This book is written by Peter Beale a WW2 tankie. As the title implies the book is a close scrutiny of the development of Tanks and tank doctrine. The book starts with a look at the armoured forces in the interwar years. Cashstrapped and hampered by the ten year rule, the Army is the Cinderella of the armed forces. Imperial policing is what's required of the army. This led to a rot in development of docrine, equipment and training. With the notion of the army not engaging in continental warfare, the development of the tank and tank doctrine slowed down. With tank doctrine virtually nonexistant the question "what tank to build?" arose. Between 1930-45 a whopping 57 different designs were made, of these 57, 28 were never produced in a suitable form for issue to field units. Of the designs delivered to units, 75% were obsolete by the time they were delivered. During the war the RAC find itself fighting with inferior equipment and doctrine. To add insult to injury much of the technology the armoured force craves is availiable at an early date. The 17pdr was conceived in 1940, and for it to take four years to mount it in a tank is to quote the author "criminal". The development of tanks and tank guns take far too long, and it can be attributed to the massive red tape and muddled management surrounding the organizational structure of various departments involved. In the chapter Customer Complaints the feedback from high and low is shown and analyzed. It would seem as if the organization of the Armoured arm is too sluggish to react in time. The Tank Board is prime example of the lethargy in this buisiness. The following quote sums it up. The debacle of Dunkirk in May/June 1940 made it clear that very few if any tanks would be returning from France. It turned out that the number of tanks availiable to defend the United Kingdom was 200 light tanks and 50 infantry tanks. Obviously some very drastic action was necessary. What could be more drastic than forming a committee and calling it the Tank Board? The opportuninty to appoint a single person responsible for developing tanks was ignored. Instead of appointing a British Inspektur der Panzerwaffe ala Guderian, a bigger bureocracy was formed that ultimatly meant that the producers of tank guns and tanks were in two different departments. In turn leading to two good tanks the Churchill and the Cromwell beeing unable to mount the exellent 17pdr.... This really is a gem of a book. The author digs deep and explore the many reasons for the poor designs in the british army. The last part of the book really got to me, it is from the horses mouth and you can sence the anger and frustration of the ex-tankie. In the comfort of my livingroom I had problems grasping the organization charts for armoured production. It had the header: Departments related to provisions of tanks. And just about everyone and his grandmother had a say on the matter. I felt as if the enemies of the empire had set up the org themselves. All in all the book offered a lot of interesting information and I reccomend it highly.
Jaeger The author of that book - Peter Beale - ended up as Lt.Col of 9th RTR in the NWE campaign - and his book "Tank Tracks"- ISBN - 0 -7509 -1519 -6 will give an insight into some battles in which both he - and all of us paid the price of the stupidity at the highest level of tank design - like my own regiment they were equipped with Churchills with their first main battle being at Epsom with 49th Division- this followed even more action all through that campaign -mainly five rivers to cross - Falaise - Le Havre - Roosendal - Ahrnem - Ardennes - Reichswald forest -Rhine and finally the heart of Germany. This is a very good account of what fighting in a Churchill Tank was like for anyone interested... Cheers
Tom Funny you should reccomend Tank Tracks, I have just ordered Tank Tracks, Brazen Chariots and A Tankie's Travels. I was looking for "a view from the turret" but it cost a whopping £90, I would have some difficuleties explaining that to my wife...
To add insult to injury much of the technology the armoured force craves is availiable at an early date. The 17pdr was conceived in 1940, and for it to take four years to mount it in a tank is to quote the author "criminal". The development of tanks and tank guns take far too long, and it can be attributed to the massive red tape and muddled management surrounding the organizational structure of various departments involved Seriously, is that what he attributes the upgunning delays to???
Hi Folks, I have just finished reading "Tank Men" by Robert Kershaw. A good, entertaining book - And only £9. Gives a lot of coverage to the comparrison between the German Tanks like Mk 3 and 4 as well as Panther and finally Tiger with the British Churchill and US Sherman. Life was certainly very tough for the tankies and if hit you needed to be on your toes to get out of there before the fire. Very, very brave men.
Phylo- Who else would you blame for the delays in upgunning etc - the Tank Crews ?- even Monty gave up trying and stopped all reports about inadequate Tanks - so it had to be in the committees in the Uk....they nearly halted the Churchill's developement until Longstop in North Africa when it showed what a good tank it was- but with a 6 pounder against the 88mm....or the long 75mm Cheers
Tom a question if I may: Is the prime ministers reply to the house near to the truth as you saw it? Hansard - in my last. Above. Mr. Granville May it not be that it is because this tank is called the Churchill tank that it has received so much publicity, and can the right hon. Gentleman say why it was called the Churchill tank? §The Prime MinisterI had no part in that decision, but I can well believe that the fact that it was called by this particular name afforded a motive to various persons to endeavour to cover it with their slime.
Phylo The DTD worked with improving (fixing) designs post deployment, such as the Churchill. They designed two tanks from scratch: the Comet and the Centurion. They did both designs in two years, and designed the tank around the gun. Both designs were successes. If they had been allowed to handle the entire designprocess throughout the war rather than from 1943 onward, Tom might have pushed on in a Centurion/Black Prince during the last year of the war. Ww2ni I wrote a review on tank men, it can be found on this sub forum.
Wills - The management of the makers of the Churchill said it all when they issued the Churchill - along with a memo to the effect that it was a rushed job and there are many problems - but they will be fixed...... The main problem seemingly at that time was that Churchill was not 100% popular with some sections of Parliament and thus tended to be blamed for everything that went wrong - including losing Tobruk in 1942- he was of course not entirely blameless along with Eden as some of his "strategic" decisions were very bad e.g - Greece / Crete - Alanbrooke had a way to go to curb this tendency - but he did successfully in the end. The facts were that six Churchills were involved in the El Alamein battle(Oct '42) and did very well and tough enough for the job - but even six months later they were considered to be for the chop - until Longstop when they did even better than the enemies armour and so common sense prevailed - with a new committee it appears and we then had the MKVcs - followed by the MkVI with the 75mm and the MKVII and Mk VIII - but unfortunately NOT the 17 pounder which would have put paid to many Panthers and Tigers.The turret rings onboth the Churchill and Cromwell were too small.... It should also be recalled that both 21st and 25th Tank Bdes - with Churchills landed in North Africa in March 1943 - with TWO pounder guns- the six pounders came out later.....which I still had as late as September 1944 at the Gothic Line....the 17 pounder was still a rare bird out there Cheers
The reason I was querying if this was really his explanation for the delay is because there's actually a full explanation of why out there...just hidden away in Postan's "British War Production"! First of all - there was a general delay because of the Emergency Porduction period immediately following Dunkirk... Even though the system of priorities was soon superseded by the fixing of allocations between the different branches of war industry, higher priority was still accorded to aircraft, and the old system was still exercising a drag on tank production. At the first Tank Parliament—a name given to a series of conferences on tank production convened in 1941—it was made clear that the two branches of production clashed in machine tools, gauges, tool-making capacity, and, to a certain extent, skilled labour. It was not until 9th July 1941 that the Production Executive decided to put on record at once for the guidance of departments, committees, etc., that the production of tanks (including spares), 2-pounder and 6-pounder guns and armour-piercing ammunition should be treated as on a footing with the production of articles of which first priority was given under the General Priority Direction of 14th June 1940. But then the second issue arrived on the scene - Largely the same causes—neglect of design in the twenties and early thirties and inability to sacrifice immediate production—produced in 1941 the notorious crisis in anti-tank and tank guns. It has already been mentioned that the worst deficiency of British tanks revealed by the battles of 1941 was that of firepower. This deficiency was relatively recent. The standard anti-tank weapon installed in the tank at the outbreak of war, the 2-pounder, was at that time superior to the 37-mm. gun carried on German tanks, and acquitted itself very well in the first Libyan campaign. This initial advantage was, however, soon lost: mostly through delays in the supplies of more advanced types and the over-cautious piecemeal advance of the War Office specifications. As mentioned above, by the summer of 1940 the Germans were known to be developing a new tank gun of 50 mm. with greater range and penetrative power than that of the British 2-pounder. The British reply to that gun was the 6-pounder, but unfortunately the reply was not made early enough. The British 6-pounder gun was a weapon of pre-war conception. It had apparently been discussed in the War Office in April 1938, but the design was not pursued owing to the urgency of other design work. The matter was taken up again in the summer of 1939. On 30th June the D.C.I.G.S. put forward a provisional specification for a new 6-pounder tank gun and a corresponding design was produced by the Director of Artillery without much delay. A complete 6-pounder anti-tank equipment was available for trials in the spring of 1940, and on 10th June the Ministry of Supply asked the War Office to agree to an order for 400 6-pounder guns Yet although on 20th June the General Staff reaffirmed its desire for a more powerful gun than the 2-pounder, the order for the 400 guns was not forthcoming. In August the War Office notified the Ministry of Supply that the number of 6-pounder guns was to be governed by the effect on 2-pounder production, which was poor. This turned out to be the crucial issue in the evolution of the problem. An earlier order for a few pilot models was now increased to fifty in order to get production under way, and in December 1940 the Ministry of Supply, on its own initiative, though in agreement with the War Office, increased the order from fifty to 500. The War Office, however, was still anxious not to prejudice the prospective output of 2-pounders through increased orders for the 6-pounder. It had been informed that the production of 100 complete 6-pounders in the year would entail a loss of 600 2-pounders. The alternative was presented to the Defence Committee (Supply) which discussed it in February 1941 and decided that a diversion of capacity from 2-pounders to 6-pounders could not be afforded and that the urgently necessary acceleration of 6-pounder production must at the outset be solely from new capacity. This was in fact the decision which the Ministry of Supply had itself taken in August 1940 in response to the War Office view that the number of 6-pounder guns was to be governed by the effect on 2-pounder production. The subsequent production of the gun was thus entirely dependent upon new capacity coming into production. The first guns in any quantity were turned out in November 1941 when thirty-two were produced: 146 came out in December, and 341 in January 1942. The output in May 1942 rose to 1,517. The installation of the 6-pounder gun on tanks could not therefore effectively begin until the spring of 1942, and in its anti-tank role the gun appeared in the Desert in time to contribute to the turn of fortunate there in the autumn of that year. As soon as supplies of the gun were available it was installed in the Crusader and Churchill tanks. In 1943 it was installed also in the Cromwell, and in that year about eighty percent of all tanks produced in the United Kingdom were equipped with the 6-pounder. It's the closest to an official acount for the delay as I can find...apart from going to Kew and rooting around in the MoS files!
Thank you Tom. Alan Brooke, one wonders where Churchill would have been without him and pulling Monty out of the fire he had lit under himself a few times-what a team though.
Phylo all that is enough to make you weep - might upset the production of two pounders - which were entirely useless ! - after the six pounders were eventually installed in the 21st Tank bde - one tank from 4th troop - "B" Squadron - 48th RTR managed to knock out the Tiger which is now restored and on display at Bovington. Wow a six pounder knocked out a Tiger !- yep - by firing a round of AP which lodged in between the turret and the main frame and as the crew could not traverse the turret - bailed out... not a hole in the Tiger...! One shot from an 88mm into our engine finished us off from about a mile away- then he hit us with some more - holes all over the place ...September '44- five Churchills were still cooking when I was picked up hours later Cheers
More tanks or better tanks or ships or planes . The debate started a long time ago will go on forever. Don't know about you but we have seemed to have fallen in the Spanish civil war trap. Books always come from the point of view of the author or the point to sell books. Sir Percy Cleghorn Stanley Hobart new how to do it and told them all so I believe.
More tanks or better tanks or ships or planes . The debate started a long time ago will go on forever. Don't know about you but we have seemed to have fallen in the Spanish civil war trap. Books always come from the point of view of the author or the point to sell books. Sir Percy Cleghorn Stanley Hobart new how to do it and told them all so I believe. Repeatedly! It is both sad and inaccurate to see Hobart's name almost exclusively associated with the 'funnies'. That narrow view greatly diminishes the influence of this genius. His role with the 1st Tank Brigade and the 7th Armoured Division is less well known as were his great leadership skills. Heinz Guderian had a much higher opinion.
Canuck - you are right about Hobo - he fought hard to set up the 1st Tank bde- then 7th armoured but fell afoul long before the desert of his CinC - Lt.Gen. Gordon - Findleyson - who didn't want him in the desert - and finally nailed him and had him fired - the whole division lined the roads to see him off from the desert ! - to turn up as a lance corporal in the Home Guard- and did a tremendous job with 79th Funnies Division - which solved many problems and saved many lives....he was also one of the pioneers of the Tank Corps in the 20's with Fuller - Swinton - Pile- et al - but they lost ! Cheers
Phylo The red tape and committee's muddled up the designs. The gun mounts were not produced by the gun producers, leading to massive retooling to make upgrades. Production capability aside (which quite frankly is stating the b...... obvious) fixing a 6pdr to a Crusader was impossible before 42. I am not interested in getting drawn into a slugging match over a or b. Read the book, it is very good
