British Errors in Reporting Tank States and Losses

[ClintHardware]

If you read the 'Repairing The panzers' books you can read how German units were hanging on to their wrecks and sending very little back for homeland repair. The situation was considered serious enough for orders to be issued forbidding the practice-which were ignored-they never did solve the problem, The result being panzers being kept 'in repair' that never ever got repaired. Every army has its foibles

They look worth getting - thanks Michael

[Gooner1]

I have no time now to put my thoughts into words, and even if I did, a PhD thesis wouldn't do the subject justice. However, a good start point to understanding the specific issues going on here is to first take on board the de facto reality that the British Army is, and always was, a colonial policing force that enjoyed the occasional heated engagement with vastly inferior (technologically) opposition.

Where would you do the PhD - the Blackadder School of History?

Your statement that the British Army is, and always was, a colonial policing force is de facto tosh. Or do you think all those wars against the French 1707-1815 were just to while away the time until we could get back to proper fighting for Colonies, against, uh, the French?

[Tom from Cornwall]

Re British Army, colonial warfare and major wars, has anyone seen a copy of this article?

Callwell versus Graziani: how the British Army applied ‘small wars’ techniques in major operations in Africa and the Middle East, 1940–41 by Simon Anglim in the journal "Small Wars and Insurgencies", 2008, Issue 4.

Regards

Tom

[Orwell1984]

Re British Army, colonial warfare and major wars, has anyone seen a copy of this article?

Callwell versus Graziani: how the British Army applied ‘small wars’ techniques in major operations in Africa and the Middle East, 1940–41 by Simon Anglim in the journal "Small Wars and Insurgencies", 2008, Issue 4.

Regards

Tom

Paper is available for download on academia.edu, made available by the author.

https://www.academia.edu/645946/Callwel ... st_1940_41

Sign up for the site is free and well worth it!

[Tom from Cornwall]

Excellent, thanks for the link.

Regards

Tom

[John T]

Where would you do the PhD - the Blackadder School of History?

Your statement that the British Army is, and always was, a colonial policing force is de facto tosh. Or do you think all those wars against the French 1707-1815 were just to while away the time until we could get back to proper fighting for Colonies, against, uh, the French?

One of the most effective ways to show your point is to make a slight exagerqation and see what answers you gets,

so Gooner1, do you think that British army was colonial police force ony after 1815?


Cheers
/John

[Tom from Cornwall]

Mark,

I'm not entirely sure that AFV Branch were originally expected to maintain a detailed overview of the strength, operability and location of all tanks in the ME, certainly not on their own.

For example, when constituted as a separate branch in October 1940 they were limited to two staff officers (one Lt Col and one Major) and in late October they were firmly told that:

Reply from:- D.C.G.S. to A.F.V. Branch.

Agreed that you function on similar lines as B.R.A. as regards giving advice to all Branches a required, and direct to C-in-C when latter so deems.

I see no good cause for increasing A.F.V. staff at present, and consider that a G.S.O. I is sufficient now and I think will be always.

(sgd.) Arthur Smith
D.C.G.S.
24/X/40.

As for 7 Armd Div's practice of keeping an eye on the mechanical state of it's vehicles, perhaps this letter from Creagh to Richards of 2 Jan 41 will be of interest and at least suggest that they had a system:

Good about the 2 Division. I reckon that around about TOBRUK we shall have shot our mechanical bolt owing to the mileage question. I will send you the figures of this position later: the 1 R. Tanks I believe have 10 out of 15 cruisers over 1200 miles and something like 50% of the cruisers of the Division are between the 8 and over 1200 mileage. The Lights are not so far about 25% of those are due for overhaul on a mileage basis. I am checking up on these figures and you shall have a copy showing the exact situation. I feel too, that after some seven months pretty hard going it will not do us any harm to have a refit.

[...]

Best of luck, many thanks. I do hope you won your battle with “Q”. I think that it is essential that if we do get a relief:-

(a) to get out of the desert.
(b) to be somewhere handy to workshops.

The mileage state of tanks, I think emphasises my last point.

Best of luck.

Yours Dick Creagh.

Interestingly, on 9 Jan 41 Richards wrote back:

Many thanks for the tank situation report, it now comes in fairly regularly.

That AFV Branch remained a Cinderella outfit is also suggested by:

To: TROOPERS

From:- MIDEAST O/41520 13/Feb.

Personal for V.C.I.G.S. from General WAVELL.

No necessity at present for Major General A.F.V. or increased staff. Will discuss this and other staff appointments with C.I.G.S.

And finally, an extract from a letter of 1 March 41 in defence of those base-wallahs in Cairo:

(g) There is little doubt about it that, after reading through some of the questions sent out by Gordon-Hall, people have no conception of the conditions under which we have been operating. A glance of the map of the Western Desert and Cyrenaica, provided it isn’t of the A.A. handbook type, should help one to appreciate the enormous distances and difficulties of getting any information through. A letter by Air often takes as much as 14 days to get back to Cairo. To answer a question like “What are the number and nature of tank casualties” is quite impossible to do accurately. The units themselves don’t even know for days on end. For example: The commander 7 Armoured Division was unable to tell me two days ago how many Cruisers he had destroyed during the operation, he thinks about three or four. I am sorry to be so long winded over this but I do want you to appreciate the situation out here. If I want to visit a unit in the forward areas it takes me away from this office for about ten days...

The job of sorting out Tank States and Losses appears to have eventually fallen to the GSOIII judging from Richards' letter of 19 March 41:

G.S.O.III.
(a) Co-ordination with the A.G. Branch regarding personnel.

(b) Intelligence liaison with M.I. for all matters concerning Armoured formations.

(c) Vehicles census in co-operation with O.S. and S.D. Branch.

(d) Responsibility of compiling and rendering returns of A.F.Vs. and related equipment of Armoured formations and Units.

(e) Preparation of Statistics in conjunction with O.S.

Has anyone trawled through the O.S. or S.D. Branch files to seek tank returns?

Regards

Tom

[MarkN]

Hello Tom,

Don't have any files with me, so posting off the top of my head.

I'm not entirely sure that AFV Branch were originally expected to maintain a detailed overview of the strength, operability and location of all tanks in the ME, certainly not on their own.

The devil is in the detail. How detailed is detailed? As your quotes demonstrate, they were provided with copies of the tank returns coming from 7th ArmdDiv. What did they do with them? As highlighted by this...

For example, when constituted as a separate branch in October 1940 they were limited to two staff officers (one Lt Col and one Major) and in late October they were firmly told that:

... they seem more energised in saving documentation regarding their 'status' and struggle for recognition as an 'equal' to RA than they are at retaining documentation pertaining to operational matters.

As for 7 Armd Div's practice of keeping an eye on the mechanical state of it's vehicles, perhaps this letter from Creagh to Richards of 2 Jan 41 will be of interest and at least suggest that they had a system:

Complete responsibility for the mechanical and fighting state of a division rested with the division. It was a system born out of 'colonial policing' (or 'small wars') mentality. The requirement to inform higher command of mechanical state was negligeable, and what was sent was not given the attention, if any, it demanded. The 'small war' mentality not being able to grasp the need for long term, big war, forward planning.

One consequence of the 'British way' of doing things was the mechanical failure of 5RTR.

Interestingly, on 9 Jan 41 Richards wrote back:

Many thanks for the tank situation report, it now comes in fairly regularly.

Evidence that AFV Branch was indeed in the loop and receiving the tank reports.

And finally, an extract from a letter of 1 March 41 in defence of those base-wallahs in Cairo:

To answer a question like “What are the number and nature of tank casualties” is quite impossible to do accurately. The units themselves don’t even know for days on end. For example: The commander 7 Armoured Division was unable to tell me two days ago how many Cruisers he had destroyed during the operation, he thinks about three or four. I am sorry to be so long winded over this but I do want you to appreciate the situation out here. If I want to visit a unit in the forward areas it takes me away from this office for about ten days...

And now evidence of a complete failure to grasp the big picture.

Excusing away and blaming others for not being able to answer precise tank casulaties at a given moment, whilst losing sight that he has (or had if they've already been thrown out) a series of tank returns from which to generate a longer term analysis. Moreover, as we have been discussing earlier, a complete failure to understand the condition of the tanks not listed as write offs and worse still, where they are!

The job of sorting out Tank States and Losses appears to have eventually fallen to the GSOIII judging from Richards' letter of 19 March 41:

(c) Vehicles census in co-operation with O.S. and S.D. Branch.
(d) Responsibility of compiling and rendering returns of A.F.Vs. and related equipment of Armoured formations and Units.
(e) Preparation of Statistics in conjunction with O.S.

More evidence that they had both the information and the responsibility. Hence my critique of their performance and the products (reports & advice on AFV matters) that they produced.

Has anyone trawled through the O.S. or S.D. Branch files to seek tank returns?

Not personally. But given the amount of historical interest in such things for the past 75 years, no doubt several authors have looked and failed to find. Given that regular tank stats have been saved (and can be found in the very same Kew file) for later in the year, I suggest the earlier AFV returns were pretty quickly consigned to the waste bin at the time and not by some archivist years later.

[Tom from Cornwall]

Hi Mark,

It is interesting that Harold Raugh suggests that it was in fact David Belchem, then a Major in SD I think, who at this time "was the staff officer responsible for collecting the data and making the calculations of serviceable tanks and other vehicles..." (Wavell: A study in Generalship, p.127). I'll see if I can find out which SD branch he was in as there are several different sections according to the lists in the National Archives. Next time I get there I'll have a shufti as they may be useful for my 'Lustre' research as well, as Belchem seems to have spent a fair amount of time in Greece in March and April 41!

I do see your point about the tank returns and states, etc, but to be fair to Richards he seems to have had only one staff officer until March 41, and he seems to have spent a fair amount of time out and about (Sudan, South Africa, etc). Richards was asking for more staff, but for some reason the main staff were not keen - perhaps not until the beginning of April for some reason.

I completely agree that the information coming back about the state of 3rd Armoured Brigade's tanks seems to have not sunk in at all in Cairo until much too late.whether that was due to incompetence or distractions of East Africa, Greece, etc is hard to say in my humble opinion.

Regards

Tom

[MarkN]

Hi Tom,

I completely agree that the information coming back about the state of 3rd Armoured Brigade's tanks seems to have not sunk in at all in Cairo until much too late.whether that was due to incompetence or distractions of East Africa, Greece, etc is hard to say in my humble opinion.

As mentionned above, 5RTR's mechanical state is down principally to the 'system' and the poor organisation and generalship.

The system determined that mechanical state was wholly the responsibility of the division. Unit technical officers (BTO or RTO) would feed information to the Brigade technical officer who fed it further up to Divisional technical officer. All under the purview of the Divisional AAQMG. The system assumed the Divisional Commander would have the experience and capacity to understand which questions he needed to ask the AAQMG to ensure effective operations. For the armoured divisions this was a major issue since a large proportion of the early divisional commanders were ex-donkey wallopers who knew equestriansim inside out, but had little or no experiance of working with mechanical donkeys.

After 1 Armd Div returned from France in 1940, 3RTR was placed directly under direct GHQ Home Forces control. GHQ HF had no AFV Branch and no system at all for the BTO to feed any information up the chain nor even for anything to get done on the technical side. He, and the CO, would have had to resort to local and personal contacts to get anything done that couldn't be resolved internally. They then returned to 3 Armd Bde control chortly before the whole division swopped to 2 Armd Div command prior to shipping out to Egypt.

In Egypt, all their A13s were handed over to 5RTR who were promptly removed from 3ArmdBde/2ArmdDiv command to direct command of GHQ BTE (or poss GHQ ME - paperwork is not entirely clear). So, back to the old story of being left to their own devices administratively and having to fend for themselves. For a while at el Adem, they were co-located with 3ArmdBde, but then they (3ArmdBde) were sent forward. 5RTR then switched from GHQ BTE to GHQ CYRCOM command.

You will see from the paperwork in the Kew file that GHQ BTE/ME, post 2 Armd Div failure, demands answers why nobody knew of the poor state of affairs. Strange that, considering that it was they who commanded the battalion directly for a good part of the time before handing it over to GHQ CYRCOM.

Whilst some of the A13s were in advanced mechanical weariness before they arrived in Egypt, it was senior commanders in Egypt that drove them into the ground. And nobody at AFV Branch ME seems to have had the gumption to spot what was going on and advise accordingly. Was Richards a tanky or another ex-donkey walloper?

The entire system was not fit for purpose - even after 18 months of major war - because decision-making was still driven by small-war mentality and by staff officers that placed operational effectiveness well down on their to-do priority list.


PS. Richards had more than 1 staff. As always, the officer class choose not to recognise the efforts of the non-officer class. From your post above you note that data collection was the GSO.III's responsibility. Clearly far below the level of Brigadier AFV, GSO.I and GSO.II !!!! And therein lies the probable explanation, the more senior officers thought that the task was beneath them and their pay grade. And yet, in reality, a job that could have been done by a private with a wee bit of common sense.

[Gooner1]

One of the most effective ways to show your point is to make a slight exagerqation and see what answers you gets,

Such as greatly exaggerating the importance of a poor bit of staff work to somehow 'prove' the British Army was institutionally stupid?

so Gooner1, do you think that British army was colonial police force ony after 1815?
/John

Eh? No. Anyway they have since been upgraded to a 'small wars' force (excluding the Great one of course), although the various tribes, states, kingdoms and empires that generally lost in these 'small wars' might more consider them seminal events.

[Gooner1]

And finally, an extract from a letter of 1 March 41 in defence of those base-wallahs in Cairo:

(g) There is little doubt about it that, after reading through some of the questions sent out by Gordon-Hall, people have no conception of the conditions under which we have been operating. A glance of the map of the Western Desert and Cyrenaica, provided it isn’t of the A.A. handbook type, should help one to appreciate the enormous distances and difficulties of getting any information through. A letter by Air often takes as much as 14 days to get back to Cairo. To answer a question like “What are the number and nature of tank casualties” is quite impossible to do accurately. The units themselves don’t even know for days on end. For example: The commander 7 Armoured Division was unable to tell me two days ago how many Cruisers he had destroyed during the operation, he thinks about three or four. I am sorry to be so long winded over this but I do want you to appreciate the situation out here. If I want to visit a unit in the forward areas it takes me away from this office for about ten days...

Pssh. Some of us actually have to drive to Kew!

[Richard Anderson]

Was Richards a tanky or another ex-donkey walloper?

It has been many years since I dug through those files at Kew, but IIRC "Richards" was G.W. "Ricky" Richards CBE DSO MC, who as brigadier was later CO of 4 Armoured Brigade (April-July 1942) and then 23 Armoured Brigade before becoming Monty's armor adviser in July 1943. He went with Monty to England in the fall of 1943 and later as a major general took Willoughby Norrie's position as "armoured advisor" at 21st Army Group. Richards was RTR and apparently was quite competent, reportedly penning at least two reports accurately outlining the deficiencies of British tanks post-HUSKY and post-NEPTUNE (although I don't think I ran across either).

My impression of the early record keeping was that the staff organization simply wasn't mature enough and there was no real system or pro forma in place for reporting. Thus, periodic reports were just that - reported when called for periodically rather than on a regular basis. On top of that communications in the Western Desert were typically abysmal and overloaded. So there are huge holes in the reporting, which can only be filled as you note by inference, until a regular system began operating c. late 1941.

Cheers for a very interesting discussion. And I commiserate with the frustrations in your various discussions.

[Tom from Cornwall]

Mark,

You will see from the paperwork in the Kew file that GHQ BTE/ME, post 2 Armd Div failure, demands answers why nobody knew of the poor state of affairs. Strange that, considering that it was they who commanded the battalion directly for a good part of the time before handing it over to GHQ CYRCOM.

Yes, I'd noticed that - as I read it, I couldn't help getting a slight whiff of "who can we make the scapegoat for this"!

As always, the officer class choose not to recognise the efforts of the non-officer class. From your post above you note that data collection was the GSO.III's responsibility. Clearly far below the level of Brigadier AFV, GSO.I and GSO.II !!!! And therein lies the probable explanation, the more senior officers thought that the task was beneath them and their pay grade. And yet, in reality, a job that could have been done by a private with a wee bit of common sense.

My God, he's a heretic! That would have required a Major in the SD Branch to discuss statistics with a private in the AFV Branch; next thing you'll be suggesting that they could even enjoy a beer in the same bar!

Gooner

Some of us actually have to drive to Kew!

Rich,

Yes, Richards was G.W. "Ricky" Richards CBE DSO MC of RTR. He seems to have survived much contact with Montgomery, so clearly he can't have been a duffer!

Regards

Tom

[Tom from Cornwall]

Trawling forward through the GHQ AFV file, I was surprised to see that even by 10 June 1941 British tank regiments were only "equipped with wireless on minimum scale of 30 sets per Armd Regt CRME/10443/AFV of 25 February refers."

I had always thought that by this point all British tanks were fitted with wireless sets, now I understand why earlier in the year Richards should have been concerning himself about the lack of a tank flag that signalled specifically that the tank had run onto a minefield.

Regards

Tom