C Company HS MGC at Thiepval - 26 Sep 1916

[delta]

The tale of tank support to 18th Division at Thiepval was covered extremely well by  Trevor Pidgeon in his posthumously published book; The Tanks on the Somme.

Three tanks are detailed ,  C5 Creme de Menthe north of the Chateau, C6 Cordon Rouge to its south (and easy located close to the Memorial th the Missing" and a third, which ditched to the east of the village in the Schwaben (communications) trench which ran to the north of the Thiepval to Pozieres road.  All of these are shown on Feb 1917 trench map of the area which is below. 

 

There is a fourth hulk marked on the Feb 1919 trench map for the area. This sits in the centre of the 26  map square, alongside a narrow gauge railway..  I can;t identify it - does anyone know the story of the "unknown tank"?    

 

 

 

 

[pjwmacro]

Stephen

 

First and upfront - I`m afraid I cannot answer the question and identify the unknown tank.

 

Second - I am struggling a little to orientate myself on the map posted - maybe because I haven't access here to a copy of Tanks on the Somme - or The Tanks at Flers. But I think on the map posted above, C5 is the left hand and uppermost derelict (directly to the left of the word of "Thiepval". C6 is the left hand lowest tank - directly below C5. Your 3rd tank ("which ditched to the east of the village in the Schwaben (communications) trench") then lies directly underneath the "p" of "Thiepval". I notice that on the map this 3rd location marks "Derelict Tanks" (plural) - whereas all the others points it is just singular "Derelict Tank".  So what were the other derelicts at the 3rd location?

 

Regards, and apologies for adding to the questions

 

Paul

[delta]

Paul

 

You are  doing superbly.

 

C5 and C6 are certainly the tanks to the  west.  As for the tanks on the road to the east of the village, one is certainly a C Company tank from 26 Sep. 

 

Gerald Moore  ( on the FTC facebook group page ) has suggested that the derelict to the northeast is from A Company.  There was a plan for ten tanks from No 1 and No 4 Sections to support an attack on Miraumont on 23 October   and one of the start points was Stuff  Trench close to which is yet another derelict tank (about 1,500 yards north of Thiepval village and not shown in the OP).

 

This attack was called off on 23 October when it was reported that "it was impractical to use the routes assigned to the tanks".  I have not seen details of those routes but an approach using the valley in grid square 26 would make sense. 

Edited 27 February , 2019 by delta