British Tank Development.

IMHO the main problem with 2-pdr early in the war was that British guessed wrong when thinking that also Germans would use homogenous armour plates in the tanks and chose AP shot as their main armour-piercing ammo when APCBC would have been the correct choice because off Germans used FH armour plates. Some also say that British made the tips of their 2-pdr AP shots too hard so they shattered even more easily. British got the production of 2-pdr APCBC ammo going only in 1943, when the importance of the 2-pdr was already very limited in Europe.

 

Define 'early in the war'?

All the best

Andreas

 

That's quite shocking really. 18 Division was re-routed from Egypt to Singapore while at sea I believe.

All the best

Andreas

 

I thought they'd absorbed the wrong ones. Wasn't there a massive expansion of the RAC trending towards 'all tanks' at the same time as Germans were realising their panzer formations were too tank-heavy? France and Flanders only reinforced the RAC's thinking. I bet even Arras was seized upon as an example of tank-only potential.

Whoever decided 18 Div didn't need to train with tanks arguably deserved a medal for foresight. But wasn't the real problem that we were sending everything out to the desert in 1941 so the RAC could keep trying its tactics until they worked?

 

I think that apart from a few months in 1940, the majority of British tanks were always in the UK. Although it is often stated that the tanks that remained at home were for training, they were primarily there for home defence up until approximately mid-1942.

There doesn't seem to have been much co-ordination between Middle East Forces and Home Forces - it was the latter who reformed their divisions to include an infantry brigade in August 1942, but that wasn't replicated in the Middle East, where they implemented combined arms at the regimental level rather than the brigade level.

 

Hello Andreas
sorry for the vague definition, I meant 1940-42.

Slava Ukraini
Juha

 

Thanks Juha!

My view is that the period of obsolescence did not really start until summer 1941. Prior to that the 2-pdr should have been good enough to deal with the main German tank forces that it would encounter.

All the best

Andreas

 

It is useful to recall that in the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War, on the Suez Canal front, an Israeli all-armour brigade counterattacking the Egyptian Army in the open desert beyond the canal were mauled, if not destroyed by infantry with swarms of wire-guided anti-tank missiles (Snapper from memory) who had dug in and waited for them. One the war's lessons for the IDF was to have all-arms armoured brigades.

 

Although the 5cm KwK 38 L/42 was equally obsolescent against the Valentine and Matilda, and would have been against the Crusader had the British provided additional frontal armour earlier.

 

Simply focusing on the failings of individual tank designs is distracting. After action reports fed back to policy makers from North Africa were not just full of criticism of the tanks - they emphasised the need for mobilisation, flexibility and coordination of supporting units especially Royal Engineers Field Companies. The realisation that the individual characteristics of the tanks was less important than ensuring they could get into action and remain there on their own terms was key to setting up in-theatre combined ops training - followed by application in the UK. In 1940 putting motorised infantry in 4x4 trucks was controversial, in 1942 providing them with armoured transport became a theme. Similarly getting artillery, field and anti-tank, mobile and armoured became obvious. 1943 became the year of change in attitudes.

 

(Deleted my post, going to start a separate thread)

 

Hmm,

The British took risks to ship tanks to the Middle east in mid 1940 and 1941. Shipping 7 RTR with its Matilda Tanks then 1st Armoured Brigade took a significant proportion of Britian's armour to the Middle East.

There was indeed limited co-ordination between Home Forces and Middle East. There is a lot more to making combined arms work than whether co-operation is within brigades or divisions.

 

This is true, but contrary to popular belief the British did not think that the Battle of Britain negated the chance of a German invasion, and they thought the most likely time for an invasion was spring 1941. According to David Strahel's "Operation Typhoon", British intelligence expected the USSR to collapse within six weeks of Operation Barbarossa, and still expected imminent Soviet collapse in December 1941. It wasn't until well into 1942 that the British thought that the chances of invasion were becoming negligible. The following quote from Alan Brooke on 1st January 1943 on the Battle of Stalingrad is pertinent:

"I felt Russia could never hold, Caucasus was bound to be penetrated, and Abadan (our Achilles heel) would be captured with the consequent collapse of Middle East, India, etc. After Russia's defeat how were we to handle the German land and air forces liberated? England would be again bombarded, threat of invasion revived... And now We start 1943 under conditions I would never have dared to hope. Russia has held, Egypt for the present is safe. There is a hope of clearing North Africa of Germans in the near future... Russia is scoring wonderful successes in Southern Russia."

So there was always a balancing act going on between sending tanks to the Middle East for actual fighting and husbanding tanks at home for potential fighting, the likelihood of which was always to an extent uncertain. However, the retrospective view that all the home-based armoured formations were doing is training is not really correct - initially they were providing home defence first and training second, and then as 1942 progressed the relative importance of these two roles gradually switched.

 

That sounds a bit 'excusey'...

The NW Frontier might have been one place that could find a use for light tanks, but to blame the tail for wagging the dog seems a bit extreme. The IA were quite accepting of technology where it served a purpose - even the RAF was deemed useful.

The hyperbole probably says more about the author's lack of understanding of the IA than it does their understanding of tanks.

 

It did seem strange that he'd be talking hyperbolics, given his reputation.

 

Extraordinary.

All the best

Andreas

 

He'd obviously read the relevant directive.

Misplaced Optimism – Hitler’s Directive 32, 11 June 1941

All the best

Andreas

 

Absolutely, and often overlooked. Plus you then get the mistaken impression that the Panzer IV gun was meant to do AT work in 1941 carried over as well.

When it comes to comparative gun performance in 1941, both the 37mm M3 and the 2-pdr were absolutely fine. The Russians with the 76mm in both the KV-1 and the T-34 were however leading edge, in having a real dual-purpose gun with good performance on a proper tank in a rotating turret.

All the best

Andreas