British Tank Development.

I suspect that the 38-T was also sidelined for the same reason that the Valentine initially was - it only had a two man turret. The British could very easily have filled the 1st Army Tank Brigade with Valentines well before May 1940 if they had developed an appropriate sense of urgency early enough.

Not that any of this really mattered, because any tank in the hands of the bumbling amateurs of the Royal Armoured Corps was doomed anyway.

 

Go on, tell us what you really think, Don Juan!

 

The RAC prior to late 1942 was basically an Axis tank donation scheme.

 

Fair point.

All the best

Andreas

 

Although the RAC can't be blamed for the worst disaster to British arms during that period so it seems invidious to pick them out for special criticism.

And yes, I do mean Singapore.

Regards

Tom

 

Does your criticism also apply to 7th Armd Div in Operation COMPASS and at Beda Fomm? That campaign is often cited as a triumph of mobile warfare. Or did Western Desert Force only succeed because it was up against a foe who was even worse prepared?

 

I'm only picking them out because this is a tank thread!

One of my hobby horses is that they should have sent the surviving A11 Infantry Tank Mk.I's to Singapore, where they would have been ideal. The downside would be that they would have been inevitably tangled up in the blame.

 

I don't know enough about Compass to really judge, tbh. I do think that in the long term the Compass victory was probably a bad thing, as it encouraged the Army to lapse back into complacency after the shock of the fall of France.

 

Good point!! Although the RAC didn't donate that many tanks to the "Axis" only to the Germans...

I'm just re-reading Barrie Pitt's first volume about the Desert War - "Wavell's Command" - and, with this thread in mind, there are quite a few warning signs that tactics which worked OK against the Italian forces were going to be doomed to failure against an enemy with more sophisticated combined arms tactics and better anti-tank guns and armour. For example:

1. During the initial British attacks on the Italian "fortified camps" the Matildas of 7 RTR went in alone and cruised about causing mayhem for 15-20 mins until the infantry turned up to mop up and take prisoners. This was absolutely the doctrine they were meant to follow - worked well in December 1941 but less so in June and November 1941 where any successes were hard-won.
2. At the same time, 7th Armoured Division, operating as 3 separate sub-formations (2 armoured brigades and the support group) were given separate tasks and operated in splendid isolation from each other. Alarmingly reminiscent of the opening of Op Crusader.
3. One of the armoured brigades charged an Italian infantry formation in the dunes west of Sidi Barrani and took the lot prisoner. No infantry support or artillery as far as I could make out.
4. O'Connor's attempts to prevent the retreat of the Italian forces up on the escarpment failed when they slipped away at night. O'Connor subsequently blamed the tank units inability/unwillingness to operate at night. He couldn't understand why the 11th Hussars seemingly could operate their armoured cars at night whilst the tank units wouldn't. He wondered if it was down to the willingness of the 11th Hussars to devolve messing and maintenance down to the troop and sub-troop level, whereas he thought the tankies didn't devolve enough below the squadron level. Not sure whether there was a genuine technical reason for that - squadron fitter support in one truck, etc. Interesting opinion though.

All in all, it looks like tactics that worked OK against the Italians in Dec 1940 - Feb 41 were increasingly unsuccessful against the Germans and Italians from May 41 onwards.

Regards

Tom

 

It took a New Zealand Brigade commander to sort this nonsense out. Of course, the tankies then claimed credit.

http://rommelsriposte.com/2015/01/26/setting-the-record-straight-the-first-night-attack-by-tanks/

All the best

Andreas

 

Let's do a poll, because, science.

Three armoured divisions faced the Germans in two theatres in 1940/41:

1: 1st Armoured
2: 2nd Armoured
3: 7th Armoured

Q1: Which one performed worst against them?
Q2: Why did you pick 7th Armoured?

All the best

Andreas

 

I am just about done the little book from the Rolls Royce Heritage Trust about the Meteor, and I wanted to post two quotes from a letter by Robotham to someone called Weir at the Directorate of Tank Design. (April 4, 1941, I believe) These are the arguments he was responding to in the letter, about why it had been decided at a particular stage not to put the Meteor in production.

"It is impossible to use the additional horsepower of the Meteor, owing to track limitations, and if it were possible, the increased performance achieved would not be of interest to the General Staff."

"The General Staff think that Infantry and Cruiser tanks should remain separate designs. A fast Infantry tank would not be acceptable. A heavily armoured Cruiser tank with the same performance as the best of the existing Cruiser tanks would not interest them."

This was just appallingly blinkered thinking. I wouldn't put these thoughts actually on the General Staff but the degree of lack of foresight here... smh.

 

You have to remember though that at this point the problems with the Liberty installation in the Crusader were not yet apparent, and I think the pressure was on to produce tanks in volume rather than tanks of quality, so the idea of Leylands pumping out lots more Libertys instead of a new engine like the Meteor still had its attractions. So the above excuses (and they were admittedly pretty poor excuses) would have had an underlying logic.

It wasn't very far-sighted, but the fear of invasion, or of otherwise being overwhelmed was still very strong at this point. The quantity-over-quality ethos would go into overdrive a few months later when Lord Beaverbrook took over the Ministry of Supply, and his production chief George Usher would develop a near-homicidal hatred of Robotham.

 

Because, Thank God, there weren't enough of the damned things left after France in May 1940 to have made the slightest difference (or to be worth taking up valuable shipping space). Best to leave them to rot in peace in UK training camps.

 

Don't include 1st Armoured in this. In France in May-June 1940, they never had a chance, and never fought together as a coherent armoured division. Just a lot of messy, disjointed, rearguard actions until they were either re-embarked for the UK or captured.

 

This is a typical example of why that is such a dangerous book to read without a bucket of salt to hand. Rowbotham is one of those "I-would-have-won-the-War-in-1938,-were-it-not-for-everyone-else's-incompetence" types. His concern throughout in this book and in "Silver Ghosts and Silver Dawn" (quite reasonably) is to praise his team (and incidentally, himself, for his wisdom in preserving that team and in finding them a place to work and something meaningful to work on, when all the rest of the R-R organization was doing aero engine manufacture and development) to the exclusion of all else.
His team were allowed to play with a knackered Crusader pilot model that no-one else had any use for and on the basis of that thing, the whole of British tank design and manufacture is condemned (and, admittedly, Rowbotham was absolutely right to do so - it's just that in April 1941, he had no experience at all of military vehicles, let alone tanks!).
Above all, there is no acknowledgement of the pressures, military, political, and pragmatic, behind the "General Staff's" "attitude" and no attempt to present the other side of the story. This is even more clear when Rowbotham moves on to write about the Challenger project. You have to read this book with another source open beside you (and, in this case, P.M. Knight's "A30 Technical History" is very useful).
It's a very interesting and entertaining read, useful at times on mechanical detail - but must be read with extreme care!

 

Coughs in January 1942.

All the best

Andreas

 

Yeah - OK, fair enough - 1st Armoured included from January 1942-onwards

 

Here's an interesting snippet on the Crusader from Alec Richardson's DRAC's Liaison Letter No.1 of 17th May 1943:



The stated overhaul life of 1200 miles had in fact been in place since the beginning of 1942. The interesting thing here is the variability in engine mileage before overhaul, and I think the most likely determinant of this was the diligence of individual crews in servicing and maintaining the air cleaners. i.e. although situating the cleaners externally promoted accelerated wear due to ambient conditions, this could have been mitigated to a greater or lesser extent by a dedicated regimental servicing regime. It would probably have been unreasonable to expect the crews to do this, but possibly the regimental fitters could have been detailed to undertake this - it would have saved them a great deal of hassle and effort over the long run. This also backs up my view that instead of sending excessive numbers of Crusaders to ME they should just have sent crated Liberty engines as spares. Six days to replace an engine in a field workshop looks a lot better than sending the entire tank back to base workshops to have the engine stripped and reconditioned.

Whatever the innate problems of the Crusader, its use in the field was basically mismanaged.

 

Also, the ability of the RAC to form an experienced, diligent cadre of Crusader crews who understood all this was adversely affected by the habit of senior commanders to fill the tanks with excessive amounts of ammunition and direct them at fortified German gun positions.