British Tank Development.

Or 2nd Armoured Division - they never fought as a division, were split up between two continents in fact with the Support Group also split itself. Both were messy, disjointed rearguard actions in which the weaknesses of those units equipped with British tanks played its part as did the issue of Italian tanks to one unit.

Despite all the criticism of 7th Armoured Division, it must be said that the performance of 7th Support Group at Sidi Rezegh was in the best tradition of the British forlorn hope!

Regards

Tom

 

Sure, but they shouldn't have been in that position to start with, which is something to lay at the feet of the division commander. That this wasn't just my view can be gleaned from the fact that on 11 Dec the order was given for HQ 7 Armd Div to move back to the Delta 'as soon as operations allowed'. In other words, the divisional HQ had been found to be surplus to requirements in battle. After that a small battle HQ seems to have hung around the area and gotten involved, but it's not clear to me what, if any value that added.

All the best

Andreas

 

I'd rather HMG had shipped the 600 Hurricanes and P-40s, and the 400 Matildas and Valentines to the Far East than the Soviet Union in 1941!

 

The Germans probably could have run whole units with just the A15s that fell into their hands, oh wait ...

Bit on the hypercritical side to knock the performance of the RAC during Compass isn't it on the whole?

For 1. I believe the Matildas were followed pretty closely by the Carrier Platoons. In the operations against Bardia and Tobruk they seemingly acted far more intimately with the infantry albeit they were far fewer in number by then.

Re. 2. and 3. fair point, usual caveats about better mobility and protection of the tracked elements, but then 7th Armoured became rather successfully Kampfgroupy for Beda Fomm.

I'm trying to remember who it was from the British commanders who said that they were prepared to take more risks against the Italians than they would have against the Germans.

 

I don't think a big influx of Matildas and Valentines from a starting point of zero tanks in Singapore in late 1941 would have helped at all. Quite the opposite.

The advantages of the A11 in that scenario were that it was sufficiently well armoured to keep out pretty much all Japanese AT weapons, and if armed with a .5 VMG they were capable of destroying any of the Japanese light tanks. They also used a commercial Ford engine and gearbox which meant that they did not require specialist fitters with arcane knowledge to service. They did not need much in the way of fuel or spares, nor did they need to connect into a complex communication network, which was absent anyway. Best of all they were DISPOSABLE, which meant that they would have been no great loss if the Japanese won anyway.

 

The likes of George Davy and John Scott-Cockburn took absolutely insane risks against the Germans.

 

The full quote from O'Connor's account of the Western Desert Campaign written in an Italian POW camp reads (Pitt, Vol. 1, pp. 123-124):

"I feel that this question of preventing the movement of enemy columns at night must be tackled. I think the main difficulty arises from the fact that our training suggests that armoured units should not be used at night, and I have noted a distinct disinclination of tank units to be used in any [such] capacity. I have a strong feeling that the real objection is due to a lack of decentralization as regards maintenance and messing – in particular below a squadron basis. In the case of the 11th Hussars, I have met no such disinclination. This unit decentralized its messing arrangements down to single cars, and was constantly employed at night."

[General Sir Richard O’Connor, personal account of the Western Desert campaign, unpublished 1941, TS. p.30.]

It would be interesting to see how accurate O'Connor's information was.

Regards

Tom

 

Confucius says: "In order to be truly said to be taking a risk, you must not be too stupid to see what you do is a risk."

All the best

Andreas

 

Whoever that was, they didn't know what they were talking about.

All the best

Andreas

 

The problem with that of course, is that tanks (of any type) are the incorrect solution to a defensive battle.

 

Don Juan wrote at#300:
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.

Patton wrote:‘The quickest way to get to heaven is to advance across open ground swept by effective enemy anti-tank fire.’ Letter of Instruction No.3 20 May 1944.Virtually the whole of one tank regiment,half the M-4 medium tanks* of US 1st Armored Division, around 100 tanks, were wiped out over two days at Sidi Bou Zid after two separate attacks conducted this way. Patton was brought in after to sort out the mess and get 1st Armored and the US Tunisia campaign on the road.I can't remember if he later toured the battlefield personally but he certainly would have known about the after battle US technical examination report. Without checking I strongly feel held held this opinion long before 1943.
*Edit. the 100 or so were all M-4s. The 100 or so remainder of medium tanks were M-3 Lee's, if my memory serves.

 

Assuming they came as part of or a reinforcement for a tank/armored brigade I think there's every chance they could have been decisive in the Malayan campaign.

The perfect solution for the invariably successful Japanese tactic of outflanking and roadblocking - just run them over whilst BESAring the heck out of them.
Not to say that the A11 wouldn't have been useful too, just they would have been less reliable and powerful.

 

To operate A12 Matildas and Valentines you would have needed to set up an infrastructure of base workshops, forward workshops, stores, ordnance field parks etc, to a much greater extent and depth than for A11's. The A11 was pretty reliable, and certainly more so than the Matilda, if not the Valentine. The debacle of 1st Armoured Brigade in Greece shows you what happens when you send tanks into a theatre without the necessary infrastructure in place.

Matildas and Valentines would have been perfectly suitable in Malaya, but their deployment would have had to have been planned and built up over a fairly long period in order to operate them properly.

 

One thing you have to give credit to Percival for, he did ask for tanks before Dec. 7th--two regiments, if I recall. As DJ points out, these would have required workshops, stores, etc. Yet even if technical support had been there one should not assume that tanks (A11s or any others) would have been a cure-all in Malaya. USAFFE had Stuart tanks on Luzon (two battalions I think), 7th Armd Bde had Stuarts in Burma, and neither tank force could turn things around. Malaya Command had a fairly good supply of anti-tank guns capable of dealing with Jap armor, and just look at how badly they handled them. Singapore was a failure on every level and everybody's part, and two regiments of tanks were not going to change that whatever they were equipped with. If I know Percival, he would simply have scattered them around in penny packets in his usual strong-nowhere-and-weak-everywhere fashion. Anyway, you can't redeem bad strategy with a narrow technical-tactical solution; isn't that how the Germans lost the war?

 

It was briefly suggested in February 1941 that small quantities of captured Italian material, surplus to Middle East requirements and possibly including ‘a few light tanks’ (L3/35 tankettes presumably), could be made available to NEI forces. No mention of Far East requirements. Priority was given to Greece, so little, if any, reached NEI forces.

 

The British CoS had been planning on sending tanks to the Far East for a long time prior to December '41. Other 'priorities' always seemed to get in the way.
I believe the Matildas and Valentines being sent to Russia were factory fresh examples? The newest of the A11s would have been more than eighteen months old and much played about with.

 

Tanks did very well in Burma, both 7th Armoured Brigade during the retreat and later, particularly at Kohima and Imphal, where they were said to have tipped the balance in fighting the Japanese on more than one occasion.
As far as I know Malaya was better suited than Burma to mechanised warfare owing to more roads and plantation tracks. Don't neccesarily see the tanks being distributed in penny-packets as a drawback, they would be a force multiplier for any infantry battalion that had them near. A few troops at Kota Bharu, a couple of squadrons at Jitra may have changed the progress of the campaign entirely, buying time perhaps, for London to get its strategy right in the Far East.

 

But this is the point I'm kind of making. If it had indeed been decided that Malaya was lowest priority, then why not bung them a few A11's? As they used commercial Ford engines and gearboxes they were the easiest tank to keep on the road in a situation where technical support would have been minimal.

 

It's an interesting point. We know in hindsight that Valentines and Matildas continued to be used in the Pacific until the end of the war.

I assume Malaya was so far down the priority list that someone decided it wasn't worth sending any tanks whatsoever. Or possibly the A11 had been declared obsolescent based on the campaign in France, without considering that it might be useful somewhere.

 

The two regiments of 7 Armoured Brigade left Egypt at the end of 1941, brought to full strength with M3 Stuarts (either refurbs or new). They went to Burma, anyone got an idea why not Singapore?

All the best

Andreas