British Tank Development.

Discussion in 'Weapons, Technology & Equipment' started by von Poop, Feb 21, 2022.

  1. JeremyC

    JeremyC Well-Known Member

    Of course the fault was the Treasury's (but you have to take into account the job they were trying to do in the mid-to-late thirties, the background of no political support for a Continental commitment for the British Army, and the priorities for spending the money that was allocated to the Army by the elected government of the UK).
    The 1st Armoured Division was not deployed to France until late May 1940 for the simple reason that there weren't enough tanks to equip its units. Even when it did go, most of its regiments had Vickers light tanks making up the establishment, and there are accounts of numbers of the cruiser tanks (A9, A10, and A13) being sent across, straight from the factories, minus their guns and radios. On landing in France, they were loaded on to trains to be taken to what they thought was a peaceful assembly and training area - the Germans, however had other ideas . . .
    The Division had already been stripped of its Support Group, so had no organic infantry or artillery, and its vehicle maintenance, recovery and repair units lacked their full equipment and sufficient trained men to service and maintain tanks that they can't have seen before.
    The whole thing was a shambles and you cannot extrapolate any lessons from it (except how not to go to war . . .)
     
  2. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    Best bit about all this business.
    'What is a tank?'
    Essentially un-answered until, what? C.1943... Or later.
    Certainly very much up in the air for most of the interwar period.
    'WTF is the ideal arrangement here?'

    If people choose to believe that question was settled or in any way simple, then they really haven't followed the process/historiography.

    Hello, Centurion.
    (That's a tank. At least for the next 80 years or so. The question remains open, particularly in the era of UGVs etc..)

    centurion-mk3-trial.jpg
     
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  3. Don Juan

    Don Juan Well-Known Member

    The Support Group was too small to be of any real use in combined arms warfare, and in any case its purpose was to protect the divisional boundaries and not to work intimately with the armoured regiments.
     
  4. Don Juan

    Don Juan Well-Known Member

    Honestly Listy, read this book. It will answer all your questions.
     
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  5. Don Juan

    Don Juan Well-Known Member

    Yes, tanks were still an immature technology at the beginning of the war, or at least a technology that was just starting its maturing phase. It's like the pearl-clutching tone that some people adopt when they say that the Cromwell or Comet were "two years too late", which is measured against some kind of retrospective ideal standard that had nothing to do with what the British were trying to create.
     
  6. BFBSM

    BFBSM Very Senior Member

    Further to this, from The 1st Armoured Division in France, Roger Evans, Army Quarterly, Vol.45 No.1, November 1942 (pp. 58-59)

     
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  7. Nick the Noodle

    Nick the Noodle Active Member

    Did anyone really have a decent tank making facility prior to WW2?

    Both the US and USSR also suffered from a lack of tanks early in the war, either due to actually having almost zero facilities to build tanks, to having 1000's knocked out. Both went quantity over quality at first, just like Britain.

    Did anyone have a 'medium' better than the A10, or a 'heavy' better than the A12 in 1939?

    The Panzer III wasn't reliable until the G model, at the earliest, when a new gearbox was introduced. In his Haynes manual on the Pz III, Dick Taylor points out that 60 out of the 87 tanks used in Poland required major mechnical repairs after that campaign, with 26 of the remaining 27 being knocked out. Further, In January 1940, he reports that 4 of 12 Pz III's broke down on a 120 km route march, and in Oct 41, they broke down frequently. That makes the Panther, Crusader and KV-1 look positively durable.

    Also, according to Dick Taylor in his book The Second World War Tank Crisis, there was real missed hit concerning kit, the lack of a decent engine, with the Napier Lion being a possible earlier 'Meteor' like power pack.
     
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  8. Don Juan

    Don Juan Well-Known Member

    There were quite a few engines being considered before the war. E.M.C. Clarke at Woolwich Arsenal tapped up Rolls-Royce about converting the Kestrel to a tank engine, although I suspect that it was the Air Ministry who put a block on this. There was the Thornycroft RY-12 which was considered for the A14, and there was also an "arrowhead" (i..e W) engine that was being specifically developed for tanks by John Fowler, although this mysteriously died a death. None of these engines would have been any good, however, if the tank designers had put the air cleaners on the outside of the fighting compartment.
     
  9. JeremyC

    JeremyC Well-Known Member

    Quite. My point was that the !st Armoured Division that deployed to France was but a shadow of its intended self (even though, with the benefit of hindsight, we know that that self would never be fit for purpose) and the deployment was so shambolic that to try and form a theory around it would be a mistake.
     
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  10. Don Juan

    Don Juan Well-Known Member

    We should remember though with regard to the deployment of 1st Armoured Division to France, that the French were supposed to hold the fort while the British gradually built up their strength. The French holding would also have allowed the British to make a few mistakes - ideally both the French and British would have learned alongside each other and shared the lessons.

    The French collapse exposed all the deficiencies in British ideas and resources, which might otherwise have been corrected before they had serious consequences.
     
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  11. JeremyC

    JeremyC Well-Known Member

    I noticed the Thornycroft RY/12 engine and have two ideas about the reason it was never used in an AFV.
    One is that it was a marine engine - and marine engines are BIG (I mean physically big, not just cubic capacity) - much bigger and not nearly as compact as aircraft engines. The picture gives no idea of scale, but I believe that the V12 marine engine in the Milestones Museum in Basingstoke is an RY/12 - and that is massive (Have been meaning to go back to see if I can get any further information, but Covid etc. . . .). The Thornycroft "advert" shows the way the engine's ancillaries are laid out around it - ready for access in a boat's engine room - and shows how much development work would be needed to produce a power plant compact enough to fit the engine bay of an early WW2 AFV. Also, marine engines tend to be slow-revving and the RY/12's 650 hp might be difficult to match to any available transmission (available in a reasonable timescale in 1938-9, that is). Technical information on the RY/12 is very scarce, though, so I'me still working on this one.
    The other thing is that the principal application for RY/12s was high-speed launches for the RAF - so did that mean they came under the RAF's much higher spending priority than if they were used for tanks for the Army?
    Same thing applies to the adaptation of the R-R Kestrel and the Napier Lion for AFV use - they were aircraft equipment and the MAP had all companies producing aircraft equipment well and truly sewn up. Perhaps it wasn't so much a case of the War Office being too blind, or too tight, or too stupid, to see the potential in these engines for tank use, but a pragmatic acknowledgement that they were Air Ministry/MAP property and therefore completely out of reach for the Army?
     

    Attached Files:

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  12. Nick the Noodle

    Nick the Noodle Active Member

    It appears that the army could have got their hands on a Napier Lion but that the £500 price tag was considered too much.
     
  13. Nick the Noodle

    Nick the Noodle Active Member

    I'm not sure that the Germans had an edge over tank design or production than any of the other 'Big 4', except for 1942. Their only truly useful tank, most of the time, in WW2, was the Pz IV, actually a great tank. The Tiger 1 had its moments, as a specialist afv. The Pz II was useful 39-40, because it worked, had tracks and a radio, and used by a combined army vs a disjointed one.

    Overall, once the Germans were facing Shermans and Churchills in 1943, and T-34/85's, IS-2's and the Cromwell family in 44, the Germans were not producing anything near as good, useful or durable as these 5-ish.
     
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  14. Don Juan

    Don Juan Well-Known Member

    Well, some marine engines are just converted standard engines, e.g. Perkins Sabre, but I take your point about the RY 12. The Air Ministry spent most of the pre-war period fending the Admiralty away from Rolls-Royce, who they considered to be "their" company, and if the Navy couldn't get in then the Army had no chance.

    But converted Aero engines aren't really ideal either, as they're generally overly complex and expensive. I've got comparative figures somewhere for the cost and time of production for the Ford GAA versus the Meteor, and IIRC the Ford comes in at about two-thirds of the price and time to complete.
     
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  15. Don Juan

    Don Juan Well-Known Member

    I think the Panzer IV was pretty good rather than great - it just wasn't durable enough, like all of the larger German tanks. Cromwell vs. Panther just shows the bifurcation in design priorities between Germany and Britain in the second half of the war. I think the Panther was the better fighting tank, while the Cromwell was the better automotive vehicle. As far as I can tell, it was only the Soviets towards the end of the war who achieved the trifecta of powerful gun, thick armour and durable drivetrain.
     
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  16. ltdan

    ltdan Nietenzähler

    Not the engines, but the complicated gearboxes were in fact the real problem.
    When easier-to-maintain gearboxes were finally installed, the problem was solved. The far more numerous StuGs on the same chassis were not considered mechanically quite reliable vehicles for nothing.

    Anyway
    As a continental dweller, I would be more interested in how the British focus on a powerful blue water navy had an influence on tank theory and development. To give a rough comparison:
    GB, as a naval power had a well-organised fleet in 1939, while the tanks seemed to be ailing on their engines
    Germany, as a continental power, had a well-organised tank force, while the Kriegsmarine..... well, the unreliability of the high-pressure superheated steam engines was almost legendary
     
  17. idler

    idler GeneralList

    Just reposting this as a point of reference from: ww2talk.com/index.php?threads/the-difficult-world-of-british-armour-development.16906/

    How New A.F.V.s Are Obtained from the R Tks Journal The Tank Vol 30, No 349, May 1948:

    View attachment 267441 View attachment 267442

    I'm not intending to kill another thread, so carry on...
     
  18. Nick the Noodle

    Nick the Noodle Active Member

    The gearbox was certainly part of the problem, with the Variorex replaced by the Aphon in the H Model. The suspension remained a problem,bogies being easily damaged, and even spare torsion bars being carried by the tank itself.

    By the time the mechanical faults of the Pz III were solved the tank was really obsolete.

    Anyway
    The British put its Navy first and army last, the Germans vice versa.
     
  19. Nick the Noodle

    Nick the Noodle Active Member

    The Pz IV was initially very good, slowly becoming adequate, until upgunned. Then it was excellent, probably the best overall tank in the world, from July 42, until the arrival of the Sherman at El Alamein pt 2. Again its ability, relative to its opponents declined over time, but it was always adequate.

    As for Cromwell vs Panther, assuming we consider the latter in perfect working order, the terrain will determine whose 'best'. On the Eastern Front, where visibility is far, I'd be in a Panther every time, especially if I can keep my front towards the enemy. OTOH, the Panther is a much larger target, and in closer terrain, the 75mm is perfectly adequate against the Panthers side armour, and the latters poor field of view would be a real concern, especially for the gunner. Assuming the report below is correct on where the hits on tanks were struck, the greater maneuverability and vision of the Cromwell should give it an advantage, given 60% hits on sides, 37% on front.

    https://www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/Ballistics/Term/ORO-T-117_Allied_Tank_Casualties_WW2.pdf
     
  20. Don Juan

    Don Juan Well-Known Member

    The Maybach engines were never really durable enough though, having a limit of 2500km (1500 miles) in the Panzer III and IV, which was equivalent to the Liberty in the Crusader, and unlike the British the Germans actually put the air cleaners in the right place. This means that the Maybach had only half the lifespan of the Liberty when on the bench.
     

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