The Influence of Tanks in World War II

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Originally submitted by Researcher Yataghan - U227486 on 11/05/03 and sent to Flea Market. My intention is to revise and rework this into a state where it can go for Peer Review. Be patient - this will not be a five minute job. AP, July 2005

Notes as per structure:-

Origins of the tank:-


It could be argued that the war chariots of several thousand years ago (used by such disparate civilizations as Ancient China and Boudicca's Iceni) represented the first AFV's. A light, mobile, weapons platform which carried a certain amount of protection (armour?) from the projectile weapons of the day, and utilising a propulsion source other than manpower. Although it has to be said that the very earliest chariots were donkey, rather than horse, propelled...



Chariots fell out of favour with the turn of BC into AD and remained so for nearly fifteen hundred years. Then a speculative thinker called Leonardo da Vinci doodled an idea in a margin, for a self-propelled armoured fort from within which men might fight in relative safety. (It has been noted that the propulsion system Leonardo sketched, dependent on isxteen big blokes manually winding a hand-crank, would have resulted in the power of thirty strong men bringing the thing to a grinding halt, as the front and back wheels would have turned in opposite directions. Definitely an off-day for Leo!)


Meanwhile, in contemporary Czechoslovakia, about this time we have the Hussites. This was a kind of "Peasants' Revolt" based on a Protestant sect rising up against Catholic overlords, and which might have become a footnote to history in the manner of most situations where ill-armed peasants rise up against feudal overlords armed to the teeth.



Except for the fact the Hussites won.



This was due to a radical thinker called Jan Ziska, who devised armoured war-wagons, drawn by oxen, that could be quickly converted into a series of interlocking forts, against which any enemy would ineffectually beat his brains out while arqubusiers, archers, and artillery ripped the attack to shreds from within the forts.


Ziska took this logic a step further: he installed artillery within the ox-drawn armoured wagons, so that, in the manner of Nelson's ships of the line, they could sweep slowly and majestically accross the front of an eney army, firing as they went, ripping it to bits and causing a general collapse of morale (as the Hussites were firing from outside the effective range of any retaliatory shots).


Strangely enough, nobody else took this idea up, even though the Hussites are credited with founding modern Slovakia as a viable state. The idea of war-wagons of whatever sort remained dormant until the late nineteenth century, and the advent of the Internal Combustion Engine.


The idea of a power-source other than the horse re-opened interest in the idea of self-propelled battle-wagons, and much specualtive thought was gioven over to accomplishing this.


Practical results were the Doulton armed motortricycle of 1899, mounting a Maxim HMG on a motorised tricyle carriage (actually a very stable wheelbase, except where taking corners), and the Sims Armoured Car of 1902, taking advantage of one of the first car chassis by building a lightly armoured body with a manually rotated MG-armed turret.


For the early years of the 20th century, armoured cars - the military application of civil technology - were a natural way to proceed, and in fact saw action in this form in the early part of World War One.


However, other ideas were in an embyonic state...

Some very necessary vocabulary items:-

AFV:- Armoured Fighting Vehicle. The generic term for all military vehicles, wheeled or tracked, which incorporate a degree of armoured protection for the occupants.
A/C:- Armoured Car. A "cheap" way of creating an AFV, using a fully-wheeled chassis with an armoured body, and generally a turret. Despite the name, most armoured cars are made by building on a truck or lorry chassis. Light A/C's tend to be 4-wheeled; heavy A/C's tend to 8 wheels or more; 6-wheelers, as might be guessed, tend to class as "medium".
Anti Tank Gun:- . A specialised artillery piece designed to accurately hit and destroy an AFV. Generally designed to fire armour-piercing rounds only, rather than the full panoply of shells a dedicated artillery piece would use (high explosive, smoke, an ti-aircraft, et c)These began small in 1939 - 20 mm calibre or at most 37 / 40mm (2-pounder). Most European governments in 1939 put their faith in the cheaper, and unambiguously infantry weapon, the Anti-Tank Rifle (see below). This is important, as in many countries there was an unedifying disagreement between empire-building generals as to who should have control over anti-tank guns: the infantry or the Artillery. However, as the war progressed and tanks grew heavier, anti-tank guns grew to match. Anti-tank rifles could not match this (see below), while the small, light French 20mm Hotchkiss or the German PaK 37mm, (initially light enough to be moved by two men), became longer and larger and heavier in step with the tanks. This culminated in the British 17 pounder, the American 3", and the German 128mm PaK48: any of these monsters weighed over three tons and was between twelve and fifteen feet in length. Indeed, the British had an even larger 32 pounder anti-tank gun waiting in the wings!


In practice, most artillery pieces could be pressed into the anti-tank role with varying degrees of success: the German Flak88 is the iconic example, although their standard 105mm infantry howitzer also had dual capability and may in the end have "killed" more tanks. The British 25 pounder standard issue field gun was also pressed into the anti-tank role in desperation, although its slow rate of reload, compared to that of a dedicated AT gun, made this very much a second-choice role 1. What distinguished an anti-tank gun was a necessarily fast reload capacity combined with a range of specialist rounds designed to defeat face-hardened steel armour, such as APDCS, HESH and the German tungsten-cored rounds.


The German term PaK:- Panzer abwehrKanone: "literally armour counter-weapon cannon", or PaK for short.
ARV:- Armoured Recovery Vehicle. It is extremely difficult to "kill" an AFV, especially a tank, so completely and utterly that it is fit for no purpose at all. In the heat of combat, many tanks were reported "destroyed" even though they had only taken light or temporarily incapacitating damage: if time and circumstances permitted, these could be retrieved, repaired and returned to combat2.
However, some means of retrieving an immobilised vehicle and safely returning it to a rear-area repair shop had to be devised.

In the early part of the war, lorries or half-tracks, in conjunction with the ubiquitous tank transporter, sufficed to recover tanks weighing twenty tons or less. However, as the war progressed and tanks got heavier, something larger was needed. If, for instance, a fifty-ton Tiger broke down, it took THREE of the large Famo half-track, acting in unison, to tow it to safety. And the thirty-odd foot Famo, standing longer and larger than many tanks, was Germany's most powerful soft-skin!

Therefore it was realised that the only vehicle that stood even half a chance of retrieving a broken-down tank was another tank: most nations created an equivalent of the Bergepanzer III (ARV on Panzer III chassis), Bergepanther, or Bergetiger for retrieving their casualties.
ATR:- Anti-Tank Rifle. A single-shot infantry weapon firing rounds of up to 20mm calibre, designed to penetrate tank armour. Weighing three or four times as much as a conventional rifle and up to eight feet long, virtually useless after 1941. Anti-tank rifles could not easily get any longer or heavier (the Russian Degtyarev was eight feet long and weighed fifty pounds)and dwindled into obselescence. Only the Russians persisted with these weapons after 1941, discovering that while ineffective against tanks, they could (for instance) penetrate brickwork and concrete and have a demoralising effect on Germans in fortified infantry positions. 3.
Cannon: accepted term for a weapon firing rounds which are larger than infantry calibre, but too small to cause significant damage to an AFV. Example: the 20mm KwK cannon fitted to the German Panzer II. Later in the war, these small-calibre weapons were dedicated to local anti-aircraft defence, as for instance on the German Flakpanzer IV "Wirbelwind" series of A/A tanks.
Co-axial: That arrangement of weapons where a machine-gun is paired with the main armament so that the machine-gun fires in the same direction and at the same target as the main armament.
Fighting Compartment: the area within an AFV where the crew live, and fight with main and secondary weaponry.
Half-track: an AFV which combines wheeled and tracked propulsion, generally wheeled and steered on the front axle but with tracks elsewhere. These varied in size from the diminutive French UE to the gigantic German Famo, which could (in conjunction with others) tow a Tiger Tank.

Armoured half-tracks, such as the American M3 and the German SdKfz 251 Hanomag, were also devised to convey infantry into battle.


Later in the war, obselete or surplus-to-requirement tanks were de-turreted and gutted to act as fully tracked infantry carriers capable of going exactly where the tanks did: the British "Kangaroo" series of carriers were based on surplus Sherman chassis or on the obselete Canadian "Ram" tank and could carry up to thirty fully laden squaddies.
Infantry anti-tank weapons: . Following the obselescence of the ATR, experiments continued in providing infantry with cheap and effective anti-tank solutions. While the British created the Sticky Bomb, essentially an anti-tank mine covered in glue, and the Germans used a more effective magnetic principle to make mines stick to tanks, the americans were experimenting with super-powering a mortar bomb so that it could be fired straight and true and level, like a bullet from a gun, at any intrusive tank. When it was discovered that leaving the back of the mortar tube open cancelled out the recoil and allowed for more accurate aim, the BAZOOKA was born as a light, man-portable, anti-tank weapon. The British and Germans soon followed: Germany created the PANZERSCHRECK as a more or less straight copy of the Bazooka4. Britain's contribution was the PIAT (Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank), which relied on operator strength to wind it up, and where (embarrasingly) the projectile would fall out of the tube if an attempt was made to fire it at angles other than the horizontal.
Germany followed up the Panzerschreck with the one-shot disposable PANZERFAUST, a rocket-propelled grenade manufactured in the hundreds of thousands and which killed many Russian tanks in the last year of WW2. The Russians, the last country to rely on the anti-tank rifle, soon learnt to make copies, and the Panzerfaust persists to this day as the standard Russian RPG (rocket propelled grenade)
Logistics: Everything you need to do to keep your tank in the field and in a fit condition to fight. For a typical tank, let's say a German Panzer IV and a five-man crew, you would need support from: a field-kitchen to service the crew's food needs. A field workshop to do those overhauls and service jobs the crew could not do. The services of a fuel tanker to keep it moving. The services of an ammunition tender (and, with twenty or thirty different types of German ammo in circulation, it had better be the RIGHT rounds!). Engineer troops to repair or create bridges or otherwise ford rivers. Recce troops to scout out the way ahead. Support from FlaK units to neutralise the enemy's air force. And the bigger your tank, the more resources it consumes and the larger and better provisioned these support echelons have to be. You need motorcycle liaison staff to communicate orders. Various levels of field HQ. Liaison to the infantry, artillery and Luftwaffe. All the paraphernalia of paymaster, military police, field-post services, chaplaincy, a bureaucratic administration (der Speiss) to hold it all together, and a general staff headquarters to do militarily meaningful things with it. It is estimated that the support train of a Panzer division stretched for up to seventy miles behind the 500 tanks and 15,000 men it kept in the field.If this support train stretches back to railheads through hostile territory, you need troops and tanks to be continually on patrol against partisan/Resistance attacks. THEN you need to feed and provision the men in the supply train.... This is logistics.
MG:- Machine-gun: generic term for any fully automatic weapon firing rounds of normal infantry bullet calibre, ie .303” (British), 7.92mm (German), 7.62mm(Russian)
HMG:- Heavy machine-gun: generic term for a fully automatic weapon firing rounds of larger calibre, ie 0.5” (British/American), 12.7mm (Russian)
Prime Mover: generic term for the vehicle which tows a field artillery piece, anti-aircraft or anti-tank gun. Generally a soft-skinned lorry or half-track, although by 1944-45, a massive items of ordnance such as the British 17 pounder, which weighed three tons, was towed by a modified (turretless) tank, which carried its ammo reserves and provided living accomodation for its crew. Usually this was an otherwise obselete Crusader.
A Round: the complete weapon delivery system. This is not just a “bullet”, which strictly speaking is only the delivered projectile. Nor is it a “shell”, which is the outer casing only: a round consists of projectile, propellant, and firing cap, bound together in an outer casing.
Soft-skin: generic term for any totally unarmoured vehicle, ie a standard lorry. This also includes unarmoured half-tracks.
SPG:- Self-Propelled Gun. Generic term for a vehicle which is turretless amd mounts its main armament in a fixed position directly in the vehicle body.
Otherwise known as: German: StuG (SturmGewehr). Russian: SU (Samochodnya Ustanovka)Italian: Semovente.
Tankette:- generic term for a vehicle which is fully tracked, but which mounts a light weapon in a fixed superstructure and which is generally turretless.
Tank: generic term for a fully tracked armoured vehicle mounting its main armament in one or more turrets, each capable of rotating through 360°.
Tank Destroyer:- generally an SPG carrying a specialised anti-tank gun in a fixed mounting. (although the American M10 was effectively a tank, as its main weapon was carried in a fully rotating turret) German: Panzerjager

The tank in WW1:-



In the first two years of WW1, the AFV's that saw combat were armoured cars. This due to the fact that they could be built cheaply and in numbers using existing civilian car production lines, and because at the time there were really no alternatives. Some, like the British Rolls-Royce, were of such sound design that they were still fighting in the first years of the Second World War.


Armoured cars proved their worth during the relatively fluid fighting of 1914, on occassion proving that a fixed machine gun is more than a match for horsed cavalry, but declined in importance as the trench lines grew deeper and more permanent.


The bare outlines of the genesis of the tank are known to just about everyone: all and any means, however bizarre, to break the deadlock of trench warfare were contemplated. This was out of a growing sense of desperation at the inability of orthodox military wisdom to find a way out of the stalemate of the trenches, and out of revulsion at the mounting casualty lists.


Fully tracked caterpillar devices had been known for some years before 1914: however, it took a flash of genius to speculate on what might happen if these were combinesd with defensive armour and offensive weaponry.




It was a matter of chance who got there first with the first tank: the British and the French, unknown to each other, were both working along the same lines, of utilising the caterpillar track principle that was in use for heavy civilian vehicles (the very first proto-JCB's on building sites were fully tracked, even in 1914).


A Colonel St Estienne of the French Army developed a military application of a civilian chassis, that was effectively a self-propelled gun with a very heavy artillery piece mounted in the nose.


Meanwhile in the UK, enter Little Willie, which mutated into the Mark One tank of 1916.


Of these two variant designs, the French StEstienne tank was hampered by an over-literal interpretation of the phrase "landship". This was only meant as a poetic description: but the boat-shaped hull of the StEstienne tank was taking trhe metaphor a step too far, as this contributed to the tank getting hopelessly bogged in wet ground.


Even StEstienne himself realised that the rhomboid shape of the British tank was far more applicable and practical on the Western Front, and applied himself to another metaphor from previous wars: that of the mediaeval castle.


His next design was a quantum leap forward in tank history. Learning from the British, it had wide flat tracks that distributed the weight of the vehicle more evenly over the ground and making a smaller, lighter, tank less likely to bog down.


Perhaps taking his cue from armoured cars, StEstienne also asked if there was no reason why his "mobile fortress" should not have a seperate turret to carry its main weapon, allowing it a full 360 degree field fo fire.


This was the first turreted tank, and also the first use of the term "turret" to describe the roating unit on the top housing the main weapon.


StEstienne's second design became the Renault FT-17, in its way and in its time every bit as significant and iconic as the T-34 of a later war. FT-17's were taken up, licence-built or simply pirated by half the armies of the world. The vehicle, or recognisable derivatives thereof, was still in front-line use by France, Japan and the USSR during WW2.


There are even reports of FT-17's having been used in post-colonial African conflicts as late as the 1960's, thus giving this vehicle a fifty-year plus fighting history: this is only rivalled by the Russian T-34, or possibly the British Centurion series. (Although see Panzer MkIV below, which holds the world record for Germany as it is still in limited active service today)

The tank in the inter-war years, 1919-39:-



These have been called the "Locust Years" of tank design and performance, with good reason.


The most destructive war the world had ever known was over. The sheer expense meant that none of the belligerant nations was willing or able to do more than the minimum necessary to keep her defences ticking over.


In addition, the old military mind was surfacing again, the one that at least in Britain saw World War One as a deviation from the "norm", happening in unique circumstances that would never again be repeated, and that therefore nothing had really changed: the strike arm of choice was STILL horsed cavalry. These tank things were at best noisy toys, damned effective in the conditions they'd been designed for, it might be useful to keep SOME on the strength just in case, but we don't need that many and we certainly can't afford any research into new kinds of tank, I mean the defence budget's limited, have you SEEN the size of this fodder bill for the horses, and Regimental polo teams don't come cheap, et c et c.


Therefore it was private research and not government money that kept the tank ideal alive.


In Britain it was Vickers who financed and developed a string of cutting-edge tank designs, with some recompense in terms of overseas sales and licencing agreements with other countries.


Vickers were so good at this that some of the ideas they evolved were taken up world-wide and were standard practice throughout the war years - for instance the patented Vickers suspension that was used by France,Italy, Japan, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Russia and the USA.


A classic example would be the Vickers Medium tank of 1928, which was (by default)only retired from front-line British army service in 1943.


While most armies still had their Colonel Blimps in charge, there were mavericks. Three names worth remembering are FULLER, LIDDEL-HART, and GUDERIAN.

The tank by major producing nations:-

America:-



Given what it became by 1945, it’s hard to visualize the state of the U.S. Army, or for that matter America’s war production capacity, in 1939.

The USA entered the war years in September 1939 with virtually nothing in the way of modern AFV’s or aircraft. The only arm of service that could be said to be even halfway ready for war was the Navy, and geography dictated that this was split across two oceans to face two possible threats (Japan and Europe).


As a result of the isolationalist policy of the inter-war years, America’s armed forces were in a state where the most they could do, and the most that was expected of them, was to undertake minor police actions in the Carribean and to maintain American colonial rule in the Philippines.



With the rise of Fascism in Europe, and Japanese expansionism in the Pacific, a handful of influential Americans, Roosevelt included, realized that isolationism was not a sustainable long-term policy: sooner or later the USA had to engage in the wider world, ideally before involvement was forced upon them with unfavourable terms. The problem was changing the majority opinion which held that America could stand aloof from conflict in Europe and Asia.


In this climate of opinion, the US Army was a loser. Held back by budget constraints and a strategic doctrine that denied a world place for American arms, the Army was little more than a glorified police force. It was largely denied the weapons for a modern offensive war; the few tanks it held were, in the main, leftovers from the First World War with a sprinkling of more modern types.



The fact the Army had any tanks at all was a triumph for those few forward-thinking officers who managed to sustain any kind of development programme into modern weapons. In fact, it was a victory for the great American talent for euphemism: denied sub-machine guns for the troops because the politicians thought they would cost too much, an unsung genius altered the requisition form to read “automatic rifles”, and thus was born the Great American Icon, the Tommy Gun. In the same spirit, “tanks” (expensive) were ordered as “combat cars”, (cheap), which allowed a bare minimum of research, development and training to take place in the 1920’s and 30’s.


In the light of what came later, the fact that American officers, such as a certain Colonel George C. Patton, had at least some tanks to work with, was clearly important.


What was also important was that because the American Army was able to buy some tanks (albeit by cooking the books and conning the Treasury), American industry was maintaining the capacity and the experience to build them. Without this minimal experience in the 1930’s, the massive expansion of America’s tank production lines that came later would have been made infinitely more difficult, even impossible. Where do you start if your industry is building no tanks at all and has no recent experience of doing so?


Because of budget constraints, America largely missed out on one of the most significant tank designs of the 1930's. Christie's independently developed tank suspension was a revolutionary arrangement that ensured far faster speeds and a more comfortable ride than most tanks of the period could give: this rejected by America but gratefully taken up by Russia and Czechoslovakia, with far-reaching consequences that found their zenith in the Russian T-34 design.


As for these early “combat cars”.


The first all-American tank was the M1. This barely classed as a tankette, having twin turrets each mounting a single standard-calibre MG. But it provided invaluable experience to American crews in fighting in tanks, to American officers concerning commanding tanks, and to American industry with regard to making tanks. No M1’s saw combat in WW2, but the type was extensively used for crew training.


This was followed by the M2, which mounted a 37mm main weapon in a single fully rotating turret. In all but fine detail and a little bit of reworking of the original design, America now had a tank fit for war. M2’s saw limited service against the Japanese and were provided to Britain as Lease-Lend items, but the British used them exclusively as training tanks, as by 1941 something better had arrived.


The M3 series saw volume production. In its essentials it was an improved M2 with better suspension and a more reliable engine, and the early models bristled with MG’s: five auxiliary machine guns, in total.



In the four or five years between the M1 in 1936 and the M3 in 1941, American industry had undergone a revolution. Roosevelt was winning the arguments for greater American involvement, slowly, steadily, and patiently moving America away from isolation. It was also the case that in 1940, there was no such thing as Lease-Lend: Britain was buying military equipment from the USA at market prices like any other customer, and American industry, under the laws of market forces, naturally expanded to take full advantage of a single paying customer. This quite neatly bypassed the Isolationist lobby in Congress, and Roosevelt was able to make the not unreasonable suggestion that America should take full advantage of its new manufacturing economy to create expanded American armed forces equipped with the best that money could buy. Congress and Senate accepted the argument: it made no sense for the very best military equipment that American skill could devise to go to equipping a foreign army, while American forces went lacking. Thus, the U.S. Army underwent a massive and necessary expansion in 1940 and 1941.


Meanwhile, a constant flow of hard data was coming back to America as to how well its equipment was standing the stresses of combat in North Africa. With British help gained in the cauldron of battle, the M3 tank was redesigned with a new, cast turret and welded hull: combat had demonstrated that a riveted design was inferior in battle and could be dangerous to the crew, in that a near-miss could cause rivets to burst loose and bounce around inside a tank with the speed and impact of random bullets.


The British loved this tank: perhaps because its British equivalent was called the Valentine, the American M3 gained the name “Honey” because it was considered to be a beauty to drive and maintain. This was a one-off: its sister tanks, as they arrived, were given more dignified honorifics, named after cavalry generals of the American Civil War, while the M3 was retrospectively named the General Stuart. (The British names succeeded in filtering back into American usage, so the gesture must have been appreciated).


In tandem with the M3 light tank, the Americans had been pursuing heavier tank development. At this point a distinction needs to be made between the M3 light tank, alternatively known as the Honey or the General Stuart, and the M3 medium tank, which the British renamed as the General Grant or the General Lee according to variant.



Again it was British tank practice which forced this: in British tank doctrine, there needed to be a lighter, faster, cruiser tank to exploit breakthroughs, in the manner of cavalry of old. This role was taken by the M3 Stuart. British doctrine also called for a heavier, more robust, infantry tank to act as immediate fire support during an infantry advance.



The British requirement for an “infantry tank” was met by the M3 medium tank. This was explicitly described as “an interim tank” on the road to something bigger and better: American industry was still learning how to gear itself up to bigger and more complex tank designs. Strictly speaking, the M3 medium wasn’t a tank at all: as its heaviest gun was in a fixed hull mounting, it is perhaps more accurately described as a self-propelled gun with an auxiliary turret. The secondary turret mounted the same 37mm main weapon as the Stuart, while the fixed-forward hull gun was a 75mm artillery piece of French design left over from the First World War.


The first model of the M3 (the General Lee) had a large turret with a large cupola mounting a machine-gun. As this could turn for 360° independently of the gun-turret, effectively it was a sub-turret on a turret. The British questioned whether this refinement was really necessary, and pointed out that it raised the height of the tank to nearly thirteen feet above ground level – a crucial factor in desert fighting, where shadow and silhouette could betray a tank to enemy fire. This point having been noted, a new, lower, turret was devised with a co-axial rather than independent MG. This version became the General Grant.


Apart from its high profile, which in the wide-open spaces of North Africa made it a natural target for German guns, the Grant was well-received by British tankers, who appreciated the vastly improved firepower it gave them.



In 1941, two things happened that forced American industry to accelerate its expansion and gear up to build still more tanks.



Firstly, in June, Germany declared war on Russia. The Soviet Union was offered, and gladly accepted, Lease-Lend aid on the same terms as Britain. From now on, there would also be a steady flow of tanks westward: by war’s end, 12,000 American and British tanks would reach the Russians as part of war aid.


In December 1941, the United States finally entered the war as a belligerent. By January, the USA was committed to a war on two fronts.


As well as the desert of Africa, American tanks were now seeing action in an entirely different theatre of combat; the Asian jungles. The M3 Stuart proved itself all over again in jungle fighting, being an equal match, or superior to, every Japanese tank it encountered, as well as demonstrating its superb mechanical reliability. The British pulled two regiments of Stuarts out of North Africa to cover the long retreat out of Burma: despite no time to acclimatize, the crews and tanks did everything that was asked of them with minimal maintenance.



Similarly, the Japanese were so impressed by the Stuart that, having captured sixty or so in the Philippines, they then equipped an armoured regiment of their own with them. This inadvertent example of American generosity saw action in 1945 against its former owner.



The humiliating defeat at Kasserine in 1943 was a wake-up call to the Americans, who responded by identifying the flaws in their command that had led to disaster, and promptly rectifying them. Out went the hapless and incompetent General Fredenhall; in came the little-known General Eisenhower5. The old unwieldy and cumbersome organization tables were redrafted to create more manageable and tactically flexible formations. The lessons of war were fed back to training bases in the USA.



From the USA, the latest model of tank, the M4 General Sherman, was flooding into the hands of end-users in many different Armies. (Principally the American, British and Russian, although minor users such as Brazil were entirely fitted out at American expense as recompense for entering the war on the Allied side.)

Recognisably derived from the earlier M3 Medium, the Sherman incorporated all the lessons of war that had been learnt so far. Its height had been lowered to a more practical eight feet or so; and most crucially, it had been recognized that the turret should be large enough to incorporate the heaviest possible weapon in the place where it could have most effect.



Around 60,000 Shermans were built up till the end of the war: it served on every front, and both numerically and geographically it must count as one of the two tanks that have a claim towards winning the war for the Allies. Not because it was an outstanding tank – it wasn’t. The best compliment that can be paid to the Sherman is that it was a mechanically reliable sound design and there was no lack of them: American industry saw to that.



At the same time, the M3 light tank had been systematically redesigned to incorporate the lessons of two years of war: it was now re-named the M5, in its new and improved form.



The M3 medium in its original form soldiered on to the end of the war in the Far East. The characteristics that had made it a mixed blessing in the desert – standing so tall and high – made this vehicle a success in the jungles, where enhanced visibility and directed firepower mattered against the Japanese.



Elsewhere, the M3, now redundant as a front-line tank, saw a new lease of life as the platform for a variety of SPG’s: the M7 Priest, mounting a 105mm gun, and as the M40 Gun Carriage, mounting the superheavy 155 or 210mm artillery pieces.


As the war swung more and more in favour of the Allies, American industry concentrated on turning out as many as possible of these tried and proven favourites, rather than to dilute production into new and untried directions.


By the end of the war, American industry added only new mass-production tanks to its catalogue: the M24 General Chaffee, as a light replacement for the M3/M5 series; and the M28 General Pershing, a heavy tank intended to be more than a match for the Tiger and the Panther.


The M10 series of tank destroyers saw the Sherman tank chassis re-designed into a tank mounting the high-powered 3 inch anti-tank gun: this powerful weapon was mounted in an open-topped turret offering no overhead protection for the crew and had surprisingly thin armour, placing it at a disadvantage against German designs unless it could fire first from concealment. This design was also adapted by the British to mount their tank-killing 17 pounder and called the Achilles. This tank saw action from 1944 onwards.


A fourth new design, the Locust light tank, was designed after the example of the British Tetrach to be air-portable, either by glider or heavy transport aircraft, and was in its essentials a stripped-down and lightweight M3/M5 medium. This was built in limited numbers and saw combat at Nijmigen and in the Rhine crossings.




In the event, Chaffee6 and Pershing were almost too late for WW2, and the Pershing, rather than squaring up against the Tiger, found itself speculatively weighed in the balance against the JSIII and JSU152 as part of the sparring to create a New World Order.


And, (as was the case with the British Centurion and the Russian JSIII), the M24 and the M28, tanks almost too late for WW2, formed the core of the nation’s army until well into the 1960’s. A transformed US Army, backed by the world’s most powerful industrial complex, emerged in 1945.

Czechoslovakia:-



Why Czechoslovakia?


The answer lies in the thriving armaments industry created during Czechoslovakia’s brief independence following the end of the First World War.


The Czechs appear to be a people who are naturally gifted at creating weapons of war – remember the Hussite armoured battle-wagons from way back in this entry?


Czech genius extended from small arms all the way to tanks.


During the 1930’s, the outstanding Skoda 35 tank not only equipped the Czech army, it was widely exported to Finland, Hungary, Romania, Poland, all of whom equipped their armies with this vehicle. Even the British Army was interested enough to buy half a dozen of this tank for evaluation, as did the German. The S35 was an outstanding original Czech design based on a variant of the British Vickers tank suspension. It mounted a 37mm main weapon and provided good protection and speed and was regarded as some years ahead of its time.


This was followed up with the Skoda 38 of 1938. Again this saw wide European take-up, particularly in Eastern European armies. This was a wholly Czech design with a radically new suspension breaking away from Carden-Lloyd and Vickers principles that had dominated for so long.


What 1938 also saw was the German invasion and annexation of Czechoslovakia.


It is undeniable that, apart from the ideological concept of “liberating” the Sudeten German peoples, Hitler was swayed by the more practical prospect of getting the Czech arms industry under German control.


One (embarrassing and unpublished) result of the Anschluss with Austria earlier in the year had been the failure rate of German tanks. What had been meant to be a triumphal Panzer march had turned into a trail of broken-down and failed tanks spread over a hundred miles of road right back to the German frontier. Guderian, for instance, reached Vienna with maybe a third of the number of Panzers his division had started off with.


The sudden incorporation of several thousand S35 and S38 tanks meant that the Wehrmacht not only increased its tank strength by 33%, it had had a sudden necessary infusion of mechanical reliability.


The blitzkriegs of 1939 and 1940 were spearheaded by Czech tanks – there is a case for saying that the defeat of Poland and France might not have happened without one German tank in every four being of Czech manufacture.


Hitler now had the Czech production lines under his control as a reliable and constant source of supply for the German army.


It was recognized by 1941 that the effectiveness of the 35 and 38 as front-line tanks was coming to an end, particularly in the face of the T-34.


The Czech factories now embarked on re-building them as specialized vehicles:- the 35 became the basis for un-armed support AFV’s, such as munitions carriers, artillery observation, field ambulances, et c.


The 38, stripped of its turret, became the foundation for a successful series of SPG’s: first the Marder and then the Hetzer tank-destroyer, which mounted 75mm anti-tank guns directly into the 38t’s hull. These Panzerjäger saw active service on all fronts, including North Africa, and were still in the German front line inventory in May 1945.


While the most potent weapon in the German inventory was the Tiger Tank, it has been estimated that for every “kill” scored by a Tiger, there was at least one scored by a Czech Panzerjäger.


Those 35’s and 38’s that remained as gun tanks were either relegated to training, or sent on second-line duties fighting partisans behind the front lines. (Deployed to SS-Police units in Russia, Poland, France and the Balkans)


Germany benefited from control of the Czech munitions industry for seven years. During this time, the Skoda works turned out a continuing supply of S35 and S38 tanks for the Wehrmacht. Renamed the Panzerkampfwagen 35(t) and 38(t), these served the Germans and their Eastern European Axis allies as main battle tanks well into 1942. As until the very end of the war Slovakia was outside the range of Allied bombers, the factories enjoyed a very long period of uninterrupted maximum production for the German war effort.


It is therefore clear that the Czech tank and vehicle industry was a potent (if unwilling) contributor to the German war economy and was a very strong factor in both Germany’s early successes and her stubborn defence of a dwindling Reich.


It should also be said as a footnote that expat Czechs fought for their nation as part of the British and Soviet armies and, where armoured, fought with the AFV's used by the host nation. Czechs in Russian service were far more numerous and grouped into a Czech National Liberation Army which at war's end was equipped with T34/85's and JS II tanks.


The Slovaks, on the other hand, were a loyal German ally, only rising in revolt in March 1945.

France:-



Tank philosophy in France was a bewildering mixture of the obsolete and ultra-modern.


To begin with, the French strategic imperative in any European war was a resolutely defensive one, despite the adage that says “acting defensively does not win wars”.


In between the wars, billions of francs were invested in the Maginot Line as the primary French line of defence. The concept was that all France needed to do was to duck behind the Maginot and wait, while a putative enemy obligingly beat its brains out and wasted its strength trying to hammer a way through. This was not completely unreasonable, as the Germans had done exactly this at the battle of Verdun in 1916. However, this reflected an incomplete learning of the lessons of WW1 – for instance, forgetting that that the original German plan in 1914 had certainly not been one of “Let’s allow the whole thing to bog down in messy inconclusive trench warfare for three years. Oh, and let’s waste half a million men trying to break through a line of long-prepared fortifications held to be the strongest in Europe, while we’re about it”.


The idea that the Germans might instead choose to bypass the Maginot and invade through Belgium seemed not to have occurred to anyone in the French High Command, despite some rather strong evidence dating from 1914.


In the event, while the French army was on paper the strongest in Europe, for several reasons the rest of the army was of variable and patchy quality.


i) The Maginot Line was not so much sucking up the bulk of defence francs, as distracting attention away from necessary reforms that were urgently needed for the rest of the French army. There was always money available, but no French general or politician had a clear idea of how it should be spent;

ii) The French had no clear idea, no strategic vision, of what their mobile army should look like; while they were deciding, the bulk of the army was in limbo with scanty and/or outdated equipment;

ii) The French system for allocating and spending money on defence was erratic, ill-accounted and chaotic; it is thought fraud and incompetence wasted a lot of the taxpayers' francs;

iv) Once bought, the quartermasters' system for issuing new equipment to the troops was woefully inefficient. As an example, even in May 1940, while front-line troops were complaining about a shortage of anti-tank weapons, enogh brand-new anti-tank guns had accumulated in rear depots to meet the front-line shortage twice over. These were later accepted, very gratefully, into German service.


As with any army depending on mass conscription to bring it up to strength, regular units received the best equipment. Reserve units had to make do with equipment dating, in extreme cases, back to the first Franco-Prussian war of 1870.


This was as true of the armoured units as any other. While France could call upon some of the most modern tanks available in 1939-40, reserve units often had the Renault FT-17 tank of 1917 vintage. This was a tank that lacked virtues in 1940: too slow, with armour that could repel small-arms fire but not much else, armed with either an infantry-calibre MG or a low-velocity 37mm gun.

However, regular units, such as General de Gaulle’s 2ieme Division de Leger, could call upon vehicles such as the Somua 37 and the Char B1bis, which, properly handled, were a match for most tanks in the German order of battle.


The Somua, and its stablemate the Hotchkiss H35, were good medium tanks, well armoured and armed, with decent armour protection.


The Char B1 was a potentially powerful heavy tank, mounting a 75mm standard howitzer in the hull and a 37mm in the turret, a configuration the Americans would revisit later in the war with tanks of the M3 Lee/Grant series. As both the French and the Anglo-Americans would discover, the drawback was that the heaviest armament was hull-mounted in a fixed position, meaning that to bring it to bear, the whole tank needed to be turned to bring it into a good firing position. (America realized the heaviest gun must be in the turret, in order to bring the maximum firepower to bear as quickly as possible. This was rectified in the M3’s successor, the M4 Sherman. It is likely the French would have realized this too and incorporated this necessary change in any successor to the B1: but their war ended too quickly for this)


The other drawback in French tanks was the distribution of labour: too often they had only two-man or even one-man turrets, where the tank commander had to act as the tank’s gunner or even loader. German tanks were all designed on the three-man turret principle, where a tank gunner looked after aiming and firing; a loader/radio operator reloaded the gun as well as relaying radio messages; and the tank commander was left to concentrate on leading and directing his tank as well as co-ordinating any other units under his command.


Many French tanks even lacked radio and had to depend on flag signals for manoevre.


This rendered French units more clumsy, unresponsive and unwieldy compared to the Germans, who took full advantage of these deficiencies in the French order of battle.


During the six weeks of battle, it is telling that the French managed nothing comparable to the localized British armoured success at Arras (where the British stopped a Blitzkrieg attack in its tracks, halting a German army in some disorder, thus ensuring they had a relatively ordered retreat to Dunkirk). It is very possible that had the French been organized enough to provide armoured support to the British at Arras, a minor defeat for the Germans could have been exploited and escalated into a major victory: but the small British armoured force on its own was incapable of inflicting decisive damage.


The Battle of France was a sorry episode where time and again, French armour was surprised, out-thought, out-manoevred, and destroyed in detail by an enemy with superior skills and a better appreciation of what a tank was for.


It also stopped the French tank industry dead, as hereafter it became no more than a client industry producing vehicles for the Germans. Like the Czech and Italian production lines, French vehicles supplied to Germany made up the shortfalls in Germany’s own production and swelled the Wehrmacht’s strength in preparation for the invasion of Russia. Many of the French tanks captured in 1940 saw continued German use; FT-17’s, Somuas and Hotchkiss tanks were to be seen in German tank training schools, or in use in anti-partisan operations in the Balkans and Russia.


Many French tanks were converted to SPG’s or support vehicles and were used extensively in Russia by the Germans.


One of the very few armoured actions fought on D-Day saw American tanks pitted against Char B1’s and Somuas from a German tank training school in Normandy (which had been chosen as an ideal backwater area, far away from any possible fighting, for recruit Panzer crews to be taught the basics). While the Germans fought bravely, the combination of obsolete tanks, semi-trained recruits and Allied air attacks saw them wiped out by the 7th June – not without taking a few Shermans with them.


Free French forces under de Gaulle were initially equipped by the British and later taken over by the Americans. Therefore the French soldiers allowed by the Americans to make a show of liberating Paris would have been dressed identically to, and operating the same range of tanks as, any comparable American armoured division: the only difference being nationality7.


The renaissance of France as a tank-producing nation would have to wait until well into the 1950’s. In the immediate post-war period, the French Army retained its Americanised identity and equipment, although, (as a major production centre fell inside the French Zone of Germany), the French used as many Panther tanks as they could get hold of, or have the factories in their zone of Germany build for them.

Germany:- a whole zoo of exotic animals



The story of Germany's involvement in WW2 breaks down into three phases.
These can be summarised as "Rise" and "Fall" with a very brief moment of "Altitude Sickness" in between.
RISE:-

Prohibited by the Versailles Treaty of 1919 to build or use tanks, Germany converted this seeming disadvantage into an asset. Firstly, the Germans were not prohibited from owning armoured cars: right from the start, these were openly used in exercises to simulate tanks and accustom the Reichswehr to the idea that tanks would be an integral part of any war it fought.


The armoured cars, or sometimes lorries, were often camoflaged in crude wood-and-canvas frames to make them look like tanks: the crudeness of this camoflage drew derisive laughter from the rest of the world, which served to deflect attention away from the serious intent beneath it and the fact that the Germans were learning and refining their tank strategies, whilst carefully and publicly sticking to the very letter of Versailles.


Where Germany WASN'T sticking to the letter of Versailles involved a secret treaty with the Soviet Union to share a tank research faculty in Siberia. This arrangement benefited both sides and lasted till January 1933 when Hitler, horrified at the idea of any sort of compact with the USSR, unilaterally cancelled it on coming to power. (Had the Germans carried on playing along with the Russians, the T-34 might not have come as such a nasty shock: again ideology served only to damage practical considerations and benefits)


However, it wasn't long before Germany started pushing at the edges of the Versailles treaty to see what it could get away with.


To Hitler's delight, he realised he could get away with a lot: he correctly realised that Britain and France, fourteen years after WW1, were now in a mood to be a lot more conciliatory and accept that it was time to quietly drop some of the more punitive clauses of Versailles which had been enforced in a mood of vindictiveness and anger.


Secondly, Britain and France both had right-wing conservative establishments that considered the Nazi Pary to be essentially a conservative administration, that would act as a sound bulwark against the Western spread of Communism: they made the error of not noticing, or at least minimising, the nastier fascist elements of the programme in favour of having Germany under strong right-wing government. Thus German rearmament was seen as a Good Thing - at first.


Thirdly, the last thing Britain and France wanted was a second ruinous European war. In this mood, and also out of a kind of guilt feeling that Versailes had been too punitive, the policy of appeasement was born: to meet what were seen as fair and reasonable German demands, in order for that country to take a strong place in Europe once more.


Therefore when Germany started to openly flaunt tanks, aircraft and big battleships once more, this was viewed as only right and proper and something not to be opposed.


This combination of timidity and sympathy was to have calamitous consequences. Hitler felt strong enough to reclaim the Rhineland for Germany in 1936 and marched his army into this formerly demilitarised border zone, despite the earnest warnings of his generals. Had France omved against this and made a decision to say "No, we will not have German troops on our border", and back it with troops, then the subsequent history of the world might have been different. But France did nothing.
HIGH WATER:-
FALL:-


German tanks of WW2: a brief chronology:-
Note:- standard German abbrievations will be used throughout this entry for ease of use. Panzerkampfwagen Mk 1 becomes Pnz 1


Also note that for every German tank, there was at least one corresponding SPG that shared the same chassis and wheelbase: where space allows the most important of these will be dealt with below.
Pnz 1 1935-43

Germany’s first volume-built tank: scarcely qualifying as a tank at all, this was a small nimble turreted tankette mounting twin machine-guns of infantry calibre and weighing in at six tons – less than the weight of a King Tiger’s turret alone!

However, these tanks had several virtues: they were cheap to make, they familiarised German industry with volume-building of tanks, they enabled German crews and officers to train with real tanks, as opposed to cardboard shells draped over a lorry chassis, and in the eyes of the Fuhrer, several hundred on parade at Nuremburg made a spectacular sight for the eyes for the Party and the world.

The Panzer One saw active service first in the Spanish Civil War, where German “volunteers” honed their skills in the Nationalist cause. It was noted here that however ineffectual, the sight or sound of a tank could have an instantly demoralising effect on enemy infantry, an observation put to good use in later wars.

In Spain, the Spanish Government upgraded this tank to carry a 37mm cannon in a slightly larger turret. As this was a workable idea, it is surprising that the Germans did not adopt this as a means of beefing up their smallest, lightest but most numerous tank.

Instead, when serious war came in Poland, the Pnz I was used in its original, double machine-gunned form. It was effective against infantry, but easily destroyed on the rare occasions it came up against Polish armour.

By the time of the Battle of France, this tank (of which nearly 2,000 were built) was gradually being phased out and converted to specialist uses, such as a mobile command centre or a turretless ammunition carrier. It had two SPG variants: the dangerously overloaded Bison 150mm howitzer, with the weight of the gun and the high centre of gravity creating a tank which was unstable on anything but a level surface, and the Panzerjäger I, which mounted the Czech 47mm anti-tank gun in a fixed, open superstructure.

The last production models of the Pnz I utilised a running gear that made it almost indistinguishable from the Pnz II, and the very last model was a “testbed” for the interleaved road-wheel system seen in the Tiger and Panther: these were issued to recce units, and fought till 1943.
Pnz 2 1936-43


The later marks of the Panzer I and the early marks of the Panzer II shared many common features.

The earliest models of the PnzII shared the same torsion-bar arrangement with the PnzI, where five small roadwheels were secured by an external bar linking them all. This made for stability, but a rocky, badly suspended, ride for the crew.

However, the modified Christie suspension that appeared on the penultimate production models of the Pnz I became the basis for the Pnz II in all but its last production model.

The tank superficially resembled a larger, stretched, Pnz I with a redesigned turret mounting a co-axial 20mmKwK cannon and a standard MG34 machine-gun. This armament remained unchanged during the service life of this vehicle.


This tank, while still light and undergunned, served on all fronts in WW2 and was particularly effective in the wide open spaces of North Africa and Russia as a fast recce vehicle.


Its last production variant used the same interleaved roadwheel system as the Tiger and Panther, and was designated the Lynx.


The Pnz II was used as the chassis for several SP weapons: the Marder II, mnounting a captured Russian 76.2mm antitank gun, nd at least two SP artillery variants: the Wespe ("Wasp"8.) SPG, mounting the 105mm howitzer, and a "stretched" chassis that mounted the SiG122mm cannon. Unarmed Wespes were also used as ammunition carriers and as armoured field ambulances.
Pnz 3 1937-44


The Panzerkampfwagen Mk III began in 1937, as a design of medium tank that was expected to eventually supercede the Pnz I and Pnz II in German service.

The prototype Pnz III did not see combat service, but offered a useful test-bed to work out the practicalities of the interleaved torsion-bar suspension that was to be “standard” in both the Pnz III and Pnz IV series tanks. It is clear on first sight that these two tanks share a common design and a common set of principles. the practical visual difference was that the III had six roadwheels per side, and the larger IV had eight.

The fact that the IV was effectively an enlarged and uprated version of the III offered German industry many production advantages, in that the two tanks shared so many common parts. This eased manufacture and contributed towards these two tank series being easily the most numerous in German service. (nearly 40,000 of both chassis types were built by 1945, including all SPG and specialised variants)

However, the smaller III, while efficient in France and North Africa with its 37mm gun, started to display signs of obsolescence in Russia when faced with the T-34 and KV-1.

At the time it was the most numerous tank in German service, and it could not be withdrawn from service without leaving a dangerously large hole in Germany’s order of battle. Therefore it was progressively up-gunned with the 50mm main gun: where facilities and circumstances allowed, the earlier 37mm armed models were also up-armoured with extra thicker armour plating on the hull and turret front. This additional weight served to slow the tank, but allowed it an extra lease of life in Russia and North Africa (where British designation called it the “Panzer III Special”).

The Pnz III was still in German service at the time of the Battle of Kursk in July 1943: here, it was given additional “skirt” armour to the hull sides and turret, as was the Pnz IV, as a defence against shaped charges and rocket-propelled grenades. Those would now detonate against the spaced armour, which stood some inches proud of the tank’s main armour plating, and explode harmlessly into the airspace in between.

The Pnz III was officially retired from front-line service in late 1943, although due to tank shortages it could still be found fighting the Allies in Normandy in June 1944.


from late 1943 onwards, the Pnz III production lines were solely tasked with building the StüG III, and tank production came to a halt.


While the tank was too small to take the long-barreled high velocity 75mm gun fitted to the Pnz IV, its last production model, the Pnz III ausf n, mounted the short L/28 75mm cannon (as had been used on the early Pnz IV). This was used as a fire-support vehicle in Tiger tank battalions and issued to Panzergrenadier units in lieu of dedicated assault guns.


Panzer III variants:-

i) StüG III: SturmGeschutz, or assault gun: this mounted a 75mm weapon in the Pnz III hull, and was used for immediate fire support and mobile anti-tank protection to lorry or half-track mounted Panzer Grenadier assault infantry. The last production model mounted the 105mm howitzer. This was Germany’s most numerous and most successful assault gun of WW2.

ii) Bergepanzer III: the unarmed tank recovery vehicle issued to panzer workshop units. This was powerful enough to recover tanks of the III/IV series: there was no need to sacrifice Pnz IV production to build a Bergepanzer IV, for instance, because the III was adequate for all.

iii) Befehlspanzer III: the unarmed command vehicle, also used as a mobile signals centre and as a command vehicle for Engineer units tasked with use of the Goliath remote-controlled demolition tank.

iv) The SU122i and the SU76i:- This SPG assault gun deserves a mention here, as the ebb and flow of combat on the Russian front had, by January 1943, left a lot of German hardware stranded on the Russian side of the front line. The Russians had seen the efficacy of assault guns based on the same chassis as your standard main battle tank, and were rushing production of the SU-85 and SU-122 to complement the T-34 in the same way. However, these would not be ready before late 1943, and the Russians needed something in place as soon as. So, having captured upwards of 300 Panzer III’s of various types and conditions, over 200 were converted into a rough-and-ready assault gun, with a simple square boxy fighting compartment built onto the Pnz III hull and mounting either the 122mm howitzer or the 76.2mm standard tank gun. These served with the Red Army until better gear became available, and at least two came full circle – they were recaptured by the Germans and ended up fighting for their original owner!
Pnz 4 1939-45


Only a very small elite handful of tanks have the distinction of having been in frontline service in September 1939, and remaining in frontline service all the way till May 1945.

The British Matilda can claim this distinction; but the German Pnz mk IV can go a long way better than this.

Entering frontline service in 1937, the Pnz IV spearheaded the Anschluss into Austria in 1938, and was there in 1939 for the annexation of Czechoslovakia and the brief Polish war.

Designed initially as a means of providing heavy fire support to the lighter tanks of the Panzer Division (the 20mm armed Pnz II and the 37mm armed 35(t), 38(t), and Pnz III), this tank, with its heavy 75mm gun, was the only German tank capable of taking on the British Matilda and the French Char B in equal combat. However, the Panzer Divisions in 1939 and 1940 did not have nearly enough of them.


This situation persisted until 1941 and the advent of the KV-1 and T-34.

Suddenly, the short L/24 75mm was no longer adequate as the heaviest German tank weapon, and the Panzer IV ausf f1 model was hastily upgunned to take the long 75mm antitank gun. This became the Panzer IV ausf f2, which was designated the “Panzer IV special” in North Africa. As the war progressed, more and more expedients were used to keep the Pnz IV battleworthy and updated. The ausf h model incorporated a slightly better gun, thicker armour and a more powerful engine; from this variant onwards, spaced armour was also incorporated as a close-defence against infantry-portable anti-tank weapons. Additional armour was spaced several inches out from the turret and body so that of hit by a bazooka round or similar, this would be harmlessly exploded into the airspace in between skirt armour and tank proper. This spaced armour did not need to be especially thick: just heavy enough to explode anti-tank missiles on contact.

This skirt armour had another bonus: it changed the observed shape and silhouette of the Panzer IV into something that could easily be mistaken for a Tiger. It is very possible this was deliberately done to confuse and demoralise Allied troops and tankers, and certainly resulted in many mistaken identifications of German tanks in Normandy.

By war’s end, the Pnz IV had advanced to the ausf j version, and plans were in existence to progressively replace the now obsolete turret with the same Schmalturm which had been designed to fit the Panther II; tests had proven that the Panzer IV hull could just about accept this turret. However the war ended before the Pnz IV ausf k could take the field.

This was not the end of the Panzer IV story.

As Cold War replaced Hot War, the Middle East became the proxy battleground of the USA and USSR. Just as the Americans provided military assistance to Israel, the Russians gave what they could to Syria and Jordan, its proxies in the region.

This largesse included a hundred or so captured and reconditioned Panzer IV tanks, which continued to fight the Shermans in Israeli service through 1948, 1956 and even into 1967.

In fact, fairly well founded rumour has it that the last of the Panzer IV’s is still in active Syrian service today, albeit dug into the Golan Heights as a manned, static, pill-box. Which gives this tank an active service record of 68 years!


Panzer IV variants seeing service: as the most numerous and ubiquitous German tank, it saw many different alternative uses. It became an amphibious chassis used by both the German Navy and Army in the run-up to a projected invasion of England; it became a “munitionschlepper”, or ammunition carrier, for the big guns; as the Hummel, or “Bumblebee”, it became an SP artillery weapon mounting a 150mm gun.

As the Panzerjager Nashorn (Rhinoceros), it mounted a lethal long 88mm tank-killer.

As the Panzerjäger IV, this tank mounted a deadly 75mm in an enclosed compartment.

As the StüG IV, it became an assault gun that spearheaded the panzergrenadier units.

There were three anti-aircraft tanks based on the Panzer IV:- the Ostwind, mounting a single FlaK 37 in a modified turret; the Wirbelwind (Whirlwind)mounting a quadruple 20mm weapon; and the Moebelwagen (Furniture Van)which could carry either of these weapons, or the classic FlaK 88. Their purpose was to carry immediate anti-aircraft defence right up front with the attacking Panzers.


Finally, there was the Brummbar IV (Grizzly Bear), an SPG mounting a 150mm mortar and used to attack enemy fortifications and for urban street fighting.
(i)Pnz 5 Neue 1940


The "first" Panzer V, not to be confused with the Panther. Effectively a clutch of four or five experimental heavy tanks that were deployed to the invasion of Denmark and Norway as a "bluff", to give Allied intelligence a misleading impression of German tank strength. These designs were proven obselete by the advent of the T-34 and were quietly allowed to serve out their time as part of the Norway garrison. In appearance, were derivative of Vickers designs of the twenties and thorties.
(ii) Pnz 5 Panther 1942-45


The Panther was developed for the same reason that had caused the “original” Pnz5 design to be discontinued as obsolete. The advent of the KV-1 and T-34 in 1941 had come as a traumatising shock to the Germans, who hitherto had considered their own tank designs to be comfortably superior to anything an enemy could put up against them.

Encountering superior tanks – albeit superior tanks handled amateurishly – forced a massive rethink of German tank design. The idea of building a straight copy of the T-34 was briefly considered, but rejected as impractical. Therefore all work on the existing Pnz V heavy tank was discontinued, and the title was transferred to a project for a new, medium, tank capable of defeating the T-34. (Similarly, work began on designs for a heavy Pnz VI to counter the KV-1: see Tiger, below)

This work was given top priority, and in less than a year, the first prototypes were ready for trials. While the new tank was visibly influenced by the T-34, it was larger and heavier, mounting a long-barreled 75mm gun with greater weight and hitting power.


The first Panthers were rushed into frontline service for the ill-fated battle of Kursk in July 1943. Out of several hundred tanks committed, over half broke down with mechanical problems, including a tendency for the engine to burst into flames: these drawbacks were due to the speed with which the tank had been hurried into service, and were rectified successfully in the later ausf A variant. (Confusingly, the first Panther type to see service was the ausf d, which had differences of detail and hull configuration to the later ausf a and ausf g variants)

The Panther tank, in its three main production variants, became one of the mainstays of an increasingly defensive war, used to beef up the ageing Pnz IV tank which was still the most numerous tank in German service.

With its early teething trouble sorted out, the Panther saw action on all fronts (excluding North Africa) and, by war’s end, was just beginning to be superceded by the improved Panther II, mounting a powerful 88m gun in a smaller and radically redesigned schmalturm . However, only six of this new model had been built at war’s end.

The Panther spawned only two SP variants: the unarmed Bergepanther tank recovery vehicle, and the 88mm-armed Jagdpanther tank destroyer.

Post-war, the Panther continued to be built by German factories within the French Zone of Occupation, in order to equip the post-war French Army with a main battle tank. The French used the Panther up until the early 1950’s.
Pnz 6 Tiger 1942-45


The genesis of the Tiger tank was the need for a vehicle that could out-fight and destroy the Russian KV-1 (then the world’s most effective heavy tank) in combat. Scenarios such as the one where a single KV-1 held up an entire German divisional advance for three days, just by sitting astride the only tank-useable bridge, haunted the German mind: the only reliable way of destroying a KV-1, for a long time, was by bringing up a battery of 105mm field guns into a dangerously exposed position and employing them as anti-tank guns.

The Pnz VI project created two variant prototypes, from Porsche and Henschel. After extensive tests, the Porsche version was discontinued and the slightly lighter, but faster and more manoeuvrable, Henschel version was taken into production.

This left Porsche with the problem of what to do with nearly a hundred of its Tiger that it had rushed into production, anticipating their design would be accepted.

These were de-turreted, and a long 88mm anti-tank gun was installed in a fully enclosed fighting compartment, generating what was at first known as the Ferdinand, and later the Elefant.

This was (at the time) the largest and most unwieldy German SPG of the war, and initially, these vehicles were sent to the Russian front where they were badly mauled at Kursk. Surviving Ferdinands, rebuilt as the Elefant with vitally essential HMG for close-combat, were then deployed in Italy where they took a toll of Allied armour.

Meanwhile, the first Tigers were sent to the Russian front in November 1942, and to Tunisia where the tank (virtually impregnable to all British and American weapons) came as a very nasty shock.

While the Tiger was a success in the wide-open spaces of North Africa, it was less so on the marshy, boggy, Leningrad front: the first tank deployed in action against the Russians was captured intact, and acted as a spur to development of the JS tank and JSU tank destroyer, which made its combat debut at Kursk, where the flower of the German army was decisively beaten by Russia.

Tiger tanks acquitted themselves well at Kursk, and became a symbol of the dogged retreat back to Berlin, with German soldiers fighting every inch of the way.

In the West, Tigers commited to action in Italy and Normandy carried on the fearsome reputation they had acquired in Tunisia – the Allies had nothing to counter this tank, with the possible exception of the British 17 pounder anti-tank gun. Even this was carried into battle in a Sherman tank hull, or in a modified Valentine or Cromwell tank, none of which could stand a direct hit from a Tiger.

There is an account where a Churchill tank commander relates firing three rounds from a six-pounder at almost suicidally close range, only to watch all his shots bounce off: the first shot from the Tiger kills his driver and destroys his tank.9

American tankers worked out that it took four Shermans to kill a Tiger: that with four tanks stalking it, the Tiger could only effectively deal with and “kill” three. Allowing the fourth to creep up unobserved and deliver a killing shot to the thinner rear armour.


Production of the Tiger ceased in late 1944 to allow for increased production of the Pnz VII King Tiger.


As the Tiger was so ubiquitous as a gun tank, only two variants shared its chassis: the undeniably needed Bergetiger tank recovery vehicle, where the main armament was replaced with a crane/winch to allow it to tow other Tigers.


There was also the Sturmtiger engineer vehicle, an SPG which mounted a massive 210mm mortar and which was used for urban street fighting and demolitions of fortified positions.
Pnz 7 King Tiger 1944-5


TheTiger II ( King Tiger) evolved from the specification for an eventual replacement for the Tiger tank. As with the Tiger I, Porsche and Henschel submitted conflicting designs, Porsche reverting to a variant on the Ferdinand chassis that was the unsuccessful design for the Tiger I.

In the event, the Porsche design for the Tiger 2 was accepted for service, although slightly less than a hundred were built with the slightly different Henschel design of turret. One or two early prototypes also saw service in the last days of April 1944: in appearance, this was the hull of the Elefant SP, rebuilt to mount a King Tiger turret at the rear of the vehicle where the SP’s fighting compartment had been.

Only about 500 of these sixty-ton tanks were built, but in one vital respect they represented a realisation that German tank production must be standardised around the greatest possible number of common parts. The flat disc roadwheels were of a universal standard that could also be fitted to later models of the Tiger I and the Panther, replacing their original cast dished roadwheels.

The Royal Tiger entered service in April 1944 and saw action in Normandy, central Russia, the Ukraine, the Ardennes, and Hungary.

While few in numbers it was very definitively King of the Battlefield, hampered only by mechanical breakdown. As with the Tiger I, the Allies discovered that the only thing sure to stop this tank was an air-strike: it presented a large, attractive, target to ground-attack aircraft.

Only one Tiger II variant was known: the seventy-ton Jagdtiger II SPG, mounting an impressive 128mm main weapon. No more than seventy of these were built, although it was intended to be the SPG partner of the tank.

This tank came too late and too few to make any significant contribution to the cause of a war effort that was already doomed: Germany might have been better off to have used the resources on three or four times as many Pnz IV's or three times as many Panthers.
Pnz 35(t) 1938-42

see under Czechoslovakia
Pnz 38(t) 1938-42

see under Czechoslovakia
"Paper Panzers" / "Wehrmacht '46" 1945 and on.

In an alternative universe where the war didn't end in May 1945, these would have been the next generation of German tanks and AFV's.

They deserve a brief mention here as a lot of speculative thought has gone into contemplating how they would have performed in combat and whether or not they would have made a difference. Also, the model industry has met a perceived need by creating so many of these tanks as kits - despite the fact some designs were only one or two stages away from being hasty scribbles on the inside of a fag packet!


There are signs that the Germans had realised how much effort was being frittered away along unproductive lines and sustaining too many different types of vehicles. The emphasis would have been to standardise as far as possible on universal components - ie, a common set of roadwheels and tracks - and to progressively refurbish older tanks with newer standard components. For instance, as Panzer mk IV's returned for overhaul, it was proposed that they be fitted with the same "Schmalturm" turret that would be used to equip the Panther MkII that was just entering production at the end of the war. The Panther II would share roadwheels, track and other components with the projected replacement for the Tiger, and with the Hetzer II update of the 38t chassis.


Most of the new designs remained concepts on paper, but half a dozen or so Panther II's managed to see combat before the war's end.


One design that says everything about German profligacy did see combat: the E-100 "Maus", possibly so called because all the big cat names had been taken, saw combat in May 1945 in the fighting outside Berlin. This 100 ton monster (two were built) was Hitler's pet project, and mounted a 128mm gun in co-axial to an 88mm. Predictably, both bogged down under their own weight and were outflanked by the Russians, who exploited their many blind zones to the full.

Great Britain, Empire and Commonwealth:- "Gentlemen" and "Tradesmen"



In 1939, the tanks available to the British Army were among the best in the world; it isn't necessarily correct to say they were, in themselves, inferior to those deployed by the Germans.

However, British command structures, and their philosophy of tank use, were undeniably inferior to those of the German Army. it wasn't that the weapons were inferior, or the men using those weapons any less better or professional - their leadership belonged to the Colonel Blimp tendency that saw the tank as being a poor substitute for horsed cavalry, and had such a strong emotional tie to the horse that they simply couldn't see any other use for the tank except as a poor replacement for cavalry.


As late as the 1980's, the British Army still had a mentality where its officer class was divided into "gentlemen" and "tradesmen"; the Gentlemen would be officers of the Cavalry, certainly of the Household Division, and of long-standing County regiments with pedigrees stretching back up to and over three hundred years.


"Tradesmen" would be Engineers, Signallers, Support Services such as the Pay Corps, et c, and most certainly included tank and armoured officers, informally viewed as mere technicians and artificers who were necessary to keep the Army moving but who were viewed as not QUITE being on the same social level as other chaps with independent incomes. It was certainly the case that in the Regiment this author belonged to, with a history spanning back almost to the Civil War, an Engineer officer who was on attachment was the butt of Officers' Mess jokes like "Shouldn't you be using the tradesman's entrance round the back, old chap?" And this was in 1983...


The strength - and an essential weakness - of the British Army is that it has been around in a pretty much structurally unchanged form for nearly four hundred years. While new bits have been bolted on over the years, the core structure of this remarkably conservative organisation remains the same, and like all conservative social structures, it changes only slowly and with very great reluctance.


The heirarchy is certainly clear to an outside observer:- Guards regiments and Household Cavalry at the top, County regiments next in order of age and precedence (English first followed by Welsh, Scottish and Irish), then the Royal Artillery; armoured regiments come quite a long way down the list and are socially outranked by the Chaplaincy Depatment and the Medical Corps.


In an institution where social rank can count every bit as much as experience, ability and skill, British tank officers have always strugled to get their ideas across to senior commanders with less technical expertise. This has always been the way, as senior officers used to pride themselves on NOT needing to know much technology - that was for fellas who needed to earn a living, not a chap of independent means!


This was the way in WW1; the inter-war years did little to improve this situation; and except for one brief moment of glory, therefore, the British tanks in France in 1940 were doomed to destruction.



(The exception was the battle of Arras in May 1940, where British tanks, properly used for once, found a hole in the German lines, exploited it, and threw back a major German attack. At one point the attacking British very narrowly missed capturing a then obscure German general called Rommel, who as always was leading from the front... unfortunately, the British army was too small to make a difference, promised French support failed to happen, but the Germans were so rattled that they then allowed the British to fall back on an obscure port called Dunkirk, and made no serious attempt to prevent evacuation by sea)
Arras was the only local defeat suffered by the Germans during the Battle of France. The panzer spearhead was so badly blunted that it allowed the British to ultimately escape via Dunkirk with no serious attempt at intervention by the Germans, as Hitler, panicked, forbade any further offensive against the British.



But while most of the British Army made it back via Dunkirk, all its equipment was abandoned in France.



This had serious effects on British tank and weapon production. Projected plans to bring in the next generation of tanks and anti-tank guns had to be scrapped indefinitely - these rather depended on having weapons of some kind already in place to keep the Army up to full strength while factories, et c, tooled up and rebuilt production lines to do new tanks and weapons.



As the Army had nothing, the current 1939 tanks, together with one 1940 model yet to see service, had to be kept in production so something could be issued to the troops to fight an expected German invasion. In fact, Britain was so in need of tanks of ANY kind that the last of the World War One tanks were brought out of mothballs and museums, refurbished and re-issued...



With the 1939 generation of tanks having to be in continuous production, rather than being replaced with newer models, British tank design began, inevitably, to slip behind the cutting edge and it never quite got round to building anything that was capable of taking on the Germans on equal terms. For instance, the Cromwell tank of 1944 was widely regarded as "1942's war-winning weapon" - the point being that it was two years behind anything German it was likely to encounter!



British tanks sent to Russia weren't rejected - the situation was too severe for that - but they were not the preferred vehicle of choice for the Soviet frontovik, who often refused to believe that the British were going to war in crap like this and must therefore be holding the good stuff back for themselves. (Although the British Valentine tank of 1940 was found to be capable of receiving the same 76.2 gun as the Russian T-34 - this otherwise undergunned British tank was universally refitted by the Russians with their own standard gun)



It was also unfortunately the case that British tanks and anti-tank guns were based on the 40mm 2-pounder, when everything happeneing on the front lines was screaming for something bigger and better. (ie, British main armament was 40mm when everyone else was stepping up to 57mm or even 75mm weaponry - the British didn't make good this deficiency until 1944, which was again a long-term consequence of the weapon shortage of 1940)



Supply of the latest American tanks under Lease-Lend eased the situation for the British, and even allowed some sort of design and research for the future to take place.


Two of the "best" Allied tanks of WW2 were the result of cross-fertilization of ideas between Britain and the USA: the Sherman Firefly of 1944 successfully mated America's mass-produced Sherman tank with the British 17pounder anti-tank gun, producing the most powerful and succesful Allied tank of the war.


Similarly, the earlier M3 tank, known as the General Lee in Britsh service, was retro-fitted with a British-designed turret to lower its silhouette: for a brief while this tank was the best of its kind in the desert war, and when it proved obselete in Europe, it took on a new lease of life in the Burmese jungle, as far and away superior to anything the Japanese could field against it.


In this form, the M3 General Grant (alongside the Lee and the Sherman)equipped India's army, and provided its tank component for the final battles that threw the Japanese out of their foothold in India, and then out of Burma.

Similarly, the Matilda II, while hopelessly outclassed in Europe, fought on in Australian and New Zealand service in the Far East. This gives the Matilda the accolade of being the one tank in front-line British service in September 1939 that was still fighting in the front line in August 1945.

Britain's other significant contribution to the tank story was in the specialised field of engineer and support tanks - the "Funnies".


Only a nation steeped in Heath-Robinson engineering contraptions could make a tank swim, for instance. (The Duplex-Drive amphibious tank of 1944, used with varying success on D-Day)



We were also learning from captured German kit - British tank suspension, gearing and power-trains were basing themselves more andmore on German practice and example.



The final British tank of World War Two, incorporating the latest in tank design and innovations captured from the Germans was called the A-41. Five vehicles were sent to Germany in May 1945 on a desperate mission to find German tanks and engage in combat, but fired not a single shot.



The A-41 was later renamed the Centurion. In its essentials, this vehicle was the parent of every British tank since. The Chieftain, and today's Challenger, are its linear descendants, which means that while the best British tank of WW2 failed to see combat in that war, the British Army of today still goes to war in its grandchild.



But World War Two was not the finest hour for the British tank, it has to be said!


British tanks of WW2: a brief chronology
Vickers Medium 1928-43

Previously retired to training and to corners of the Empire that were thought unlikely to see any sort of major war (such as North Africa), it was brought out of mothballs in 1940 to face the German invasion. Saw active service in North and East Africa and was finally retired in 1943.
Light Tank Mark VI 1935-43

Effectively a Bren Carrier with a tankette body riveted on top. Carried either a .303 or a 0.5" HMG in the turret. Small, fast, agile and ideally suited for recce duties, esp. in North Africa.
Matilda Mk I 1937-40

Slow, heavy, cumbersome and still only carried a HMG in the turret. Effectively a Sumo tankette with no virtues whatsoever.
Infantry Tank Matilda Mk II 1939-45

Easily Britain's best tank of the period: heavily armoured, mechanically reliable, but still only mounting the 2pounder (40mm) gun.
Cruiser A4 1938-41

Fast, agile, mounting the same 2 pounder as the Matilda,but cursed by the mechanical unreliability of her successor tanks, Covenanter and Crusader.
Infantry Tank A9 1938-42

Solid, reliable and robust. Generally 2 pounder armed, although some models carried a 95mm support howitzer.
Infantry Tank A10 1938-42

The 95mm howitzer support version of the A9. Also noted for two machine-gun sub-turrets on either side of the driver's position.The only multi-turreted tank used by the British.
Infantry Tank A11 Valentine 1940-43

The culmination of the A9-A10 series, using the same engine, transmission and running gear, easily one of the most successful British designs of WW2. A9/A10 production was stopped completely in favour of this tank, and 11,000 were built, 3,500 of them going to Russia. The 2 pounder turret was eventually uparmed to carry the 6pndr gun - the first British tank capable of being upgunned. it also served as the basis for the Archer SPG tank-hunter, which mounted the 17pounder anti-tank gun in a fixed hull mounting.
Covenanter 1941

The next in line from A4 - did not see action owing to hideously unreliable mechanics. Used exclusively for training.
Crusader 1941-3

In direct line from the A4 and Covenanter, Crusader mk 1 also had a manned sub-turret mounting a HMG, but this was soon deleted as un-necessary. (Crusader mk2) Saw action in North Africa where it was dogged by the same atrocious mechanical and electrical unreliability that had plagued A4 and Covenanter. The Mark Three was up-gunned from a 2pounder to a 6 pounder.
Churchill 1942-5

The most numerous and successful British heavy tank of WW2. Mark One had a 2-pounder gun in the turret and a howitzer mounted in the body: the hull gun was lost from later Marks. Up-gunned to a 6pounder gun, while in Italy the Churchill(NA)was locally modified to carry 75mm guns surplus from American Sherman tanks. At war's end, an experimental version of the Churchill mounting the 17pounder gun was in prototype, but the "Black Prince" model was scrapped as inferior to the Centurion.

Loved by its crews for its mechanical reliability, its armour protection, and its ability to climb hills. 10
Cromwell/Centaur 1943-5

"The War-Winning Tank of 1942" - a pity it came out in 1944. Saw action in Normandy and into Germany. A reliable tank and a well-liked workhorse, but not quite an equal match for the German Panzer 4. The Centaur was the close-support version mounting a 75mm howitzer.
Tetrarch 1943-5

Designed to be airlifted into combat for paratroop support, Tetrach was the lightest British tank, of 5.5 tons, but because of its requirement to be air-portable, mounted very thin armour and the antiquated 2-pounder gun.
Challenger 1944-5

A "stretched" Cromwell, carrying the 17 pounder in a large ungainly turret. Allowed to fade out quietly when there were enough Sherman Fireflies to go round.
Comet1945-60

The development of the Cromwell that served the British Army until the middle 1960's. Armed with the British 75mm gun, a scaled-down version of the 17 pndr. Entered service in January 1945 and capable of taking on most German tanks as an equal.
A41 Centurion1945 - now

Refer to text. Missed combat in WW2, but served until 1970 and became the "parent" of every British main battle tank since. Some specialised varieties of Centurion, ie engineer and bridging vehicles, are still in British Army service today!

Japan:-



Following their destruction of the Russian fleet in 1904, Japan saw its destiny as that of a naval power in the Pacific. Sea power and control of the Pacific would enable the Japanese empire to spread into Asia and for the nation to become the unchallenged regional superpower.


Therefore the Navy was the favoured senior service, with Air Force and Army needs lagging behind.


Japan already held Korea as a colony which served as a jumping-off point into Asia; when war began with China in the 1930’s, the Japanese were fighting a nation which had little in the way of mechanization or armour, and saw no pressing need to develop tanks which were much more sophisticated than those which had ended WW1.


Therefore, Japan’s principal armoured weapons were nothing much more than a locally produced variant of the Renault Ft-17 (called the Type 87 by the Japanese) and a series of light tankettes, the best of which was the Type95 Ha-Go, mounting a low-velocity 37mm gun.


Even a brief but humiliating war with Russia, which both sides chose afterwards to describe as “a border dispute”, did nothing to change this insular world-view, that Japan didn’t really need too many tanks.


The Russian war of 1936 over a disputed border region (Khalkin-Gul on the Far Eastern border with the USSR) saw a previously unremarked Russian general called Zhukov use his fast and robust BT tanks to deadly effect against the underpowered and undergunned Japanese tank force.


This should have made the Japanese realize that they needed tanks that could at least match, if not surpass, those of their nearest neighbour and potential enemy.


Instead, the following summer, the Type 97 (Chi-Ha) series emerged: effectively this was a stretched Type 95 mounting a not much better 47mm gun. This was the tank combination that would serve Japan even into the war with Britain and America: the light T95 and the medium T97. Experience was to show that these would end up to be just as ineffective against Britain and America as they had been against Russia.


At first it didn’t matter that Japanese tanks were inferior to their Western counterparts. Handled aggressively as part of an offensive strategy they did their job well enough in Malaya and Singapore, where the defending British had no tanks to match them. The fighting in the Philippines was largely infantry slogging with nothing more than a minor supporting role for tanks: even though the Americans had a tank regiment here, it saw little combat and fell virtually intact into Japanese hands. (The M3 Stuart tanks were gratefully received and were used as the core of a Japanese armoured brigade)


Real tank versus tank fighting only began to happen during the long British retreat from Burma. Two regiments of Stuarts, hastily withdrawn from North Africa and still in their desert camouflage, acted as armoured support during the retreat, and it was here that the shortcomings of Japanese armour and crew training were discovered.


Japanese tank crews appeared to have no conception of even the most basic tactical considerations:- it was as if the only manoevre they had been trained to do was to attack on sight, even if it meant a headlong rush by a single tank against two or three enemy tanks supported by field guns. This was a phenomena that British and American tank crews were to see time and time again in the Japanese war.


It was also clear that Japanese tanks were no match even for the M3 Stuart, the smallest and lightest tank in the Allied arsenal. Against an M3 Grant or an M4 Sherman, it was no contest at all. This factor enabled the British Matilda tank to soldier on in the Far East to the end of the war, long after it had been declared obsolete in Europe.


It was only when the Japan faced very real possibility of invasion of the Home Islands that serious thought was given to creating tanks capable of fighting the Sherman
.

The Type 97 was progressively up-gunned first to 57mm and then to 75mm in a wholly redesigned turret; however, the basic tank and armour thicknesses remained those of the T-97.


In keeping with the established practice of all tank powers, Japan also converted the Type 97 into a dedicated SPG/tank killer, the Ho-Ni. This fitted a high velocity 75mm gun in a fixed hull mounting. However, this had an open, rather than enclosed, crew compartment,aslthough better armour protection was offered. Later models of this SPG had first the 85mm and then the 105mm gun fitted: both these guns were converted anti-aircraft weapons. (the heavier weapons were retained on the Home Islands against the expected American invasion; the 75mm Ho-Ni saw limited action against American forces and did, in fact, kill Sherman tanks. However, the generally inept standard of Japanese tankers prevented it becoming a menace)


During the war years, there were contacts with Germany, either by long-distance plane or by U-boat. It is known that the Germans managed to provide their ally with the blueprints and the specifications for the Mark Four, Panther and Tiger tanks (as well as sample Junkers Jumo 004 jet engines of the sort that powered the ME-262 jet fighter.) The Japanese Military Attaché in Berlin actually bought one each of the Panzer mk4, Panther, Tiger and King Tiger: how he thought he was going to get them back to Japan baffles rational thought, but the point remains that these exchanges happened. The thought does arise that had Japan been able to build Tiger Tanks, or indeed ME-262 jet fighters, it would have come as a nasty shock for the Americans…


The thought does occur that perhaps the Germans would have been better off to offer, and the Japanese better off to accept, battle-hardened German tankers to set up a tank-training school along the lines of Panzer Lehr, to instruct the Japs in how to do it properly: given German expertise and training, this might have made a very big difference!


Japan’s ultimate defeat involved no tank fighting and came about in a manner the rest of the world could not have predicted. However, with the war in Europe over, Marshal Zhukov reprised his 1936 victory by leading a battle-hardened Red Army into war with Japan. (July 1945). This time round he was commanding T-34’s, JS-2’s, SU85’s and JSU152’s.

Against him? The same T95 tanks that he’d encountered nine years previously…. This probably the telling indictment of Japanese attitudes towards tanks in WW2: such a low priority was placed on them that virtually no change occured in front-line tanks in nine years.

Italy:-



Like Japan, Italy's main strategic drive in WW2 was as a naval rather than a land power.


In keeping with Mussolini's edict that the Meditteranean was mare nostrum - "our sea" - it was anticipated that the naval battle to wrest control of the Med from France and Britain would be the decisive theatre.


Therefore, the bulk of Italy's military budget went into the provision of a world-class navy: the Army and Air Force had to struggle for what was left over.


It followed on that the armour available to the Italian Army, at the outset of Italy's war in 1940, would only have rated "poor", or at best "mediocre".


This was proven in the first battles with the British in North Africa, between December 1940 and March 1941.


A British armoured corps made up of leftovers from the 1920's, supported by what few modern tanks could be spared from a Britain facing German invasion and fighting at odds of 1:8, comprehensively annhihilated the Italian Army in Libya. A significant factor in this defeat would have been the age and poor mechanical reliability of the Italian tanks, combined with some incredibly poor generalship on the part of the Italian High Command.


A lot has been said concerning the Italian soldier's perceived lack of martial qualities, and most of this prejudice dates from these initial battles where it is estimated that 30,000 British soldiers defeated or took prisoner some 250,000 Italians.


However, the Italian soldier was grossly ill-served by his poor equipment and abysmally bad leadership: is it really a cause for wonder that his willingness to fight a determined and better equipped, better-led, opponent sank to zero? It should be said, for the sake of the record, that later in the war, well-led, well-trained and well-equipped Italian soldiers were almost as tough an opponent for the British as the Germans.


The most numerous Italian "tank" at this time was the functionally useless Carro Armato 33. Strictly speaking, this classed as a "tankette" rather than a tank proper, as it had no turret, just one or two machine-guns in a fixed-forward mounting and only a two-man crew. For minor policing actions, for keeping ethnic Libyans in control and for conquering Ethiopia, this was an adequate tank: in combat against another European power, it was a useless death-trap.


The tank "proper" in the Italian armoury would have been out of the M.11 series. The tanks of this series shared their hull, running gear and engine power, but had slightly different armour and armament characteristics. The M11 had its main 75mm weapon fixed in the hull, while the turret only mounted twin MG's. The M12 and M13 had the slightly more practical arrangement of 47mm main gun in a fully rotating turret while the MG was hull-mounted; and the M14 and M15 (not in service in 1940-41)carried a 57mm main gun in the turret.


For fire support, there was the Semovente da'M.13 self-propelled gun: a turretless version of the M13 tank mounting a heavy 75mm anti-tank gun in a fixed forward-facing position.


Effectively, the M-series and Semovente represented ALL Italy's tank options during WW2, and, in terms of armour thickness and mechanical reliability, were no match for British vehicles of the same period. (Although, it has to be said in fairness, the Semovente's main weapon was heavy enough to penetrate most British armour at reasonable combat distances. There just weren't enough of them)


The rest of Italy's war is fairly well known. (embroiled in North Africa until the collapse in 1943, then invaded by the Allies and annexed by Germany)


If Italian tanks had a lamentable time in North Africa, in Russia they failed even more calamitously.


It is known that Zhukov hit Germany's allies for preference when launching the November 1942 offensive that sealed off Stalingrad from the rest of the Axis army. Italian forces fought bravely but had nothing whatsoever that could take on a T-34 on equal terms.


Italy's last tank design of WW2 was the P-40 of 1942: an attempt to upgrade the M-series with a 75mm weapon in a fully rotating turret. Ironically, none of these tanks were ready in time to serve with Italian forces: following the surrender of 1943 and Italy's takeover by Germany, the P-40 finally came off the production lines in Milan in good time for some 600 of these tanks (possibly the best Italian design of WW2) to be used by the German panzer forces.


The Germans also deployed maybe 400 Semovente 75's, made on the same production lines that remained in German hands right to the very end: as both vehicles were capable of tackling a Sherman on a near-equal footing, it could be argued that Italy's ultimate significance as a tank-producing nation was as a welcome addition to Germany's indigenous tank-producing stength, serving to stave off the final collapse of German forces in Italy until the very last minute in May 1945. Thus, Churchill's strategic vision of an Allied army rolling into Austria from the South and serving the dual purpose of getting into the Balkans before the Russians did was ultimately doomed to failure. Italian tanks, ultimately, were a small but significant part of the reason why Italy was such a tough nut for the Allies to crack.

USSR:-



The Soviet Union in 1939 was not an especially pleasant place to be if you had the misfortune to be a capable or gifted military officer.


Stalin's purges of the armed forces had effectively removed the best and brightest Army officers, largely in an eastward direction with loss of privileges. The ones left behind running the military may have been clods like Voroshilev, but at least they were (i) no threat to Stalin and (ii)in the main, his good drinking buddies, who could always be relied upon to bring a crate of vodka down the dasha.


This corresponded with a kind of national paranoia, that saw enemies everywhere and viewed the security of the Soviet Union as a matter of playing the numbers game - the more tanks, the more aircraft, we have, the stronger our Army, and therefore the safer we will be.


However, all this ultimately engendered was a false sense of security. The practical drawbacks of keeping such a vast number of tanks can be summarized as follows:-



i) This caused an imbalance in the Armed Forces: if so much of the nation’s resources were going on tanks, these might have made a spectacular show of strength on the Red Day parades, but it masked the fact that less economic resources were available for less glamorous but necessary things such as trucks and support services;


ii) Brute numbers concealed the fact that many of these tanks were obsolete and unfit for modern war; marks such as the T17 (the Russian copy of the Renault model 1917) and the T26 were still in service. The double-bind here for Soviet generals and planners was that having to play the numbers game meant keeping large numbers of obselete tanks in service, as the alternative meant having to report to Stalin that total tank strength had gone down by 3,000 or so; the man making such a report would be signing his own one-way ticket to Siberia.Even if scrapping 3,000 elderly tanks was a necessary prelude to replacing them with better and more useful models.


iii) More tanks require more maintenance and logistic support; a basic shortfall in spare parts meant that up to two-thirds of the tank fleet was out of service at any one time;


iv) To crew all these tanks with conscripts meant that the standard of crew training was necessarily rudimentary – there were never enough experienced crews to go round.




This was not immediately apparent to the Soviet leadership, as up until 1939, their only serious military test had been a border war with Japan in Northern Manchuria. Badly led Japanese forces supported by light tanks were no match for a capable Soviet general called Zhukov, who showed that he had assimilated the lessons of combined-arms warfare, and had some of Russia’s best and most modern tanks to drive the lesson home with.


However, Zhukov’s rout of the Japanese was not typical of the Red Army as a whole, and may have contributed towards maintaining an illusion of security.


Russia’s part in the war with Poland had been no real test – occupying land taken from an already defeated enemy. It was the Winter War with Finland in 1939 which brought all these shortcomings to the attention of the Soviet military and political leadership.


One of the strongest armies in the world had been held at bay for eight months by a nation a fraction of its size and strength. The performance of the Red Army had been lamentable; only good summer campaigning weather and weight of numbers, combined with Finnish exhaustion, had enabled it to prevail.


New reforms were instituted, and capable officers recalled from Siberia and rehabilitated.


A program was commenced to remove clearly obsolescent tanks and equipment from the Army and progressively replace with the best the Soviet Union could provide. Combat experience in Finland helped: the Winter War had been used as a test-bed to give various designs coming out of the Leningrad factories combat evaluation in testing conditions.

It was decided that only one basic Leningrad design was worth persisting with. Behemoths such as the SU-100Y SPG (weighing fifty-five tons) were quietly retired, as were unwieldy multi-turreted monsters such as the T-100 and KV-3 series.


However, the heavy tank series the Russians chose to put into mass production in 1940 were the Leningrad-designed KV-1 and KV-2. While larger members of the same family had proven lacking in Finland, the performance of these “junior” members of the Leningrad design family had been efficient and gave cause for hope.


Both these tanks shared a common hull and running gear, but had different turrets. The KV-1 mounted a new high-velocity 76.2mm gun that was just beginning to enter service. As most Russian tanks of the period were still 47mm armed, this represented a step up in firepower and easily qualified the KV as a practical design of heavy tank. The KV-2 was heavier still: designed for infantry support and possibly more of a self-propelled artillery piece than a tank (although it had, at least in theory, a fully rotating turret), this tank mounted a massive 152mm howitzer.


While the KV-1 soldiered on until 1943, the KV-2 had several drawbacks. The turret was high, heavy and ungainly and in silhouette presented an unmissable target for German gunners. The sheer weight of the main gun plus a turret to accommodate it placed a far heavier stress on the engine. The turret also had a nasty habit of refusing to traverse if the tank was on any sort of slope at all: it would jam under its own weight and require workshop attention to fix it. (Finally, all KV-2’s were retro-converted back into the more successful KV-1 version: the KV-2 turret was sometimes used in static fortifications, eg in the defence of Leningrad)


The KV-1, a successful heavy tank in its day, mutated via the interim KV-85 variant into the JS (Joseph Stalin) series of tanks, recognizably the same running gear and hull, but with better armour, a more powerful engine, and a new turret packing 122mm of high-velocity punch. The JS tanks saw active service in 1944-5.


Meanwhile, elsewhere in Russia, attention was being paid to the Christie tank suspension imported from the USA in the middle 1930’s. Although the Christie tank had been rejected by the Americans, the Russians had seen potential in the idea and their faith had been rewarded with the BT series of medium tanks. (these mounted a conventionally laid out tank chassis, on the radical Christie suspension)


The BT tanks, fast manoevreable medium vehicles, had proven their worth in combat against Japan in 1936, but by 1940 had shown that they were not capable of being upgraded. Design work had been in place for some time on a successor tank that would also be based on Christie suspension: by 1939 the prototype was ready and in 1940 this tank was in production. The new BT tank mounted a radically different hull with sloped armour for enhanced protection, together with the same 76.2mm gun that equipped the KV-1, but in a welded turret designed to offer maximum protection for minimal weight.


This vehicle was called the T-34, and would go on to become possibly the most important and iconic tank design of all time.


The T-34 was Russia's staple tank of the war; between 50 and 60,000 were built, with the T-34/85 design of 1944 mounting the even more powerful 85mm gun in a wholly redesigned turret.


In its derived SU variants, the T-34 became a powerful SPG mounting the 85mm, then the more powerful 100mm and finally the 122mm anti-tank guns in a fixed superstructure.


A mention should also be made of the Soviet light tanks, beginning with the T-60: these were no match for most German main battle tanks, but performed a sterling role in recce units as a replacement for the obselete BA series of armoured cars. They also provided a light and versatile armoured punch as the tank component of cavalry divisions, offering immediate fire support for Cossack horsed cavalry who fought throughout the war as conventional mounted troops.


The T-70 also provided the chassis for the SU-76 SPG, an open-topped vehicle used to provide immediate artillery support for infantry units, but which, in extremis, could serve as a tank-destroyer, despite its light armour and open superstructure.


Russia's last main battle tank of the war was the JS-III of 1945. This was the zenith of the KV design of 1941, but only the wheels and running gear would have been recognisible from the KV-1. This mounted a futuristic-looking turret that looked like an inverted cooking pan or a part-section through a football, a turret design that would be perpetuated through Russian tanks right down to the present day: the T-54, T-60, T-70 and T-80 would all show a turret lineage derived from their JS-III ancestor.


Symbolically (like the British Centurion)there are no reliable reports of the JS-III seeing combat in WW2: but this tank had far-reaching influence on the design of every Russian tank since, right down to the present day.

Minor Producers(everyone else):-



Tanks are expensive, technologically complex, items to build. It follows on that only a nation with heavy industry, advanced motor and metalworking skills, and a thriving armaments sector, could hope to build them. Effectively, this limited tank and AFV manufacture to the seven "superpower" blocs detailed above.


For most "small" nations, the logical course was to buy your tanks off-the-peg from one of the big names.


Thus, countries like RUMANIA, HUNGARY11, BULGARIA, YUGOSLAVIA, HOLLAND and BELGIUM were in the main, perfectly happy to shop around and buy their tanks from Czechoslovakia, France and Britain.


Conversely, once war was opened up in 1942 and neutral nations could see the trade and aid potential of lining up alongside the United States, countries such as BRAZIL and PORTUGAL, as well as smaller South american states like PARUGUAY, were happy to join in as long as Lend-Lease provided the most modern equipment for their armies at minimal cost. This way, two Brazilian divisions ended up fighting on the Italian front, albeit wholly sponsored by American largesse.


While most German output went towards domestic consumption - re-arming the Wehrmacht always took precedence - some foreign exchange was gained from overseas sales. Until an alliance was signed with JAPAN, for instance, the Germans were perfectly happy to export armoured cars and light tanks to CHINA. Ideological commitments to Fascist allies ensured that SPAIN received its quota of German tanks, principally Pnz 1's. Later in the war, a small proportion of German production was creamed off and used as an arms subsidy to German allies, such as Finland, Hungary, Bulgaria, et c.


Although some smaller nations did try for self-sufficiency, with varying degrees of success.


Perhaps the most determined, if misplaced, attempt was made by NEW ZEALAND, in the face of possible Japanese invasion in 1942.


The Kiwi solution to the problem of "How do we build a tank quickly?" was to requisition every civilian bulldozer, JCB, et c (every fully-tracked vehicle used in construction or agriculture)and to hastily weld on a lashed-up crew compartment and whatever weaponry could be made to fit. Some of the more sophisticated variants even had fully rotating turrets, but these mounted nothing more effective than a heavy machine gun.


Alas for the New Zealand war effort, the result still looked like a stripped-down bulldozer or JCB with a rudimentary tank-like hull welded or bolted on top: armour plate was in desperately short supply, so corrugated iron took its place in "less critical" parts of the vehicles. It also went without saying that no two vehicles looked exactly the same and there would have been logistic dificulties in keeping this tank fleet supplied with even the most basic spare parts. Although it is conceivable that any invading Japanese would have been incapacitated by laughter at the sight of what was opposing them.


Fortunately, none of these Dad's Army style lash-ups saw combat; the New Zealanders realised how difficult it is to build tanks from a knowledge-base of near zero; and the nation took grateful receipt of the first delivery of American lease-lend tanks.


Even though CANADA had the arms industry, the steelworks, and the expertise, to make a main battle tank, their one attempt at creating a Canadian tank was forced to lean heavily on American components and ended up looking like a pound-shop Sherman. The Ram tank was obselete as soon as it was built, and was swiftly relegated to training purposes, the Canadians then deciding to abandon what was just a resource-wasteful prestige project, and to concentrate on licence-building American and British designs. It was a similar story in AUSTRALIA, where the production history and eventual use of the Australian-designed Sentinel tank almost exactly mirrored the Ram.


The story of the Ram tank illustrates exactly how difficult it is to make a tank from scratch when your country has no prior experience at tank design and construction, even if the industrial infrastructure exists to enable you to do so. Canada was certainly a volume builder of tanks: nearly 2,000 Valentines were licence-built, all for export to the Soviet Union, as well as quite a few thousand Shermans.




Other nations took other routes towards creating an armoured corps.



FINLAND, for instance, took what can only be described as the "beg, steal, or borrow" approach. Prior to war in 1939, the Finnish armoured corps consisted of a motley of tanks bought from Britain, France, Czechoslovakia and Germany, and dating right back to 1917. When war began in 1939, the Finns proved adept at capturing, rather than destroying, Russian tanks, which were hastily oversprayed in the national colours and sent back into battle under Finnish crews.



Re-entering the war in 1941 as a German ally, the Finns used veiled threats of withdrawing from the war to secure a small but reliable regular vehicle delivery from Germany, as well as continuing the tried and trusted method of nicking Russian kit,12. Therefore the Finnish armoured corps comprised the very best, most modern, German and Russian vehicles fighting side-by-side under the same flag, with not a markku paid to anyone and no need to set up an indigenous tank-building industry to support them.

Conclusion:-




Original text of submission by yataghan follows:-



The Influence of Tanks in World War II
Without tanks in World War II, the entire war would have been much less eventful. The primary reason tanks were built was because their primary rotary gun that could destroy enemies and also fortifications. The treads and armor gave the tank mobility and also a means of defense. Tanks were used in many differing combat strategies, both offensively and defensively. Although tanks were very useful, they came at the price of incredible amount of gasoline and also had some problems. The Axis tanks were usually outnumbered and outfought by the Allies tanks, giving them a significant disadvantage. Also, the Allied tanks were better engineered and more efficient than those of the Axis. The Axis designed many tanks but their specialty was medium jack-of-all-trades tanks. They also created an excessively powerful tank, the Royal Tiger, which was a monster to all it approached. Tanks had a large role in the result of World War II and had large effects on both Allied and Axis strategies.

Tanks consisted of many parts including its primary weapon, a high caliber gun. The gun had to me not only be powerful but also quick and accurate. A factor of most large guns was their rotating ability. The French were the first to develop a tank with a 360 rotary gun turret (Armored). The 360 range allowed the tank to move in one direction and fire in another. Another very important part of the gun was it’s incredible power. Tank rounds were capable of not only destroying other tanks and infantry but also buildings. Tanks carried barrel sizes (of guns) of up to four and five inches (Armored). Tanks were able of destroying most structures without trouble. The large rotary gun gave the tanks not only a defense, but also a purpose.

Back then, tanks were complex machines that, when all parts were functional, were capable of great tasks and accomplishments. Treads were a great alternative to wheels when designing tanks for one main reason. Treads allowed the tank to cross trenches and other obstacles without trouble. “By world war II armored vehicles (tanks) were capable of speeds of over thirty miles per hour” (Armored). The treads made tanks more terrain-capable and enabled them to travel at high speeds. Another important part of tanks was the heavy armor they carried. Not only would it deflect bullets from hand-held guns, but it could also withstand natural elements. Tanks were tough and rugged, for they are still found over fifty years later intact (John Slee). Without the armor tanks would be incredibly vulnerable to enemies. With good maneuverability and strong armor, tanks were nearly unstoppable.

Truly, tanks were used in many different combat situations. After a group of forces took over a position, they then assumed the responsibility to defend it. Tanks were ideal for this role because they were easily movable artillery of sorts. “In the battle of Stalingrad, decisive action by the 26th tank corps forward element in taking control of the bridge, closing the noose of encirclement around a multi-thousand strong enemy force” (V.G. Reznichenko). As a rule, defense is almost always easier than offense, and tanks were perfect machines to fill a defensive role. Tanks were also fast enough to catch up with mobile enemies. Once an enemy was defeated, it would naturally retreat. The British Cruiser could track and surround retreating enemies to finish them off, because of the Cruisers’ high speeds (C.L. Sulzberger 241). This would eliminate the most of the enemy as otherwise possible without tanks. Tanks played multiple very useful roles in World War II combat.

Yet, tanks were by no means perfect battle tools, and had some impractical flaws. First, tanks required vast amounts of gasoline and oil to run. This dependency was a large weakness for tanks. Gasoline was very valuable and became rare during World War II, for it was needed to run all machinery. Therefore capturing a fuel or supply depot was a major victory (C.L. Sulzberger 233). Without the proper resources, tanks were merely uncomfortable shelters. Secondly, tanks’ mobility was not unflawed. Although they could withstand the rain, snow, and other harsh climates, maneuvering in them was very difficult, for they got caught in the changed terrain. As Montgomery was chasing Rommel, during the Axis withdrawal, Rommel escaped because the pursuing tanks forces of Montgomery got caught up in the mud (C.L. Sulzberger 241). These weaknesses of tanks made their dispatching questionable at times. Although tanks were great machines, they had their downsides.

Essentially, the Allied Tanks were more numerous than the Axis tanks. The Soviet Union mass-produced their tanks, forming large forces. Although casualties were high, there was never a shortage of tanks. The Russians produced huge numbers of tanks, lost many of them (eighteen thousand) by September 1941, but enough remained (twenty-one thousand) to protect the homeland (C.L. Sulzberger 250). Many Soviet Union tanks were great additions to the Allied forces. There were many examples of the Axis being outnumbered by the Allies. Although in some scenarios, the Germans are better equipped, they numbered less. “The combined Anglo-French forces disposed four thousand armored vehicles against two thousand-eight hundred for Germany” (C.L. Sulzberger 60). Fewer numbers opened weaknesses and openings for enemy attack. Part of Germany’s defeat was a result of fewer forces.

To emphasize, the Allied tanks were better quality and engineering than those of the Axis. The Germans had good quality tanks, which the Allies had to match. New versions of tanks were constantly under development to counter the Axis. The medium M3 “Grant” American tanks were built specifically to match the German firepower (Mario Paesani). Countries worked together to outdo the Axis tanks. The Soviet Union worked secretly to develop superior tanks. Through many versions and revisions, finally success was achieved. “…the Russian T-34 tanks, which no one had had a hint of, proved to be better than anything the Germans possessed” (C.L. Sulzberger 265). After designing a powerful tank, it was produced as quickly as possible. The better-quality tanks contributed to the gradual Allied victory.

For this reason, a group of compiled Axis forces was always a contender to deal with. The Germans had many differing models of tanks for different situations. Some tanks were fortification outfitted, trading off maneuverability for greater protection. However some were outfitted for assaults, basing their equipment on offense. The German “Panther” was a great medium tank, with good armor, a punishing gun, and large tracks (Mario Paesani). Medium tanks were most common because they could fill most roles. German tanks were never solitary. Support from other forces prevented weaknesses tanks generally had. “Panzer forces were made up of supporting forces (motorcycles and infantry) as well as tanks” (C.L. Sulzberger 258). Without gaps in their ranks, Panzer forces were very strong. With diverse designs and coordinated attacks, the Germans could crush many opposing forces.

Widely, the German tanks were known and mimicked for their firepower. The Axis would go to extreme lengths to have more powerful machines than the Allies. Because of this obsession, they developed a new tank. “The Tiger II “Royal Tiger” was the most powerful combat tank of World War II” (Mario Paesani). The Royal Tiger was huge in comparison to other tanks. Everything about it was perfect except for one problem. Firepower came at a price of an important factor, mobility. “Although it’s mobility was limited by it’s great weight and terrific fuel consumption, it’s big 88/71 gun as well as it’s oversized armor made it a real nightmare” (Mario Paesani). With its long-range cannon, maneuverability was not as much of a factor. The Royal Tiger was a living legend that destroyed everything in its path.

In summary, tanks played a very large role in the strategies of the Allied and Axis forces and also affected the outcome in World War II. The tanks primary rotary gun was very important to the tanks existence and purpose. Treads and armor helped the tanks prolong their destruction and protect the lives inside. Tanks were used in many situations and scenarios that could otherwise not be filled. They were not, however, perfect machines, for they consumed great amounts of gasoline and also got caught up in awkward terrain. The Allies usually outnumbered the Axis regarding tanks in battle, and in a result, the Allies usually conquered. The Allied tanks were also most commonly superior to those of the Axis, for they were better engineered. The Axis produced many tanks for different roles, and also created medium tanks that could be useful anywhere. The Axis designed and manufactured a huge mammoth of a tank, the Tiger II Royal Tiger, which had more significant firepower and armor than any other existing tank at the time. Tanks were great and influential vehicles in World War II, and were unequaled war machines during ground combat.



1 At the battle of Tebourja in 1943, a battery of 25 pounders supported by 6 pounder anti-tank guns and infantry of the Royal Hampshire Regiment fought Rommel's last African offensive to a standstill in a classic "last ditch" defence. When the battle was over, SEVENTY Italian and German tanks had been killed or damaged and abandoned, at the cost of virtually all the defending British troops.The Hampshires won two VC's on the day, and the nickname of "Tebourja Tigers" 2 You also REALLY want to stop the other side from getting in first and retrieving what could be an example of your latest, most up-to-date, super-duper all-singing and all-dancing main battle tank. The Germans failed to do this in the Tiger Tank's very first combat outing - which was into a swamp near Leningrad - with the result that the Russians retrieved it first and were able to not only evolve an antidote, they also tipped off the British, who met it next in North Africa. Also, all armies in WW2 used captured tanks to supplement their own. For an example of this, see the SU122i / SU76i entry below, under German Pnz III Variants.3 Well, imagine a German soldier, thinking he's safe behind three inches of concrete, when a fist-sized hole appears in the wall and shards of broken cement start ricocheting round the bunker... most off-putting! In his autobiography The Forgotten Soldier, Guy Sajer describes the effect on morale when a German stepped out of his position for a sly smoke, and a Russian with an ATR put a very large bullet into him. The morale effect of an ATR used as a sniping weapon in the anti-personnel role cannot be understated either. 4. It's worth noting that the muzzle-diameter of both the Bazooka and the Panzershreck was that iconic number: 88 millimetres. An odd coincidence. 5. Fredenhall, the first commander of American armies overseas, was an ageing, possibly senile, incompetent who presided over the Battle of Kasserine: this disaster saw the American Army receive its greatest ever defeat in combat, as Rommel's seasoned German troops joyfully walked all over the newcomers, inflicting massive losses in men and equipment. His replacement Eisenhower was a little-known military bureaucrat who, while not renowned for his generalship, had the great advantage of being a born diplomat, capable of winning the trust of and getting the best from temperamentally opposed subordinates. As his two principal subordinates were Patton and Montgomery, Eisenhower's gift of political acumen and diplomatic skill was probably essential to the job! 6The M24 Chaffee found its moment of glory in the Korean War, when it was the only tank available to fight a way out of the last bridgehead in South Korea, and drive the invading Red Armies north again - it was easily a match for T-34.7 The tale is told that in late 1944, the French army corps captured members of the SS Charlemagne division - made up of French soldiers who had elected to fight for Germany. The prisoners were marched in front of General Leclerc, who looked them over with disdain and demanded to know what Frenchmen were doing, wearing foreign uniforms and fighting in the service of a foreign army. One of the SS men looked Leclerc in the eye, drew attention to the General's American uniform, and said "well, mon general, we could rightly ask the same of you!" Very true, very candid, but not prudent, as Leclerc, outraged, ordered the prisoners be taken outside and shot.8 The smaller 105mm "Wasp" was meant to be the supporting handmaid to the heavier 150mm armed, Pnz IV-based, "Hummel" SP artillery piece- the Bumblebee.9 Refer to "Mailed Fist" by John Foley, pub. Panther Books, 1957.This is a very readable account of a Churchill tank troop at war. Foley's acount of the Churchill's inadequacy against the tiger is gripping reading.

(From the context, this is almost certainly the German tank ace Michael Wittman, who, on one black day for British armour, destroyed or crippled nearly sixty British tanks before returning, unscathed, to base with his Tiger and crew. John Foley was just one of his “kills”.)10In Tunisia in 1943, at the battle of Longstop Hill, the Germans neglected to lay mines or defend against tanks on the steepest side of a strategic hill, logically reasoning that tanks could never climb it. Churchills managed the climb easily, and rolled over the otherwise impregnable position, with minimal loss of life on the part of the assaulting infantry.11 It should be said that Hungary had a limited tank industry of its own, but this was only capable of licence-building locally adapted Czech designs, such as the Turan tank series - effectively Hungarian modifications of the Czech Skoda 35. Similarly Rumanian AFV production was limited to refurbishing and adapting captured Russian tanks, although the Rumanians did succeed in mating captured Russian anti-tank guns to Czech tank chassis. 12Interestingly enough, the IRISH FREE STATE used a similar gambit, not with the intention of joining or staying in the war but with the intention of staying neutral: occasional diplomatic hints that they might abandon neutrality and join the Allies ensured the Irish received frequent sweeteners from Britain, in the form of the makings of a Navy and an Air Force, as well as a supply of free vehicles for the Army. As Ireland's entire pre-war Armoured Corps consisted of half-a-dozen clapped out armoured cars - supplemented during WW2 by locally built a/c's - this was thought of as most neighbourly. Later in the War, the Americans (as a nation that enjoyed a far less ambivalent and more positive relationship with Ireland) took over the task of persuading the Irish to join in, with many gifts of modern military equipment.

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