Battle of Crete airfield question

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phylo_roadking
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Re: Battle of Crete airfield question

#61

Post by phylo_roadking » 19 Jan 2009, 03:09

Not the Lights, but the Vickers Medium MkII was produced with a few "Tropicals" clad in asbestos - it was believed the asbestos, spaced about an inch and a half from the armour, would actually insulate the crew from EXTERIOR heat... 8O

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I think this is from the AKirk site, I've had it on my hard drive for ages.

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Re: Battle of Crete airfield question

#62

Post by The_Enigma » 19 Jan 2009, 03:16

Ah that will be the one!

It seems at least one of them ended up its life as a pillbox in the Mersa Matruh defences.
I have the IWM ref number (E828) but i cant seem to find it.


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Peter H
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Re: Battle of Crete airfield question

#63

Post by Peter H » 19 Jan 2009, 03:18

Tony Simpson in Operation Mercury states that the two I tanks at Maleme set off along the road towards the river at 5.15pm 20th May 1941.

"..the second tank turned around before reaching the bridge and came back..said the ammunition would not fit the machine-gun and the turret had jammed(in fact it was the breach block on the 40mm which would not take the ammunition)."

"--the first tank fared better 'proceeding up the river,firing as it went until it stopped in the river bed---[then] go down under the big bridge and out a little further west where it came to a halt.The place was seething with enemy plainly visible in the long grass".

Then its turret jammed as it was traversing and its engine failed.The crew then surrendered.

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Re: Battle of Crete airfield question

#64

Post by phylo_roadking » 19 Jan 2009, 03:26

Actually IIRC several did; as well as the British Mediums already in the Canal Zone on the outbreak of war, the Australians brought either four or six with them (can't remember which). The British Mediums actually had to be used against the Italians in October 1940...and apparently did quite well for being scrap! But as newer armour arrived, German as well :wink: they were no match and were dug in after that.

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"..the second tank turned around before reaching the bridge and came back..said the ammunition would not fit the machine-gun and the turret had jammed(in fact it was the breach block on the 40mm which would not take the ammunition)."

IIRC it was Alan Clark who mentioned this event too...with the caveat that the tank must have come from Britain like that! After all, 2pdr AP is 2pdr AP LOL so there must have been something VERY wrong with it.

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Re: Battle of Crete airfield question

#65

Post by The_Enigma » 19 Jan 2009, 03:39

Those things actually saw service ... as in running around using there own engines!? 8O I had thought they had already been mothballed. Are these tanks included in the number of servicable ones the 7th Armoured Division had in Aug 1940 - that being 65 cruisers? (playfair, p. 188)

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Re: Battle of Crete airfield question

#66

Post by phylo_roadking » 19 Jan 2009, 03:47

They were phased out of the Royal Tank Regiments in Britain starting in 1938. In November 1939, some Medium Mark IIs were sent to Egypt for experiments being conducted by Major-General Sir Percy Hobart and his Mobile Division (Egypt), the experimental Western Desert Force :lol: They too were phased out of "regular" service before Italy declared war in June 1940, so I doubt they're listed as active; I don't think in their case however they were mothballed, they were still being used for training. At a guess, after casualties they were used to fill blank files for a time.

And the Home items were indeed brought out of mothballs again in the summer of 1940 for a time!

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Re: Battle of Crete airfield question

#67

Post by The_Enigma » 19 Jan 2009, 04:00

So the 65 tanks were the "new" ones then.

Cant believe they mothballed Hobart :P One does ponder if things would have been different for the better or worse if he had stayed.

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Re: Battle of Crete airfield question

#68

Post by phylo_roadking » 19 Jan 2009, 04:10

I'm not sure if they would actually have been better - not with the raw material the British had to work with, their cr@ppy tanks of 1940. Hobart certainly seems to have ruffled a lot of feathers in his time in Britain through the 1930s, leading to his temporary demise at the hands of Wavell - but if given his head...once the severely-limited resources of the Western Desert Force met the technically far superior tanks of the early DAK...it's possible he could have managed to engineer even greater armoured defeats than OTL :lol: It's almost certain that once his ideas met the more conservative, oldfashioned ideas of other Britiahs armoured officers coming in the other direction at him in North Africa, the..."doctrinal differences"...could also have caused mayhem in the Mess - if not on the battlefield. Wavell was probably right to ship out someone with a belief to prove that could cost extra lives in the process.

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Michael Emrys
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Re: Battle of Crete airfield question

#69

Post by Michael Emrys » 19 Jan 2009, 05:06

phylo_roadking wrote:I think the giveaway is in THIS section of the picture...
Sorry, phylo, I'm just not buying it. For one thing, the road wheels in the mystery pic are noticeably smaller than the front idler, which is true of an A10 but definitely not for an A13.
And with no port-side damage...THAT drooping upper track run can only come from a Christie-suspension A13...
Whoa! Who's to say that the track didn't simply break when (if) it bogged down? They were prone to do that, you know. Your conclusion is unsupported by any evidence available in the photo.

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Re: Battle of Crete airfield question

#70

Post by Michael Emrys » 19 Jan 2009, 05:23

The_Enigma wrote:...there is one photo of an armoured car iirc with an Italian AA gun mounted on it.
ISTR that quite a few B/C/E armoured cars were modified in that way. The Breda 20mm was a good weapon used by all sides in NA, and the Brits captured wholesale lots of them. IIRC, the LRDG and the SAS also used a few. Ironically, the Germans recaptured a number of them and pressed them into service in their forces.

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Simon K
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Re: Battle of Crete airfield question

#71

Post by Simon K » 19 Jan 2009, 05:35

I think Urmel in his post earlier and Phylo who picked up on it are right.

Its an A9/10 early model that has been knocked out in Greece, and wrongly attributed.

Did Greece,or Yugoslavia have any of these models in service?

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Re: Battle of Crete airfield question

#72

Post by phylo_roadking » 19 Jan 2009, 16:28

Whoa! Who's to say that the track didn't simply break when (if) it bogged down? They were prone to do that, you know. Your conclusion is unsupported by any evidence available in the photo
Michael - wrong. On both possibilites, the A10 and the A13, the drive sprocket is at the rear. IF this portside track had broken on bogging down, it would have broken AT or just below the drive sprocket when the trackrun "seized" in the bogging-down. The first thing that would have happened was that the short section of track BELOW this would fall to the ground - but the track HERE is visibily still in place at the rear. See the sections?

Image

IF the track had seized and broken, it would have been at the point where the maximum breaking strain would have occured - here - where the suddenly-static track meeets the teeth of the drive sprocket; same place where a motorcycle chain or bicycle chain or industrial conveyor would break, where it comes under maximum stress at the point of take-up by the sprocket teeth. And I'm regularly aware of the first of these cases :(

Image

...and we would THEN see TWO things - the track sections or so ABOVE the break would EITHER spin through and be out of sight as the sprocket turned, or be hanging vertical...IF the driver clutched really, REALLY fast LOL....but in EITHER case the two or three sections BELOW the break would drop to the ground. But they didn't, we can just make out the "serrations" of the individual sections of track as they come up out of the ground at an angle i.e. under tension, and arc round the drive sprocket. On a rear-drive tank, the point where the track is LEAST stressed is in the upper track run, so it certainly wouldn't have broken there.

Ergo, if we can see track intact at the front, and track intact at the rear, on a rear-driven tank - the track isn't going to break at its least stressed part - on the top run - in the event of a bottom-run lockup.

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Re: Battle of Crete airfield question

#73

Post by Urmel » 19 Jan 2009, 22:21

Simon K wrote:I think Urmel in his post earlier and Phylo who picked up on it are right.

Its an A9/10 early model that has been knocked out in Greece, and wrongly attributed.

Did Greece,or Yugoslavia have any of these models in service?
No, but 3 RTR helpfully brought about 60 along to the party to leave them to the Germans when they hurriedly left.
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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Simon K
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Re: Battle of Crete airfield question

#74

Post by Simon K » 19 Jan 2009, 22:32

That would explain it.

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Re: Battle of Crete airfield question

#75

Post by Urmel » 19 Jan 2009, 22:47

Peter H wrote:The author gives as his source for the photo Gem.Fallsch.Pz.Jäger-Abt.1.This is the Veterans Association of Fallsch.Pz.Jäger-Abt.1.
Good thing it was not a US veterans association, they'd have said it was a Tiger. :wink:
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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