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

 

I think the lack of sponsons thing is a good exampe of logic being applied retrospectively in a way that fails to reflect events as they happened .

The A22 was originally designed to be wide enough to take a 57.5" turret ring, the presumption being that it would operate on the Continent and be transported on Continental-gauge railways.

The requirement for the A22 to be redesigned to be narrower and consequently to have a smaller 54.5" turret ring was introduced in June 1940 as a response to the retreat at Dunkirk. This was because the Churchill would now be largely confined to the UK and have to be transported on the British railway gauge. However, it is important to point out that this decision was taken by the BRITISH ARMY, in the form of the War Office's Directorate of Movements, and was not imposed by the railway companies themselves. This is a very important point, as there is a general belief that restrictions on British tank design either descended out of the ether, or were directly imposed by the railway companies, but this is not true - any consequent hampering of British tank design was imposed by the Army themselves. This of course made sense, as the Army had a huge coastline to protect and not many tanks to protect it, so the ability to move tanks quickly around the country was paramount.

So the restrictions on British tank size were a particular response to the unexpected events of May 1940 and not some kind of dogmatic pre-war refusal to overcome petty regulations, as is generally perceived. Had the British and French held in May 1940, then it is likely that British tanks would have entered service in 1941 or 1942 that exceeded the UK railway gauge without sponsons being necessary.

 

Oh, I never thought that the railway companies were imposing restrictions - just that the physical limitations of the railways imposed a restriction on width. That is interesting about the original width of the A22, though. It does seem relevant to know that the context in which the width limit applied was when the UK was worrying about defending itself from invasion.

I wonder about prewar designs, though, like the Crusader and the like. I guess I should read those books!

 

I haven't seen railway gauges come up in pre-war documents, but as the 2 pounder was perceived as being almost crazily powerful for a tank gun, I don't think that turret ring size was a major issue. It's the same with durability (i.e. life mileage) which is barely mentioned in pre-war documents, but which after two years of war was seen as critical.

I think one thing that is crucial is that British planners just didn't foresee the sheer SCALE of the war that was coming, and so a lot of the things that they arguably should have been thinking about, they simply weren't. They generally seem to have foreseen tank actions as being fairly local like in the Great War, where you ship your tanks to the front line by train, they have their little (but successful) battle, and then they are shipped back to the rear and a new set of tanks are brought forwards.

I mean, a lot of what is critical in pre-war British documents lies in what is NOT being said. There is no idea for example that tanks might be in the field for a whole year or more, and might need to be able to accumulate several thousand miles of running. The Germans had much the same problem. Generally tank historians like to find specific things to blame for any flaws in British (or other nations') tank design, such as the financial constraints imposed by the Treasury, but the real constraints were the unspoken, undocumented assumptions that the planners and engineers carried around in their heads.

 

I guess the idea that a model of tank might still exist and need to be upgunned was similarly not part of their thinking then. That sort of makes sense.

 

Yes. No-one has really tried to realistically reconstruct the pre-war British worldview regarding their expectations for their tanks, as far as I can tell. But for example the French were supposed to shoulder the main burden of the early fighting, and by 1939 there was some idea that there might need to be a common tank for both nations, or at least common tank components. Like how the British employed French aero-engines during WW1. Certainly the British were preparing to manufacture the Hotchkiss H35 as an interim Infantry tank.

The BEF were only supposed to be a token force, with the British Army gradually building up its strength in France into 1941. The area around Rennes was intended to be the main British logistics hub, with a secondary hub around Rouen/Le Havre, and the line of communication going between the two and north into Flanders and Belgium. You would then have had a set-up where tanks were overhauled in the Rennes area, then entrained up to Rouen for allocation to the front as and when required - the idea seems to have been a constant flow of tanks up and down the line of communication. Again this was like the previous war, where the British Army only began to manifest in decisive strength at the Somme in the summer of 1916 - nearly two years into that war.

So as far as I can tell the general expectation was a re-run of WW1, although ideally shortened by the employment of tanks. The idea that the British would have tanks simultaneously driving for hundreds of miles in NWE, Italy and Burma was far outside their wildest expectations. Preparing tanks to be upgunned was a similarly exotic idea really - there wasn't a decision not to do it - it just wouldn't have particularly entered anybody's mind to actively design in redundancy. I think the British were also unlucky here, as the collapse of France and emphasis on production at all costs meant that they couldn't produce tailored tank guns, for example an interim calibre between the 2 pounder and 6 pounder that would have suited their existing tanks. British tanks were basically stuck with modified versions of the standard anti-tank guns.

 

Militaries always start the next war with the methods of the last one - then the learning curve sets in.

Tanks were relatively uncharted territory and the development of such systems between wars was
conditioned by financial possibilities on the one hand and tactical-operational concepts on the other.

The concept of cavalry and infantry tanks existed in some form in practically all nations.
The medium "universal" tank then finally developed out of the war experience and the resulting requirements.

 

Yes, I had run across that bit about the H35 earlier on a French website. The Hotchkiss was supposed to be a common light tank/light infantry tank for both armies, I presume in its later H39 version. There were also, it seems, plans to manufacture the Char B1bis in Britain as well, though whether for common use or just for the French isn't clear to me. It's interesting to speculate about how Allied tank development and other armaments programs would have worked out if Britain and France had been able to collaborate on them, as it seems clear they intended to do. Also, according to the ever-reliable wikipedia, around 1938 Nicholas Straussler was angling to produce the Skoda Model 35 in Britain and a Praga TNH did get tested and rejected at Lulworth.

 

The US Army (cough cough) seems to have come close to the "universal" concept surprisingly early with the M3 Grant (designed with some British input in 1940).

 

I suspect that if the French had held at Sedan, then the issue of British tank development would have been significantly less controversial, even if the tanks themselves had been exactly the same.

 

Do you think this is more a case that many historians don't consider this? or that the papers/ documents to support it don't exist and so they focus more on what papers they do have?

 

A bit of both, I think.

But even now, you almost never hear tank historians talk about durability, which is the critical factor in tank automotive performance. They still go on about "reliability", as though this is some kind of magic factor that does or doesn't manifest. A lot of this is probably because most tank historians aren't engineers - they tend to be academics, ex-tankies, model makers etc., so they don't really understand the engineering aspects beyond the basic mechanics.

For example the Cromwell was designed to be durable, not reliable. Because if you embed durability, you get the reliability for free. It amazes me how almost nobody understands this.

 

How would you describe the Cromwell as being designed to be durable as opposed to reliable? I am somewhat familiar with the Cromwells mechanical specifications but I am unsure I see what you mean by Durable.

 

Durability is bascially the life mileage a tank can achieve before it needs to be overhauled or scrapped.

If you specifiy a life mileage of 1000 miles and the tank achieves 1200 miles before it wears out, then that tank has been, in strict engineering terms, reliable.

If you specify a life mileage of 3000 miles, and the tank achieves 2500 miles before it wears out, then that tank has been, in strict engineering terms, unreliable.

However, to the end user, the second tank obviously appears to be the more reliable of the two. The Cromwell was the first British Cruiser tank to have been developed to a life mileage of 3000 miles. Before that, no life mileage was specified which is why e.g. the Crusader could only achieve 1200 to 1500 miles before it wore out. A lot of the perceived "unreliability" of early war tanks was simply due to them being run in excess of their life mileage and thus effectively being automotively worn out.

However increasing the durability of a tank from 1000 miles to 3000 miles doesn't take three times more development effort, it takes about thirty times more effort, which is why the British basically built an entirely new tank development infrastructure around the Cromwell.

 

That was a point that jumped out at me while reading the A13 Technical History. Rather than seeing them having a "little" battle though, my reading was that they would be used to achieve a specific and important objective and then retired for rest and repair. I'd tentatively suggest that, with the British only having such a small armoured force until very late into the 1930's, this was reasonably sensible as a short-term philosophy especially given the limited durability and reliability you've just described. Given the lack of formation-level training of 1st Armoured Division when it deployed to France (and the fact that its Support Group was dispersed) I suppose understanding the need to provide forward support to keep the tanks going was something only realised after more campaigning. The hollowing out of 7th Armoured Division's tank strength by the time it had crossed Cyrenaica being a salutary lesson?

I wonder what LH and Fuller had to say around this in the 1930's. LH seems to have become much more restrained in his writing around armoured forces as the 1930's progressed and I'm not sure how far either understood the technical challenge that British industry faced in the second half of the 1930s. Something that the A13 book certainly brings out.

Regards

Tom

 

It's useful to compare the BEF with 21 Army Group in terms of the kind of supporting infrastructure that was necessary for such a highly mechanised army as the British Army. You would have needed one hell of a lot of foresight in 1936 to create a formation like 21 Army Group by 1940, but that was what was effectively necessary if you were going to match the Germans from the very start.

It's worth pondering whether if the Germans had been held at Sedan, Britain could have created that kind of formation a bit earlier, while the French were effectively holding the fort, but it isn't really a surprise that they failed to anticipate the sheer size and complexity of the task they faced.