Monty on Tanks

The superior mobility of the Churchill compared with the Sherman is a critical advantage, getting tanks to where they could be used is obviously important. The US had an agenda to promote the Sherman as the tank all it's allies should use, how well it could do the job was another question entirely.

 

I can only go on what they've said, I'm afraid, as I'm not overly familiar with the Italian campaign. Naively, I'd have thought the Churchill's reputation with hills from Tunisia would have made it a shoe-in for Italy. It's interesting that there was a conscious decision to try and do it without them. Was it purely logistical concerns?

 

The overt reason was that the Sherman's 75mm was considered a better and more flexible weapon than the Churchill's 6 pounder. I think the logistical reasons, although I've not seen them stated, were probably decisive though. British Military Mission 222 (Maj-Gen Alec Richardson) visited Italy in Spring 1944 and notified the War Office of the strong demands in the theatre for the Churchill. This is when a number of other justifications for not sending the Churchill in the first place were aired. One of these was the concern that the Churchill, being 10 tons heavier than the Sherman, would present problems crossing bridges. I don't think this was a very convincing argument, and in the event it turned out that the Churchill actually coped with bridges better than the M4 because its load was more evenly spread.

I personally think that not sending the Churchill in the first place was quite simply an error, as the British had become a bit over-enamoured with the Sherman/75mm combo and the simplified logistics it offered, and overlooked the shortcomings it might present in a geographically challenging theatre.

 

They may simply not have considered Italy to be so geographically challenging? If your vision are the gently rolling hills of Tuscany and the great plain of the north, the reality in many areas is probably quite a nasty shock to anywhere depending on getting from A to B off road.

All the best

Andreas

 

Or 'we managed without it in Sicily'?

A useful point about the 6pr Churchills, I don't suppose they were in a rush to ship 75mm ones out there.

 

Assuming you have a copy of this, does Chapter 10, Section 2 have anything insightful to say about NZ-Corps and the second and third battles of Cassino?

By chance I've just spotted a copy of the contents pages.

 

I will see if I can dig it out (I'm assuming I've got it as I can't think where else I'd have got the quote).

 

Thanks a lot, Idler.
I mistyped, in fact, it's Chapter Two, Section 10.

 

Had a read through this whole thread... rather than follow any particular lines let me just make a few observations.

I think it's hard to accept that maybe a lot of the Allied tank casualties in Normandy were unavoidable due to the necessity of attacking in an area which was highly suited to defence. If Shermans and Cromwells has been better armoured, it might have saved some lives but they were still dealing with hidden anti-tank guns and enemy tanks where maybe (at least) the first tank in the line was going to get hit before they knew the enemy were there.

As far as the desert is concerned, I think ... well, 6-pounder anti-tank guns might have made a big difference if they had arrived earlier, although I'm not even sure if I'm speaking of tank-mounted guns or RA guns. We all know how very well the guns did at the Snipe position in 2nd El Alamein, for instance.

As DJ pointed out, one of the issues was the lack of an HE shell, I think particularly for dealing with enemy AT guns. I don't know if the stories of 2-pounder tanks charging AT guns to get into range with their machine guns are true or not, but I'm pretty sure I've read something like that. There was something broken in the lack of feedback returning to the tank designers from the actual users.

All the equipment in the world won't solve doctrinal problems, though. A 6-pounder Crusader madly charging the enemy would get hit just as easily as a 2-pounder.

The advantage of numbers over quality, though, I think, can be overstated. The British lost (if I remember the numbers correctly) hundreds of tanks in Operation Crusader alone. Maybe they would have been better off with a hypothetical smaller force of tanks if it had meant they husbanded their strength more carefully.

With regards to Monty, I am not convinced he was any good at commanding forces involving tanks. The initial battle plan for 2nd El Alamein fundamentally just didn't work. The tanks were up to the ridge but they could not go break out because of German anti-tank guns further back.

And fiiiinally any time someone says the British had no good generals in the desert before Monty, I feel like I need to point out that O'Connor and his men did extremely well. I may be valorizing someone whose reputation in the desert was left untarnished because of his capture, but I do wonder whether Rommel would have had a harder time if O'Connor had not been captured and had been put back in command of the forces in Libya.

Cheers all,
Chris

 

Meant to say that I believe this was true, because of the time/energy to make the cast front of the Matilda hull.

(The Matilda Black Prince was an interesting idea... A remote controlled tank that could be used to draw enemy fire and thus help locate enemy guns.)

I wonder what tanks would have been sent to the desert if Churchill tank development hadn't been so rushed and if the tank has entered service later but with a better reputation. It's academic, anyway

 

Just a random thought on the tank casualties in Normandy and afterward.
We are all familiar with the Commonwealth infantry doctrine of shooting the infantry onto the target with rolling or creeping artillery barrages. The concept of neutralizing the enemy while the infantry advanced was well established. I am less familiar with that same concept being applied to armoured attacks. I realize there was British/Commonwealth army doctrine related to artillery support for armour but considering the devastating tank loss rates from German AT weapons, was it not effective or not utilized frequently enough?
I simply cannot recall a detailed account where, unlike the infantry, the artillery was credited with reducing armoured losses or achieving the neutralizing effect.
Perhaps a gap in my education but I'd be interested in hearing from those more knowledgeable about that facet of armour/artillery co-operation.

 

I can think of a negative example from North Africa... But that might not help?

Re earlier discussion and I think I'm contradicting my earlier post: 2 pounder HE would probably have been quite helpful in the desert. Although the range would still have been an issue it would have given the Matilda, Valentine, and Crusader something to fling at enemy AT guns other than their MG fire. The Matilda got away without because their armour was SO good against the weapons the Italians had.

But the difficulty they had in dealing with enemy AT actually comes back to your question: in general I think the communication between the armoured units and artillery was poor. So they couldn't easily call on some field artillery to blast an AT gun at a particular location even though in the scheme of things I believe it was the responsibility of the RA to deal with them.

 

And the Churchill is another example of vehicles rushed into production without all the technical hurdles having been worked out earlier, to no one's benefit. I believe the unreliability of the early Churchills is why they were not deployed to North Africa earlier.