The very same story can be said of the British in the ME.Michael Kenny wrote:I am not familiar with the NA numbers but what I did (for NWE) is get a start number and then total up all losses over an extended period. Once you struggle through the 'non combat loss/abandoned' get-outs you find that admitted losses were always well below the actual shrinkage. Also concentrate of the 'fit' tank total rather than all tanks still with the unit. The norm was a Panzer unit entered combat and in the first few days had a huge drop in fit tanks. This gave a pool of damaged tanks that were repairable and their return to service over the next week or so tended to mask the daily losses. The chaos of the eventual German flight meant this discrepancy could be attributed to all manner of reasons other than the mythical 'fair fight'. For example damaged tanks in overrun workshops could be classed as abandoned whilst the original action that rendered them beyond repair can be forgotten.
Are you trying to find traction in the idea that the Germans managed to send reinforcement tanks undocumented to Libya on invisible ships so that they could hide the losses you seem to think they incurred?ClintHardware wrote: And do we really know every shipment of panzers to Libya including those lost at sea ? I hope we do.
Off the top of my head, read the document a few days ago, tests done by Col Drew in Tobruk mid-April with an A13 tank firing at captured German tanks had 5 out of 6 rounds of the 2-pdr go straight through 60mm frontal armour at 600yds.Don Juan wrote: The 2 pounder was effective at 1000 yards against Panzer III's that still had 30mm frontal armour. Once that armour was augmented to 60mm, the effective range of the 2 pounder was reduced to 200 yards at best.
If during Battleaxe there were still Panzer III's with 30mm frontal armour, then they would have been very vulnerable to 2 pounder fire.
You are probably onto something there. However, when you look at the the orders of the Liberty engine for the A13 etc, they only ordered and produced a handful over and above those ordered for fitting into tanks. Probably the same with other parts too.Don Juan wrote: Well, the deep problem with the British is that they were basically operating a "spare tanks" rather than a "spare parts" system i.e. instead of overhauling tanks they were attempting as much as possible to directly replace them with new ones shipped in, I think in the mistaken belief that this was more efficient. It all fell to pieces because after two months at sea going round the Cape the new tanks were in almost as bad a state as the ones that had been in action. The British should really have been sending new engines and gearboxes in sealed crates instead.
There is also plenty of evidence that tanks in workshops became spares central to support the running of others. Immediatly prior to Op Battleaxe, tracks were taken off all A9s and A10s in workshop in Egypt and sent forward to 7 Armd Division. This meant that 7 Hussars couldn't be reequiped with tanks. Earlier 9 of the A13s that 2RTR had brought out to the ME were stripped of their engines which were then sent to Tobruk to replace the dead ones there.
It is not irrelevant to you. But, potentially mission impossible. Those sort of records were just not kept it seems. Pz.Regt.5 workshop was overrun during Op Crusader and masses of their documentation captured. Some of it was translated over the weeks and months and pished out in Int Summaries. But what happened to the original documentation?????Don Juan wrote:While I tend to agree that the British during this period were not the sharpest tools in the box, my own interest in this period is on the equipment, especially the tanks, rather than the tactics. This is why I am interested in the damage inflicted by both sides, and how they dealt with it. While this is probably, as you say, "irrelevant" in terms of battle outcomes it is interesting to me how comparative equipment performed, even if one set of equipment was being used by serial bunglers.