more I'm amazed at the amount of unofficial wear or loose interpretation of the rules when it comes to insignia, even to the cap badge. Two regiments, 146RAC and 155RAC both seem to have replaced their RAC badges with their infantry ones (at least at officer level) as a regimental pride snub to authority only to be ordered to revert back to the RAC badge, you couldn't make it up!

Based on the above evidence plus the fact that as a CDL unit security would lend itself to the RAC badge I'd say it seems highly unlikely 152RAC wore a chromed or nickel plated King's badge and if such exists it almost certainly falls into the one off/occupation era camp. The regiment became a training regiment in late 1944 and maybe that's a time when some of the men might have adopted the King's badge to distinguish themselves??

The only two converted infantry regiments that can be said with certainty to have regimentally chromed/nickel plated their badges are 107RAC and 141RAC. 141RAC had a mixture of brass and chrome/nickel badges through half it's life from when the decision was taken to plate badges from the PRI fund, intakes especially getting the brass version initially.

Throw in intakes of new men and you have another can of worms to deal with, the number of regiments that have entries in the war diary instructing only X variety of badge to be worn as a result of intakes and shuffles is quite surprising.
John

[Alan O]

John

I think your summary is spot on. The yeomanry were the same and swapped between Yeo badges and RA/RTR badges. Officers did their own thing (Worcs Hussras) and duplicate regts wore different badges to each other. Some years ago I was looking at one of the Yeo regts and their own photos taken in 1944 contradicted their own written history! One regt wore the Yeo badge whilst the other wore RA.

A right muddle.

Alan