British Tank Development.

Taming the Panzers by Patrick Delaforce, chapter 4, has much to deride the A10 (page 48-49), but these were already clapped out. An average A10 could travel 1000-1100 miles in the desert without mechanical incident. OTOH, iirc, they had traveled 2002 miles through the extreme elements of N Africa without servicing. When 3 RTR reached Greece, the required spares for the tanks that were sent, were actually for the A13 and A15 instead.

The problem with British tanks was not usually the tank itself. German tanks were generally worse a a tactical level in 1940. The Germans had 3 poor combat tanks - 35t, Pz I and PzII. They also had 3 decent tanks, Pz III, Pz IV and 38t. The former vastly outnumbered the later during the Polish and French campaigns. Further, when the 'decent' designs met any serious competition, they proved inadequate. Souma S35's proved more than equal to PzIII's during the battle of Gembloux 14-15.5.40, Char B1bis, proved more than equal to the Pz IV's at Stonne, and 38t's were unable to deal with both Matilda types at Arras 21.5.40.

It's clear that the British and French were going to lose against the Wehrmacht, even if they had Shermans, T-34's or even Comets. However, the Germans could have done better if their main medium, the III, was not so unreliable.

 

The PzIII wasn't really upgraded to take the 50mm KwK 38. It was designed to take that weapon in the first place, but degraded to take the 37mm KwK 36, to ease ammunition supply, as the main infantry AT gun was that weapon.

The British had far more mobile tanks than the Germans, with both their lights and cruisers, and more armoured tanks with infantry tanks. It was found that in 39-41, the former were more useful most of the time.

 

The British turret traverse system was the same as that found on their aircraft. This proved to be fast and accurate, having to deal with 200 mph fighters, but for some technical reason (which I don't know), restricted the gun size further than that of other designs of the same turret ring radius.

 

Just received my copy of Dick Taylor's, The Second World War Tank Crisis .

 

You may find this interesting.

http://rommelsriposte.com/2017/11/2...losses-during-the-first-days-of-crusader-pr5/

All the best

Andreas