A view on why Britsh tanks were so inferior.

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Michael Kenny
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Re: A view on why Britsh tanks were so inferior.

#31

Post by Michael Kenny » 14 Jan 2011, 21:31

Sunbury wrote:A example of what dogged the British can be best explained by the German 88mm cannon and the British equivalent the 3.7in ack ack gun. The Germans to their delight found the 88mm to be an excellent anti aircraft cannon (ack ack) and an excellent anti tank one. Cries of wundabar all round and prosit! The British 3.7in ack ack cannon in 1940 had a longer range than the 88mm and could have been a powerful anti tank gun. However it was designed to be an "ack ack" gun and that was that. Bureacracy at the War Office and inter service rivarily between "ack ack" and "armour" sections of the Army actively discouraged any attempts to develop the cannon. It didnt matter that men died , what mattered was the 3.7in was an anti aircraft gun and nothing else. It was used once as anti tank gun at Tobruk but that one-off was forgiven. This closed mindset was a common feature in British Tank Development.
The 3.7 was significantly heavier than the '88'.
The Germans used their 88's in the AT role because they found their standard AT gun was not up to the job. The 88 was a massive overkill, a huge exposed target and waste of a specialised AA gun. An AA gun that if used in its proper role would have helped prevent a lot of Rommel's losses to airpower. It is not that the '88' was a super-weapon. It was no better than any of the standard AA guns of the time. It was its forced use in the AT role that was an 'adavance'.
And of course the '88' was never the main AT gun of the war, that was the 75mm. The '88' was not as important as some would have us believe.

Sunbury wrote:The vertiable German Mark 1V was upgraded and upgunned throughout the war. The first 75m long barrelled ones had arrived for Rommel before the Second Battle of El Alamein (some mere 26 or so), it could outgun the Sherman even then.


The Pz IV by 1944 was severely overtaxed. They had to start dropping features just to keep it running. It may suprise you to know the Germans had a name for the Pz IV just like the 'Ronson' term for the Sherman. In the OR surveys done on tank survivability in 1944 the Pz IV came bottom. Marginaly worse than the Sherman.
Sunbury wrote:The Germans introduced the Panther and Tiger and the excellent Sturmgeschütz III / IV tank killers during the war, all had faults and they have been seized on by apologists in here but the fact remains they went into production and killed allied tanks easily.
Just as the Shermans and Cromwells killed Stugs and the tank killers easily. If ease of penetration is a drawback then the Stug was just as handicaped as any Allied vehicle.


Sunbury wrote: Infra Red sights were being experimented with by German Panthers at war ends, the Allies always seemed to lag behind.
The IR claim is an oft quoted example of German superiority but it is also a myth. IR was a pre-war invention and all nations had versions (even Russia) The trial showed that it was not developed enough to be used for anything other than night driving. Driven by desperation the Germans tried to get a version to work as a gunnnery aid but they could not get it to function correctly . It would have been a futile gesture anyway because the Allied had IR detectors stockpiled in Europe ready for the first use of IR illuminators. Any tank using it would have stood out as if it was using a torch in pitch darkness.


Sunbury wrote:Wittmann and Co at Villers Bocage clearly show the difference in quality and temperment between the Germans and British. A very small number of Tigers, stopped the veteran British 7th Armoured Divison cold,
I am not going to comment at length but if you bother to check you will find it was not just Wittmann and it was not all of 7th AD.
You should also take note that the second attack by a larger force of Tigers and Pz IV's was totaly routed and sent scuttling back out of Villers. The repulse of this attack is an outstanding example of a confident and aggressive British Unit standing its ground and defeating a confident and aggressive enemy in a first class tank


Sunbury wrote:An edit. the performance of the 7th Armoured Divison (the Desert Rats) in Normandy has beem questioned, battle worn, away from home so long etc are reasons given for its medicore performance.
You clearly have made your mind up on this point and are become more and more disparaging as you plough forward.
I urge you to broaden your library and avoid the mistake attaching yourself too closely just one authors conclusion as if they were the last word on the subject. Perhaps you should purchase John Buckley's book


http://www.amazon.co.uk/British-Normand ... B000P0JNEE

and see if he is able to open your eyes.

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Urmel
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Re: A view on why Britsh tanks were so inferior.

#32

Post by Urmel » 15 Jan 2011, 00:15

Dunserving wrote:Re the missing oil filters......

Perhaps not so much missing as none available to fit?
In the factory?

Stranger things have happened, I guess, especially since this is a British factory we are talking about... :milwink:
The enemy had superiority in numbers, his tanks were more heavily armoured, they had larger calibre guns with nearly twice the effective range of ours, and their telescopes were superior. 5 RTR 19/11/41

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Re: A view on why Britsh tanks were so inferior.

#33

Post by JAK » 15 Jan 2011, 02:10

Delta Tank wrote:Because of doctrine, the tank lacked an adequate gun.
But wasn't the 75mm gun perfectly satisfactory weapon in most battlefield situations including tank battles from -42 till late -44 considering that until then the numbers numbers of Panthers were rather limited and the Tigers were always in short supply?

-Jari

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Re: A view on why Britsh tanks were so inferior.

#34

Post by verdenpark » 15 Jan 2011, 02:49

German tanks were not all that flash either. Captured examples that were studied showed, whilst the armour quality was slightly better than British, the welding was of poor quality. This was due to the high Carbon and Chromium content, thus leading to heat affected zones around the welds. This had the affect of making the plates brittle, and reducing their affectivness. Not what you want on an armoured vehicle.

Their engines were just as vunerable to the elements as British ones, and suffered the same problems. Especially the ones in North Africa and the Ukrane. They were also noted for their leaky petrol tanks, especially late in the war. They should have had Diesel engines, but the same dogmatic approach to things that the British had, was also present in Germany. Diesel was for U-Boats, thus no suitable engine was developed for vehicle use.

Upgrading the tanks, especially the armament, also went through the same painfull process as the British. Just look at the debarcle of ungrading the Pz.III with the Kwk. 39 (50L60). Lets not forget the suspension wars on the Pz.III and IV. Better still, lets not go there.

To put it simply, no country had a perfect tank at any time. Every design is a compromise between what you want, and what you can produce, with what you have. A bad tank fought well will always defeat a good tank fought badly.
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Re: A view on why Britsh tanks were so inferior.

#35

Post by Curnoe » 15 Jan 2011, 11:59

Were British tanks really "so inferior", especially earlier in the war?

Surely, the German successes over 1939-41 were not dependent on the superior quality of their tanks, but on their superior armoured doctrine and all arms co-operation? They had also had extensive practice of pseudo-operations during the occupations of the late 1930s, which had taught them about maintenance issues on the move. (For example, see Guderian on the lessons learnt during the Austrian Anschluss).

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Re: A view on why Britsh tanks were so inferior.

#36

Post by John Hilly » 15 Jan 2011, 13:50

verdenpark wrote:To put it simply, no country had a perfect tank at any time. Every design is a compromise between what you want, and what you can produce, with what you have. A bad tank fought well will always defeat a good tank fought badly.
Hear, hear! :milwink:
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Re: A view on why Britsh tanks were so inferior.

#37

Post by hagen » 15 Jan 2011, 14:17

Sunbury wrote:Barnett gives a timeline. It took the British 3 years of war to get a six pounder gun and a HE shell.
I read a memoir in which an officer described how he had place a design order for the 6pdr before the war but discovered his successor had cancelled it to save money; that resulted in a two year delay in its introduction.

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Re: A view on why Britsh tanks were so inferior.

#38

Post by phylo_roadking » 15 Jan 2011, 17:18

Re the missing oil filters......

Perhaps not so much missing as none available to fit?

Not a crucial part, as the engine will run fine without an oil filter and the tank could operate normally.
Yes, it is true that the engine will have a greatly shortened life, but does that really matter?
Just how long would the lifespan of the entire tank be in wartime.........?
As long as the engine is still running when the tank brews up, and that engine failure is not the cause of it being lost in combat....
Hi Dunserving, I'll break my answer up into separate points;

1/ If missing from new, when the engine is first warmed up and run with no filter in the system - what's going to happen to all that metal swarf etc. that would normally be caught in a filter when "running in"? :wink: It's going to merrily scrape and score its way around the engine in all the testing and "depot miles" between leaving the assembly line and reaching the repair depot in the Delta...all of them nice cold starts on thick oil anyway that has had weeks in the hold of a ship to drain way from the top end of the motors...

(Be interesting to know what sort of an oil filter we're talking about - if it's a simple felt filter in the bottom of the oil tank, yes it could be left out with the consequences above and the engine at least run....but something like an inline cartridge filter would mean there's a break in the oil system without it in place...)

2/ a "short" engine life in European terms is going to be FAR shorter in a North African environment;

3/ How long would the lifespan of an entire tank be in wartime? For the Crusader and other earlier types in the Western Desert - long enough when they had to do all that extra motoring/roadmiles to reach the front, sans enough transporters etc. as I noted;

On a more lighthearted note - this...
Just how long would the lifespan of the entire tank be in wartime.........?
As long as the engine is still running when the tank brews up, and that engine failure is not the cause of it being lost in combat...
...could also be interpreted as saying that a tank broken down in the workshops is more effective than a tank lost in combat - because at least at the end of a battle that results in major British tank losses IT'S still on strength to fight another day! :lol: Tho' I;m not sure the idea of a "fleet in being" applies to armoured units without tanks, waiting to be re-equiped... :)

Moving on...
Barnett gives a timeline. It took the British 3 years of war to get a six pounder gun and a HE shell.


I read a memoir in which an officer described how he had place a design order for the 6pdr before the war but discovered his successor had cancelled it to save money; that resulted in a two year delay in its introduction.
See Postan's British War Production; it accouns for the delay.
German tanks were not all that flash either. Captured examples that were studied showed, whilst the armour quality was slightly better than British, the welding was of poor quality. This was due to the high Carbon and Chromium content, thus leading to heat affected zones around the welds. This had the affect of making the plates brittle, and reducing their affectivness. Not what you want on an armoured vehicle
Surely, the German successes over 1939-41 were not dependent on the superior quality of their tanks, but on their superior armoured doctrine and all arms co-operation? They had also had extensive practice of pseudo-operations during the occupations of the late 1930s, which had taught them about maintenance issues on the move.
Things improved fast - but in May-June 1940 at least, if you read Montefiore's Dunkirk, there are plenty of recorded instances of German tank crews getting out and running when faced by even light A/T or HMG fire....for it simply passed thr ough their armour! In that 1940-41 period, the PzII for instance had only 13mms of armour to the Vickers Lights' 12! 8O Not THAT much "superiority"! :lol:

A PzIII up to Ausf.F had the same frontal armour thickness as an A13...and the Matilda II/III had a whopping 78mm of frontal armour! Outclassing most early ausfrungen of even the PzIV...

But - if they're going to break down in short order, or come with problems that lead to excessive workshop time instead of combat time, or their OWN ordnance simply bounces off an enemy's even thinner...then all they are are moving targets.
The Pz IV by 1944 was severely overtaxed. They had to start dropping features just to keep it running.
...or because the Allied bombing campaign meant they couldn't be assured supplies of the traverse electric motors? :wink: There could actually be many reasons for some of the late marks' retrograde changes.
In 1939 the British Matlida Infantry tank mounted a single two pounder firing only solid shot to do the same job. How was its pop gun supposed to damage a pillbox? A serious retrograde step in the interwar years and one never really explained.
...because it was far better than the old 3pdr low velocity weapon of the early 1930s? :wink:
Why between 1942 and D-Day 1944 were there not serous modifications made to the Sherman (ie wet storage, a bigger gun and more armour). Or more simply why was a new tank based on the Sherman not ready for D-Day?
Sherman M4A3E2 "Jumbo"? :wink:
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Re: A view on why Britsh tanks were so inferior.

#39

Post by Dunserving » 15 Jan 2011, 19:46

Hi Phylo.........

I note and accept your comments. However, while a tank engine sans oil filter will indeed have a drastically shortened lifespan, so does the rest of the tank once it gets into combat... I suspect that one reason why so many were shipped incomplete is that parts were not available at the right time in construction, and sending out tanks with bits to be added was better than holding up production in the factory - especially as onward transport, such as convoys, would set time limits that had to be met.

You are right to note that an engine would be shorter in a North African environment. I'm not agreeing that lack of an oil filter would be relevant there. Effective air filtration to keep out fine sand is far more essential. At least that was the view of my father who was with his RAF squadron in Egypt in 1935/36. They had a few engines on their Hawker Demons ruined by lack of air filtration......
This was one of them......

Image

Zero air filtration meant fine sand sucked into cylinders, whence some got past piston rings as the cylinders got scored, once sand got into the engine oil, too fine to be captured by the oil filter, engine failed. Hence this aircraft fuselage coated with filthy engine oil. I'm afraid I don't know how many hours this aircraft had done in that environment. Obviously a severe environment compared with their previous airfield at North Weald!

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Re: A view on why Britsh tanks were so inferior.

#40

Post by phylo_roadking » 15 Jan 2011, 20:10

Effective air filtration to keep out fine sand is far more essential.
True - over a longer service life ("longer" being a relative term given the trials and tribulations of operating in North Africa). If you remember, I mentioned previously that another defect on the Crusader was that its air filter also gave problems... 8O

Though - simple ingress of sand into the engine compartment seems to have been what did for the radiator fans, drive sprockets and chains in service: somewhere (can't remember now where) I once read that the cooling fan drive chain streched the width of the engine compartment...that's a lot of oily chain (even IN a chainguard or oilbath) to pick up the sand that permeated everything and everywhere...

Here's an odd thing - if you go back to the original Crusader project pages referenced -
I suspect that one reason why so many were shipped incomplete is that parts were not available at the right time in construction, and sending out tanks with bits to be added was better than holding up production in the factory - especially as onward transport, such as convoys, would set time limits that had to be met.
....tanks missing components AND the components themselves were sent in the same ships; so why on earth couldn't mechanics have been embarked too, and had the separately-despatched parts fitted during the voyage? :P

(Reading around, my personal opinion is that the reason for them not coming together at the factory may have been PARTLY this..."parts were not available at the right time in construction" - and the need for components to be uprated or improved in the early days of Crusader construction and panic improvement; one of the issues with "ordering off the drawingboard". If some kind soul were to be willing and able to root around at Kew, This is bound to have left a papertrail....)

{But that still doesn't explain why - if they were ready and could be shipped in the SAME ship - that day's work fiting them couldn't have been carried out in the UK...? 8O Surely sending a posse of factory fitters to whatever depot, vehicle park or quayside by bus or train would have been better than having to do it in the Delta on arrival? }
Last edited by phylo_roadking on 15 Jan 2011, 20:23, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: A view on why Britsh tanks were so inferior.

#41

Post by Dunserving » 15 Jan 2011, 20:22

Good point Phylo, especially re having mechanics on the ships...........

Not sure if this is relevant, but an uncle of mine served overseas as a driver on Churchill tanks. I remember him telling me that he was trained to use, and was issued with, a complete tool kit to do all maintenance, overhauls, and repairs himself. Perhaps a crew would be issued with a replacement tank plus the "missing" parts, and the driver told to get the vehicle ready for operational use? No need to send mechanics on the ships as the drivers were quite capable...

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Re: A view on why Britsh tanks were so inferior.

#42

Post by phylo_roadking » 15 Jan 2011, 20:35

Perhaps a crew would be issued with a replacement tank plus the "missing" parts, and the driver told to get the vehicle ready for operational use? No need to send mechanics on the ships as the drivers were quite capable...
Looking again at the article -
This probably meant that between them, all 166 tanks of the Brigade may have had at least one issue that needed fixing, with the first items being fixes that could be implemented by the units themselves...
...referring to these issues -
Oil filters (missing on 40 tanks)
Track guard inserts (missing on 39 tanks)
Modified fuel tank cock (missing on 8 tanks)
Gear lever extension (missing on 26 tanks)
BUT -
...while the last one necessitated a trip to the base workshops, of which there were two in Egypt.
..referring to the fitment of the 86 new fan drive assemblies.

That's two classes of repairs involving the separately-packed parts - one that could be done by the crews, yes, and one that had to be done in base workshops.....but there was a third major issue -
What was not foreseen however was that someone in Egypt had decided that all axles needed to be reinforced, because of some failures that occurred shortly after arrival. This was in fact a known problem in England, and traced back to metal manufacture errors. But it had been decided that since the problem affected not all axles, that strengthening of them as a matter of course was not required. Not knowing this, Middle East Command presumed all axles were faulty, and subjected all tanks to a reinforcement programme, which ate up time.
That also reads like a base workshop issue :(

And of course - we don't have details in that article of how 22nd Armoured and its tanks were despatched - "These tanks had arrived in the Middle East with some vital equipment uninstalled, but nevertheless included on the ships they arrived in" - except it was ships plural :( Who's to say brigade personnel and tanks were in the SAME ships??? 8O
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Re: A view on why Britsh tanks were so inferior.

#43

Post by Urmel » 15 Jan 2011, 22:01

I understand they were on the same ships, or at least traveled and arrived together. But I maybe wrong.
The enemy had superiority in numbers, his tanks were more heavily armoured, they had larger calibre guns with nearly twice the effective range of ours, and their telescopes were superior. 5 RTR 19/11/41

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Re: A view on why Britsh tanks were so inferior.

#44

Post by Urmel » 15 Jan 2011, 22:09

Michael Kenny wrote:
Sunbury wrote:The Germans used their 88's in the AT role because they found their standard AT gun was not up to the job. The 88 was a massive overkill, a huge exposed target and waste of a specialised AA gun. An AA gun that if used in its proper role would have helped prevent a lot of Rommel's losses to airpower. It is not that the '88' was a super-weapon. It was no better than any of the standard AA guns of the time. It was its forced use in the AT role that was an 'adavance'.
Michael, I don't really have any issues with your post (which is very good at setting the Wehrmacht Penis Envy Brigade straight), apart from this.

There was nothing forced about the use of the 88 in the ground role. Already in 1940 there were Panzerabwehrabteilungen (soon renamed Panzerjaeger for propaganda purposes) equipped with the 88, before the invasion of France (see Frieser Blitzkrieglegende). It had nothing to do with a sudden realisation that the standard AT guns were not up to the job (which they weren't, but that happened to all participants - nobody started the war with a standard AT gun that performed well over a significant length of time, with the exception of the British 2-pdr), it was intentional. In individual tactical situations it may have been the case that the gun unit had to be reminded of this, or forced into it, but from a design and doctrine perspective, it was a multi-purpose gun (it also served as indirect artillery).

And I would argue that the 88 was better than the British 3.7" because it achieved similar performance at a much lower weight, by the way.
The enemy had superiority in numbers, his tanks were more heavily armoured, they had larger calibre guns with nearly twice the effective range of ours, and their telescopes were superior. 5 RTR 19/11/41

The CRUSADER Project - The Winter Battle 1941/42

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Re: A view on why Britsh tanks were so inferior.

#45

Post by phylo_roadking » 15 Jan 2011, 22:13

I understand they were on the same ships, or at least traveled and arrived together
I've found out that major elements of 22 Armoured Brigade travelled in convoy WS10X, in the ships Orion, Strathnaver, Strathmore, Palma, Brisbane Star, and Port Jackson. naval-history.net says this about the convoy...
This small convoy sailed from Avonmouth 14.8.41, Liverpool 15.8 and the Clyde 16.8, making its juncture late on 16.8:

BRISBANE STAR lost the convoy 19.8 and did not rejoin until 22.8.

Local escorts were the Dutch AA cruiser HEEMSKERK and destroyers WHITEHALL and WITCH from Liverpool 15 to 17.8, destroyers GURKHA, ISAAC SWEERS, LANCE and PIORUN from the Clyde 17 to 19.8; DORSETSHIRE as ocean escort to Freetown from the Clyde.

Local Freetown escort of the destroyers BRILLIANT, VELOX (for one day only) and WRESTLER and corvettes CLEMATIS and CROCUS joined 27.8 and the convoy arrived at Freetown 28.8.41.

From Freetown the convoy sailed on 1.9 in the same cruising order with the battleship REVENGE as ocean escort. Corvettes AMARANTHUS (to 2.9) and ARMERIA, MIGNONETTE and WOODRUFF escorted to 3.9.

During the passage, REVENGE's Officer of the Watch chose to exercise a steering breakdown while in close company with the convoy; the resultant violent sheer towards ORION was potentially disastrous but, fortunately, the liner struck the battleship on the starboard bulge with only minor damage to both ships. Had the reverse been the case, the loss of ORION would have been almost inevitable with the possibility of heavy loss of life. The OOW was subsequently court martialled, and disciplined for having endangered both his ship and the transport.

Convoy arrived at Capetown on 11.9, and sailed once more on 14.9, still escorted by REVENGE, and in the same formation. The battleship was relieved by the cruiser CERES on 22.9 who took the convoy on to dispersal off Aden on 27.9, thereafter ships proceeded independently to Suez, arriving at varying dates between 1 and 4.10.41.
I'm hoping for more information on what/who was in what ships.
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