Monty on Tanks

Discussion in 'Weapons, Technology & Equipment' started by canuck, Oct 15, 2011.

  1. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    In August 1943, Montgomery wrote to the Vice-Chief of the Imperial General Staff about tanks:

    “We are badly behind the Germans in this respect, and I’m anxious as to whether we are thinking far enough ahead. History relates that in the struggle between gun and armour, the gun had always come out on top. The penetrating power of the German tank armament is infinitely superior to the gun at present fitted to the Sherman V or the Cromwell. At 1000 yards the Panther gun will penetrate 130 mm of armour. At this range the 75 mm in the Sherman will penetrate 62 mm and the six-pounder in the Cromwell will penetrate 72 mm.
    This a very serious situation. The enemy can engage our tanks at ranges at which it is hopeless to reply with any hope of success. Being outgunned in this manner permits the enemy to reduce his armour thickness if he wishes, and to engage us at any range he desires.

    In less than a year Monty’s views had changed radically. On June 24 1944 his Chief of Staff, Freddie de Guingand, wrote to him:

    “If we are not careful there will be a danger of our troops developing a Tiger and Panther complex. P.J. (Sir James Grigg, Secretary of State for War ) rang me up last night and said he thought there might be trouble in the Guards Armoured Division as regards the inadequacy of our tanks compared with the Germans. Naturally the reports are not being circulated.”

    On 25 June Monty wrote to Grigg as follows:

    “It has come to my notice that reports are circulating about the value of British tanks etc. compared to the Germans. We cannot have anything of that sort at this time. We have got a good lodgement area; we have built up our strength and tomorrow we leap on the enemy. Anything that undermines confidence and morale must be stamped on ruthlessly.”

    In a memo of February 1945 Monty made some very strange statements about British tanks.

    “British armour has come through the campaign in western Europe with flying colours, and has proved itself superior in battle to German armour. If Rundstedt had been equipped with British armour when he attacked in the Ardennes on 16 December 1944 he would have reached the River Meuse in thirty-six hours. This would have placed the Allies in a very awkward position. If 21st Army Group had been equipped with German armour it could not have crossed the Seine on 8 August 1944 and reached Brussels on 3 September and Antwerp on 4 September, thus cutting off the whole Pas de Calais area in eight days: a very remarkable achievement which had far-reaching results.
    The credit for all this must go to the War Office. The British armies in June 1944 were splendidly equipped for the job that had to be done.”


    Precis of the book “Death by Design” by Peter Beale; and published in 1998
     
  2. Tom Canning

    Tom Canning WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Canuck

    if all your quotes came from Peter Beale then I would challenge many of them as being variations of factual knowledge inasmuch as Monty in 1943 had possibly never seen a Cromwell Tank- so he must have taken his knowledge from a brochure...

    Monty - whilst in the desert 42/43 asked and received a constant stream of memos disparaging the British Tanks which in those day were of the Valentine - Matilda and Crusader - with the early Shermans still coming on stream with the better
    75mm which was more than a match until Gerry Introduced the Tiger and the long barrelled 75mm special fitted to their Mk IV's.

    The introduction of the FOUR 17 pounder A/T guns at Medenine quelled the adverse reports with most Tank men thinking that they would have this gun very shortly - alas and alack - this was not to be as NOT ONE Tank was fitted with this 17 pounder all through Sicily and Italy.

    BUT - they appeared in the new Cromwell and Sherman( Firefly) at D Day and later in the Comet by that time Monty had a belly full of complaints and thus stopped all adverse reports on the inadequacies of British Tanks and thus made up this fairy tale for the war office as finally they had come up with the Comet - Chieftain and Challenger with it's 120mm - which outmatched the 88mm's of Germany

    To-day - this is all we have with Challenger II Battle Tank with the 120mm- and whole bunch of lighter stuff for recce purposes....

    Now Peter Beale must have known all this as he was the C.O. as Lt.Colonel of 9th RTR equipped with the latest Churchill Tanks in NWE - so bags of salt all around Tim ..
    Cheers
     
  3. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    The most basic issue confronting Allied tank crews was that the armour of the Sherman and Cromwell could not withstand hits from any major German anti-tank weapon at distances close to standard battle range. Most anti-tank firing took place at less than 1,000 yards, especially in the close terrain covering much of Normandy, even with the improved long-range gunnery of 1944–45. Even to the south of Caen, Canadian after-action reports indicated that the mean range of anti-tank fire was still under 1,000 yards, while US figures for June–August showed that the average range of lethal engagement by anti-tank gunnery was less than 600 metres.
    At such ranges Sherman and Cromwell armour offered no protection against German anti-tank guns of 75 mm calibre and above, or the weaponry carried by German tanks, assault and SP guns. At 500 yards it was difficult not to be hit by the enemy once engaged, and within a minute of being under fire the likelihood of not being penetrated was reduced to virtually nil. Indeed, it was contended that the survival chances of an Allied tank halved every six seconds in such circumstances.

    Almost all 75 mm and 88 mm AP hits penetrated the Sherman’s armour and in 62 per cent of cases knocked the tank out of action.
    US 1st Army figures showed that 80 per cent of M4s disabled by gunfire had been penetrated.Even the Churchill, despite its 150 mm-plus frontal armour, was still vulnerable to the latest versions of the 75 mm and the 88 mm gun.


    Buckley-
    BRITISH ARMOUR IN THE NORMANDY CAMPAIGN 1944
     
  4. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    That Buckley quote is taken without true context.
    The thrust he takes after establishing armour thickness inadequacies is that no matter how effective the plate may have been, it would likely have made very little difference in the Normandy fighting he's referring to. Well sited German HV guns were cutting through even Churchill's front plate at the average encounter range, and that plate was about the thickest in the field at that time.

    Just one paragraph after the above quote, he goes on to say that improvements in armour thickness would have "made little difference" & that "even Panther was highly vulnerable when it adopted an aggressive posture and advanced on allied positions". He also cites an ORS report carried out at the time that dismisses extra armour as unrealistic, instead recommending that any extra weight added to allied tanks be concentrated on upgunning, and that improving methods of spotting dug in German gear in defensive positions was equally important:

    Moreover, they [a 21AG ORS] argued that the supposed invulnerability of German armour was largely caused by the tactical situation pertaining in Normandy, where the enemy camouflaged its armour well, used low-smoke propellant, got in the first shot, and more often than not deployed defensively.
    p.126
    It's a very good book, but it's also a rather complex effort at pinning 'The Armour problem' to the real world situation.
    Buckley really doesn't make any conclusions as simplistic as that first quote implies, it's just a part of his overall analysis.
     
  5. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    It doesn't take much research to discover that there are very strongly held opinions on both sides of the debate on the adequacy of allied armour in Normandy.

    I was prompted to spend some time on the subject after reading the introduction to The Guns of Normandy. Blackburn doesn't pull any punches in his condemnation of senior Allied leaders who he claimed, "were responsible for putting at risk the whole invasion by sending men to their doom in under-gunned, under-armoured tanks." He goes so far as to say, "someone high up realized the extent of the problem but a conspiracy of silence was imposed at the highest levels of the military and political powers".
    Strong language!
     
  6. Tom Canning

    Tom Canning WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Canuck
    Your authors appear to be trying to teach their grandmothers to suck eggs - I personaly can vouch for the fact that MOST allied Tanks were undergunned and underprotected having fought in what turned out to be the best protected of them
    all - the Churchill - and still lost one of them to an 88.mm from yonks away.

    This was not a sudden revelation caused by many losses in Normandy although it must have come as a shock to the regiments who had been training in the UK most of their existence to find that they were at the wrong end of Tank warfare......

    IF they had looked at the Torch landings for example they might have noted that the 6th Armoured Division had landed with Valentines and some very old Matildas with 2 pounder guns installed - the 21st and 25th Tank bdes landed some months later with Churchills again with 2 pounder guns - the 6 pounders came out later and were fitted
    ....now this was March/April 1943...three years after the start of the war

    6th Armoured finished off that campaign with mainly Shermans and 75mm guns- and all through the Sicilian and Italian campaigns - until AFTER the fall of Rome and D DAY in France - 76mm were fitted here and there and the Churchills were presented with one per squadron of the new 95mm bombard.But still NO 17 pounders ...

    WE has accepted all the reasons for the lack of Tank developement in the early days when our very lives were ruled by the potential Sea Lion invasions and had NO scruples about the finances pouring into Aircraft developement - so there was no ulterior motive or Conspiricy of Silence - it was fact of life and we just had to get on with it and do our best - which we did and as it turned out - our best was enough
    to do the job - at a very high cost no doubt -

    but hey - that is what war is all about
    so what I think is this - many people who were not there - and even some who were are writing books in order to stir things up and make a couple of bucks...out of other people who were also NOT there !
    Cheers
     
    Steve Mac likes this.
  7. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    Tom, in defence of Buckley, & in the full context of British Armour in the Normandy Campaign, he pretty much agrees with all of your comments.

    I haven't read the Blackburn book, so am loathe to comment, but that "were responsible for putting at risk the whole invasion by sending men to their doom in under-gunned, under-armoured tanks." is rather suspect. Particularly if it relates to pipe-dreams like Normandy Pershings or the M6. The realities of landing craft availability alone usually puts that one to bed, disregarding strange Cooper-esque theories of what Guns or machines could genuinely be fielded. I'm suspicious of any author that leans too far towards the 'murderers' hypothesis of allied armour design.

    All that was done was done to the best of intentions, by men working under extremis, in the face of an enemy that had been preparing for war long in advance. As Tom says: "there was no ulterior motive or Conspiracy of Silence", just the real world, and a very difficult situation.
     
  8. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    Didn't we discuss this once before & someone mentioned even a Tiger would not survive a hit from an 88 at ranges we're talking about ?
    I might be wrong.
    Can anyone remember where I might have got that into my head from?
     
  9. idler

    idler GeneralList

    To add to the canon of Monty tank quotes, don't forget 1942's:
    "The 75mm gun is all we require."
    Strictly speaking, this was a statement by a visiting Tank Board official that was endorsed by Monty, rather than a direct quote. At the time it had some validity: the 75 was adequate against Pzs III & IV, but it was the revolutionary (for British tanks) HE capability that was really being appreciated.
     
  10. TiredOldSoldier

    TiredOldSoldier Senior Member

    Every time I go to work I pass what is obviously a Firefly parked on the Rome ring road, while it could have arrived post war are we sure none where there in 1945?
    By the time of the breakthrough to the Po valley the Firefly had been in production for months and in the flat Po plain engagerment ranges of 2000m or more were likely, a nasty proposition in a 75mm Sherman vs a Panther or Tiger.

    BTW why would Monty talk about the Panther in August 1943, AFAIK the only "heavy" the western allies had met at the time was the Tiger.
     
  11. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    Owen, it's mostly buried in the Sherman thread a few times.
    Comet, Centurion, Pershing, or any other of the upcoming designs would likely have fared no better in terms of armour protection than Sherman, Cromwell, or Churchill against German 75s or 88s in the close range engagements of the Bocage.
    Just as Tiger & Panther would be vulnerable to 17pdr or 77mm, though there were never quite enough 17pdrs or the special ammunitions, to go around.
     
  12. sol

    sol Very Senior Member

    Every time I go to work I pass what is obviously a Firefly parked on the Rome ring road, while it could have arrived post war are we sure none where there in 1945?

    Fireflys arrived in Italy in October 1944 but in very limited numbers as NWE had priority. It was used by British, Canadian, New Zealand, South African and Poland units.
     
  13. Tom Canning

    Tom Canning WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Tired Old Soldier
    No sure of that "Firely" on Rome's ring road and cannot imagine where it came from and when as they weren't in any quantity- certainly 6th Armoured didn't appear to have any when they were the main strike force in the Po Valley.

    Perhaps if you could slow down ( in Rome ?)on your way to work and read off the signs on this Tank we could then Identity the owners ...

    I don't read where Monty talked about the Panther in 1943 as they didn't show up until the Liri Valley in May '44 - but DE Guinand did mention his fear of the "Panther and Tiger" syndrone in 1944.

    Cheers
     
  14. TiredOldSoldier

    TiredOldSoldier Senior Member

    The OP mentioned Panthers ....
    The Firefly appeared as "gatekeeper" around 12 years ago and has been repainted at least a couple of times, no chance of getting at the original markings:
    Old pic

    [​IMG]
    More recent (no comment)
    [​IMG]

    Google coords: 41°58′26.64″ N 12°32′47.61″ E
     
  15. wowtank

    wowtank Very Senior Member

    Is it a firefly or easy 8?
     
  16. Tom Canning

    Tom Canning WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Tired old soldier -
    The picture - it figures ......and you are right as Monty allegedly mentioned the Panther in the OP - BUT - I am wondering how he had knwledge of both the Cromwell and Panther in August of '43 as the Cromwell never showed up in Italy and the Panther was first spotted near Frosinione in the May of '44....much to the discomfort of the 5th Cdn and 6th Brit. Armoureds

    According to Sol - the 17 pounders arrived in Italy during October '44 - this is after the Gothic Line Battles- the reason I missed that arrival was the fact that I was reclining in Catania at that time until the January '45 - and so missed the big event - perhaps he can also tell us where they went....?

    Cheers
     
  17. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    A passing point, but there's likely no real reason why Monty might not have been aware of both types at that time.
    The Cromwell/A27 project was under discussion since at least late 1941, and a mild steel prototype was delivered to the Army in March '42 for testing.
    First 'proper' Panthers were produced very early 43, issued, and then recalled (I forget why). They made it into the field at Kursk in July '43. News of new types travelled pretty fast between the allies, but I'd have to have a little dig to be sure when word first reached 'the Western allies'. Sure I've got something on it somewhere.

    (WT, an Easy 8 would be on HVSS, or it wouldn't be an E8.)
     
  18. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    This is your Vc/M4a4 Firefly isn't it, ToS?
    The Afv Register: Pictures
    (Data button takes you to map link and a scrap of extra info.)
    Not yet found anything on how exactly it got there - still Googling.

    Wonder if that scrappy knows how much Shermans go for now...
     
  19. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

    Is it a firefly or easy 8?

    Hi Tim,

    Here's an Easy Eight suspension:

    Dave
     

    Attached Files:

  20. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    Good post Adam

    I agree that the nature of the terrain in Normandy favoured the defender. The Germans were able to use that to their advantage and inflict heavy losses on Allied armour when they advanced. However when the Germans attempted similar offensive operations in Normandy they were faced with the same difficulties. They too suffered their heaviest losses when they left their defensive positions and attacked the Allies.
    As noted, upgunning was likely the only option available. Clearly, the fact that the 17 pdr was jury rigged into Shermans was an indication that someone felt more firepower was necessary. If only to give allied tank crews some additional confidence in their equipment. The sight of 500 burning British/Canadian tanks after Goodwood could not have been a morale booster.
    Beyond the opinions of Blackburn, I did have a personal acquaintance with a former 1st Hussars officer. He had 5 Shermans shot out from under him from June 44 to April 45. In two of those instances, he was the only survivor. His remarks on the Sherman vs German armour are unprintable.
     

Share This Page