Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => The Second World War => Topic started by: War In 15MM on 02 May 2022, 05:28:03 PM
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I recently saw a 1/35 scale model of an AB 41 with the number 15 on the side. The number was black and large. I would like to know what this number represents. My understanding is that normally the Italians marked their armor with colored rectangles indicating the company and white bars running from top to bottom to represent the number of the troop or platoon with a number above the rectangle indicating the vehicle within the troop or platoon. Apparently they sometimes simply used a large number without the colored rectangle to indicate the number of the vehicle within the troop or platoon, but 15 is too large a number for that. I was thinking that perhaps some companies might simply number all the vehicles within the company from 1 to 15 or the first number (the 1) might represent the platoon and the second number (the 5) my represent that it is the 5th vehicle in the platoon, but that I don't know. I would appreciate information concerning what this two digit numbering systems actually represents. Thank you.
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Since posting this I have done some additional hunting on my own, and while I don't have an absolute answer to the use of these numbers I have some found some indications of how they were used. The DAK Profile Guide says that each Italian armored car company in North Africa consisted of three platoons of four armored cars each and those numbers were used to id the number of each car in each platoon. That of course does not explain the use of the number 15. I have found several photos of the AB 41 with double digit numbers... 10 and 14 come to mind. I'm included to believe that this suggests that in some Italian armored car companies all the cars were numbered in sequence by company rather than by platoon.
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I had a look in the Bengazhai Handicap campaign guide for Command Decision - and all it simply says is large Roman numerals numbering the vehicle in the platoon
It would seem likely that numbering would continue across platoons rather than each platoon restarting from 1.
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Thanks. I think I will continue the number throughout as well.