What prevented the QF 3.7-inch AA gun being used in the Anti Tank role.

[MarkN]

My memory is quite vivid. Sadly, my memory does not stand up to historical evidence that I wrote up at the time. As you can see, I attribute the exact same thoughts and beliefs to my own memories. I'm an equal opportunities commentator.

Rather you attribute your own failings in memory as being exact same shared by everyone else.

And yet, I'm not the only one saying it. Even in this thread Don Juan has pointed it out to you. My personal experiences allows me to understand that, as time passes, people believe what they want to believe rather than what is historically accurate.

Indeed. Clearly you were wrong. Not just on what I would or wouldn't learn by reading the obituary, but also in your schoolboy error in thinking that deliberately diverting the discussion onto Rea Leakey's war record somehow mitigates your other schoolboy errors.
The problem is NOT Rea Leakey's war record, nor even his account of various events. The problem is the way you are approaching this discussion and your understanding of history.

Have to say I find the arrogance and hypocrisy in that really quite funny!

Given the previous point, I have to say I find the stupidity and ignorance in that really quite funny!

So. More evidence that Leakey's memory was a bit leaky.

Nah, not really. Leakey recalls "we were disturbed to see our 2-pounder solid shots bouncing off their armour. But some of our shots found soft spots and the crew of their leading tank baled out."
The 'our shots' just came from somewhere else (probably), that he wasn't aware of, possibly one of the Italian 47mm anti-tank guns being manned by Australians.

Nah, quite so. Leakey remembers 1RTR losing 3 pantsers and only getting 1 German one in return. That was THE point you lept upon. The Australian OH concurs with all the other evidence that I posted. It does not concur with Leakey.

Again, the problem is the way you are approaching this discussion and your understanding of history.

Yes it could be caused by anything, anything at all. Anything at all that is, apart from what a veteran tanker took it to be, his shots bouncing from an enemy tank.

No, bouncing of a pantser hull is indeed one of the many possibilities.

Leakey did NOT see a round bouncing off an enemy panster, he saw the tracer from a round veer off course. What the round did at that point in time is entirely speculation: shatter, bounce, penetrate, bury itself into sand, and so on and on...

Once again, the problem is the way you are approaching this discussion and your understanding of history.

Whilst it is true that your quote from Leakey may have nothing to do with 11 April 1941,

Correct. That account was during Operation Compass. It establishes Leakey as someone who knows what their talking about.
And also the 2-pdr was not useless when fighting Italian tanks.

Thank you. So, not entirely "bloody useless" then. But no, it does not establish "Leakey as someone who knows what [he's] talking about." It's just another in a long line of non-sequiters from you.

And once more, the problem is the way you are approaching this discussion and your understanding of history.

[Don Juan]

Rather you attribute your own failings in memory as being exact same shared by everyone else

From the Scientific American article I linked to:

The uncritical acceptance of eyewitness accounts may stem from a popular misconception of how memory works. Many people believe that human memory works like a video recorder: the mind records events and then, on cue, plays back an exact replica of them. On the contrary, psychologists have found that memories are reconstructed rather than played back each time we recall them. The act of remembering, says eminent memory researcher and psychologist Elizabeth F. Loftus of the University of California, Irvine, is “more akin to putting puzzle pieces together than retrieving a video recording.”

Every time you recall a memory, it is a reconstruction of a previous reconstruction. The more you recall a memory, the more you distort it. Memories don't "fail" (unless you completely forget), they are subject to an inherent process of corrosion. Nobody is immune to this, no matter how impeccable their character.

[critical mass]

5cm full calibre AP (see attachment).

vastly different performances.

[Gooner1]

Nah, quite so. Leakey remembers 1RTR losing 3 pantsers and only getting 1 German one in return. That was THE point you lept upon. The Australian OH concurs with all the other evidence that I posted. It does not concur with Leakey.

No, it was not THE point. The actual score of German Mediums versus British Cruisers was not 1-3, it was 0-2.

Again, the problem is the way you are approaching this discussion and your understanding of history.

[Gooner1]

From the Scientific American article I linked to:

The uncritical acceptance of eyewitness accounts may stem from a popular misconception of how memory works. Many people believe that human memory works like a video recorder: the mind records events and then, on cue, plays back an exact replica of them. On the contrary, psychologists have found that memories are reconstructed rather than played back each time we recall them. The act of remembering, says eminent memory researcher and psychologist Elizabeth F. Loftus of the University of California, Irvine, is “more akin to putting puzzle pieces together than retrieving a video recording.”

Every time you recall a memory, it is a reconstruction of a previous reconstruction. The more you recall a memory, the more you distort it. Memories don't "fail" (unless you completely forget), they are subject to an inherent process of corrosion. Nobody is immune to this, no matter how impeccable their character.

Right, so that makes you think that all these British tankers were misremebering? How does that work?
They could shoot at, hit and destroy Italian tanks OK but when it came to shooting at German tanks the British suddenly all got the accuracy of Evil Roy Slade?

[Don Juan]

Right, so that makes you think that all these British tankers were misremebering? How does that work?
They could shoot at, hit and destroy Italian tanks OK but when it came to shooting at German tanks the British suddenly all got the accuracy of Evil Roy Slade?

After Compass they could actually count the Italian tanks they had destroyed or disabled in detail as they had retained the battlefield. The Italians made it easy for the British with their reckless tactics, and iirc 4th Armoured Brigade noted that the Italians could have used their tanks far more effectively. The Germans provided much more difficult tactical problems for the British. Had they instead copied the Italians and attacked piecemeal, while simultaneously stuffing their tanks with loose rounds, then the British would have had no problem beating the Germans either.

There wasn't a magical difference between Italian and German tanks. The testing conducted by the British in the Middle East, as I showed in post #64, showed that even the Panzer III Ausf. J was penetrable from the side at 1500 yards by the 2 pounder. This presented both a tactical and technical problem for the British, but as far as I can tell the technical problem was over-emphasized (the impenetrability of the Panzer III's frontal armour) and the tactical problem (how to get onto the flanks given the German use of anti-tank guns) seems to have been barely discussed at all.

[MarkN]

Nah, quite so. Leakey remembers 1RTR losing 3 pantsers and only getting 1 German one in return. That was THE point you lept upon. The Australian OH concurs with all the other evidence that I posted. It does not concur with Leakey.

No, it was not THE point. The actual score of German Mediums versus British Cruisers was not 1-3, it was 0-2.

Oh dear!

The point was to the accuracy of Leakey's account. Here is your original post. I've underlined the single point that you chose to comment on.

And a very real test a few weeks earlier in Tobruk by Captain Rea Leakey of 1RTR, this time against 'live' German tanks.

"Here, for the first time, my Regiment fought against German tanks. There were about fifteen of them, and we had the same number of cruisers. But we had an equal number of light tanks, which, although useless in a tank fight, could be used to distract the enemy and make him believe we were stronger than was in fact the case. We opened fire on them when they were within 800 yards of us, and we were disturbed to see our 2-pounder solid shots bouncing off their armour. But some of our shots found soft spots and the crew of their leading tank baled out. Then they opened fire on us and the battle was on.
"We were on one side of the perimeter defences, and the Germans were on the other; the Australians were in the middle, and we could hear them cheering us on. We were very relieved to see the Germans had started to withdraw as already they had brewed up three of our tanks and, we had only accounted for one of theirs. It was painfully obvious we were out-gunned by these tanks. When the action was over, I heard Milligan telling the other members of the crew that he had failed to brew up a single tank and yet he thought he was shooting as accurately as ever before. He had not seen his shots bouncing off the target and I did not enlighten him."

A three-to-one exchange rate between Panzers and Cruisers was actually pretty good.

The 1RTR WD disagrees with this.
The 1RTR battle report disagrees with this.
The 5.lei-Div KTB disagrees with this.
And now you disagree with it too.

I repeat, eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable.

Once again, and depressingly so, the problem is the way you are approaching this discussion and your understanding of history.

[MarkN]

The testing conducted by the British in the Middle East, as I showed in post #64, showed that even the Panzer III Ausf. J was penetrable from the side at 1500 yards by the 2 pounder.

Clearly a bloody useless popgun that was outranged by everything the bloody fritzers possessed.

It seems to me, considering his posts, that Gooner1 is just trolling to annoy us. On that basis, I'll be bowing out from this sillyness.

Hopefully something with a bit more intelligent thought will come up. Perhaps some serious thought and research into how many 3-inch HAA guns became available, and when, to be reroled and relocated to Africa. Perhaps some serious and intelligent consideration that German pantsers were 3D objects and not 2D flat surfaces of FHA. Perhaps we might even gets some analysis that is not a non-sequiter.

[Gooner1]

After Compass they could actually count the Italian tanks they had destroyed or disabled in detail as they had retained the battlefield. The Italians made it easy for the British with their reckless tactics, and iirc 4th Armoured Brigade noted that the Italians could have used their tanks far more effectively. The Germans provided much more difficult tactical problems for the British. Had they instead copied the Italians and attacked piecemeal, while simultaneously stuffing their tanks with loose rounds, then the British would have had no problem beating the Germans either.
There wasn't a magical difference between Italian and German tanks.

The main difference between Italian and German tanks is that the Italian tanks could be penetrated from the front by the 2-pdr at battlefield ranges and the German Mk IIIs and IVs could not.
I cannot fathom why this is so hard to accept.

The testing conducted by the British in the Middle East, as I showed in post #64, showed that even the Panzer III Ausf. J was penetrable from the side at 1500 yards by the 2 pounder. This presented both a tactical and technical problem for the British, but as far as I can tell the technical problem was over-emphasized (the impenetrability of the Panzer III's frontal armour) and the tactical problem (how to get onto the flanks given the German use of anti-tank guns) seems to have been barely discussed at all.

Yet in reality, knocking out the German tanks even from the flanks was easier said than done.
Check out the Easter Monday battle in Tobruk. German tanks break through the perimeter defences and trundle north. Thanks to the Australian infantry they are denied much in the way of direct and indirect artillery support. They encounter a 25-pdr regiment firing over open sights at about 600m, they are shot at by 2-pdrs en portee from the flanks, turning back then to the east they encounter another 25-pdr regiment firing over open sights and Australian 2-pdr and 37mm anti- tank guns firing enfilade. The Germans are also then attacked in the flank by Leakey's 5 Cruisers.
The Germans retreat in a hurry but have lost just 17 of their 38 tanks, in a pretty much ideal tank-killing situation for the British.

How many British tanks have survived if they had blundered into an anti-tank trap like that? I think we all know the answer would be a big fat zero.

[Juha Tompuri]

Yes, no-one could see the projectiles. What they saw were the tracers. Either attached to the projectiles, or from some reason, torn off.
If I understand correctly the target at the mentioned demonstration was made out of such of a materials, that no real bouncing was to be expected.

The Australian experiment led to the proposition that the tracer on the 2 pounder shell most likely became detached when it hit the sand dunes at the back of the range

How did they verify the tracer being being separated from the projectile?

Regards, Juha

[Don Juan]

Check out the Easter Monday battle in Tobruk. German tanks break through the perimeter defences and trundle north. Thanks to the Australian infantry they are denied much in the way of direct and indirect artillery support. They encounter a 25-pdr regiment firing over open sights at about 600m, they are shot at by 2-pdrs en portee from the flanks, turning back then to the east they encounter another 25-pdr regiment firing over open sights and Australian 2-pdr and 37mm anti- tank guns firing enfilade. The Germans are also then attacked in the flank by Leakey's 5 Cruisers.
The Germans retreat in a hurry but have lost just 17 of their 38 tanks, in a pretty much ideal tank-killing situation for the British.

What is so amazing about the 30 mm RHA side armour of the Panzer III, and the 20mm RHA side armour of the Panzer IV, that allows German tanks to perform such remarkable feats?

[Juha Tompuri]

How did they verify the tracer being being separated from the projectile?

Verify/figure out

[Tom from Cornwall]

Juha,

I think I posted this on another thread but as it directly answers your question it's worth putting it up in full (source: AWM52/1/5/12/18 - 6 Aust Div G Branch Jul - Aug 41):

AWM52/1/5/12 – G Branch 6 Aust Div July – August 1941

SECRET
Headquarters
6 Aust Div.
6 Jul 41.
S/2163/G

DEMONSTRATION – A. TK GUN 2 PDR.

On 1 July a demonstration of firing by A Tk Guns was arranged to bring out certain characteristics of the gun and its projectile.

The target used consisted of a light wooden frame covered with hessian; and mounted on a form of sledge under-carriage. The target was towed by a lorry at an average speed of 10 – 15 miles per hour.

The target crossed the front of the guns with the range varying from 600 yds max. to 400 yds min.

It was clearly observed that with most of the rounds fired, somewhere in the flight of the projectile the tracer illuminant of the projectile was deflected from its normal path. Usually this deflection was in an upward direction.

It was impossible to decide whether this illuminant was thrown off as the projectile passed through the hessian target or when the projectile hit the sand dunes at the rear of the range. Most probably the latter is the correct deduction.

For some time there have been rumours or statements circulating among officers and other ranks that the 2 pr A Tk projectile has been seen to “bounce off” German and French tanks. The rumours even included that the shells were seen to bounce off at ranges up to as much as 1100 yds.

This demonstration on 1 July was principally staged to kill such an untrue impression.

Firstly it is clear that no officer or man could see an object as small as the projectile of a 2 pr A Tk Gun at 1100 yds even with the projectile at rest. Even with the most efficient binoculars it is questionable whether this object would be visible at 300 yds.

Realising this factor, it is further evident that the chances of seeing the projectile moving, at the velocity with which it does move, are surely non-existent.

It is suggested that what observers have been seeing “bounce off” is not the projectile but the “tracer illuminant” of the projectile. This error in judgement then is most probably responsible for the erroneous impressions held by a proportion of officers and other ranks as to the efficiency of the A Tk Gun.

It is the teaching in this Division now that the most effective range to engage an enemy AFV by the 2 pr gun is at ranges of 400 yds and below.

The gun, when fought by determined and well trained crews, is a most efficient weapon if it is used at these close ranges.

PTO/…


- 2 -

Personnel of Inf Bns will then be taught that the 2 pr gun can kill tanks and will kill tanks penetrating into our defended localities. This killing will be done at short ranges; so the Inf personnel should not expect the A Tk Gun to engage enemy AFVs at long range and before these AFVs have advanced within effective range of the guns. The problem of engaging the tanks at long ranges is one for the Fd Arty.

It is requested, therefore, that commanding officers give the fullest publicity to the results of this A Tk gun demonstration with the principle object of destroying for all time the bogey that the 2 pr projectile “bounces off” enemy AFVs.


[sgd: RB Sunderland ??]
Colonel,
G.S. 6 Aust Div.
DISTRIBUTION.

List “B”

Regards

Tom

[Juha Tompuri]

Tom, thank you very much...

Juha,

I think I posted this on another thread but as it directly answers your question it's worth putting it up in full (source: AWM52/1/5/12/18 - 6 Aust Div G Branch Jul - Aug 41):

It was impossible to decide whether this illuminant was thrown off as the projectile passed through the hessian target or when the projectile hit the sand dunes at the rear of the range. Most probably the latter is the correct deduction.

... but it's still unclear to me how the tracer element separating from the projectile was noticed, and the two parts continuing their paths to different directions.

Regards, Juha

[Tom from Cornwall]

I guess when they walked down to the target and found the two parts of the projectile had separated. There might be more details elsewhere, but somehow I doubt it.

Regards

Tom