The image used to state that "Forced the British to flee the continent, leaving it's tanks on the beaches at Dunkirk" is from The Dieppe Raid by the Canadians in 44.
@thhseeking Ouch.. I find it difficult to take authoritative accounts seriously when their producers haven't watched their videos, or worse still, don't recognise well known footage such as the Churchills at Dieppe.
The old boy at 36 mins talking about having to order his tank to drive over bodies. Nothing but total respect for him and his peers. Go through that and still retain your humanity. There are reasons they are called the Greatest Generation.
The very same thing happened to a friend of ours at Omaha Beach. He told me his Sherman unit arrived later in the day but before the bodies had been cleared. It was the worst thing he ever ordered his driver to do.
35:45 My grandfather served as a Sherman tank commander on Iwo jima, and I was the only person he told all his war stories to. He told me about being ordered forward when the beach was so covered with dead and wounded that 'you couldn't step between them.' He never said directly that he ran over wounded Marines, but he was gravely serious about it when he mentioned it, and he only told me about it near the end of his life.
During combat many men told each other IF I get through and I want to, to have a story to tell my grandchildren. That was a respected unspoken rule. That is why many wives, friends, siblings and anyone else werent told the stories. Only the grandchildren did and also lest we forget. I got to hear stories too ...
My grandfather on my mother's side was a medic on D day and the only time he ever mentioned the war was while drunk, describing very briefly the damage inflicted to a Sherman by a German 88mm gun,he fell immediately silent and withdrawn after his short and completely unexpected disclosure,the look on his face unmistakably that of reflection mixed with "I've said too much". I felt immensely sorry for him at that point but always carried the utmost respect for his silence.My paternal grandfather was RAF and had a different outlook,quite happy to relate tales once prompted,cleverly adapting the details and even outcome of the stories stories according to the age of his audience,kids want to hear that the hero always win,equally they don't need to know that a quick glance around the cockpit saw his co pilot cut almost in half.War is a dreadful thing however you view it,but it brings out some of the absolute best qualities in humans,One and all proper men,proper heroes,and then some!
@@notpoliticallycorrect1303 Grandpa also revealed more and more details as I got older, culminating with the revelation that, when his tank came off the landing craft ready for battle, the jolt caused an ammo box to fall out of the turret storage and land on the foot trigger for the main gun, sending a 75mm round into the Marines on the beach. As time went on, I also noticed that, during his training stories, the members of his crew were (for example) Smith, Jones, Brown, and Green, nut as soon as the narrative turned to recollections of the action on Iwo, they became Driver, Co-Driver, Gunner, and Loader.
My father was a commander of a "Cromwell Tank" In the "Guards armoured division".His tanks name was "Fulham". This tank came back with him to the UK after the completion of the Disarming of the Germans.!! I understand it was one of a few tanks that was employed that came back at the end of the war!!
16:13 The British were unable to use tanks effectively because the man who knew (Percy Hobart), and had written the textbooks in the 1930s, was of the wrong class and therefore his opinion was of no interest. Heinz Guderian had copies of everything that Hobart wrote, translated into German, and carried them with him throughout the war.
After the war, in captivity, he was convinced to say how he was influenced by Fuller & Lidell-Hart. But I agree about Hobart. HE made some enemies with his abrasive nature, was shipped out to Egypt, and started training the tankers there until he was dragged back to England. I think he was a corporal in the Home Guard for a while. The guy deserved so much better. He did see his "Funnies" used successfully, though :P
@@thhseeking trained one of if not the best armoured unit in the british army while in Egypt and was responsible for so much of the success of D-Day with the 'funnies'
Hobart and Liddel-Hart wrote the copy book for the use of the tank. The British high command declared their contribution as useless. The Germans read it too. They decided that it was exactly correct. History proved who was right! British tank and anti- tank guns were great. The problem was fitting them into small turrets.
Class had nothing to do with it. Primarily, British doctrine was that a tank accompanied infantry, rather than vice versa, and the experience of German officers during WWii was more vivid than that of British officers, thanks to unwelcome direct visual evidence! However, the main reason was disarmament; no money was spent on tanks, despite featuring in doctrine, so on manoeuvres, tanks were represented by a man carrying a flag; that was told to me by my father, commissioned in 1935 as an infantry officer. In France1939-40, they prepared positions, and then left them to race forward to help the Belgians who had hoped to stay neutral (didn't they learn anything in 1914?), but then repeatedly had to retreat back to Dunkirk, as they were outflanked through French lines. They repulsed all German attacks, even though their only anti-tank weapon was ........ a rifle (Boyes). They then had to abandon all transport and equipment other than personal weapons, and were taken off the mole on 2nd June, but were important in creating a new army; he returned to France on 6th June 1944.
Listening to this and the arguments in the 30's about costs and cutting military spending is like listening to todays news. History is there to learn not dispise.
Art Boon ran a 50 cal on top of a Sherman or Firefly from Juno Beach and up through the Netherlands. He said there were so many wounded and Canadians on Juno Beach that they turned and eventually found a way up. He joined at age 15 and just passed away two years ago. Art was brave humble man, ever "Audox et Cautus".
The Battle of France forced the British to reconsider their tank philosophy. The Matilda had good armour but it was slow and lacked firepower. The crusader had mobility but lacked both armour and firepower. The British needed American Grant and Sherman tanks in order to succeed in El Alemein.
The German panzers also had better radios enabling communication in the battlefield and the ability to call in air support. Then they had the commander's cupola which gave a good field of vision.
The Grant made zero difference in the rout at Gazala, while El Alamein was won because Montgomery placed far greater emphasis on artillery rather than tanks, and much close ground to air coordination. I can't agree that Grants and Shermans were the sole reason.
Tanks in WW1 didn’t have turrets - guess Renault did not get the memo. The British tank philosophy was of infantry -Heavy- tank like the Matilda and the cruiser tanks light fast tanks for exploitation. This is based on cavalry doctrine. Heavy cavalry like cuirassier and lancers and light and medium cavalry. The problem was the allies in did not deploy them as cavalry.
Nonsense. Alamein was won primarily by artillery, infantry, anti-tank guns and the DAF. The armour was still stuck in the ‘Devil’s Garden’ until near the end. The first Shermans were actually constructed in a factory in the United States which had been paid for by the British. The Lima Locomotive Works, Inc in Ohio was a manufacturer of steam engines. In February 1941 the British government signed a contract for them to make and supply 400 tanks, and as part of the deal the UK provided the funding for a new 11,600 square metre manufacturing facility, with all the tooling and equipment necessary to produce 50 tanks per month. Britain spent it’s massive US currency reserves during 1939-41 on things like paying for US factories to tool up to make tanks and aircraft on their behalf and helping to pull the US out of depression. _The facilities chosen to build the Grants were in various states of disrepair, none more so than Pressed Steel Car's "Ghost Plant" in the Hegewisch neighborhood of south Chicago. _*_This factory, which had been used for the manufacture of railroad cars, had stood empty since the Great Depression, and had "no roof, no floor, no machinery." The British Production Orders provided funds to add to, refurbish and equip the plants, including a late addition in February, 1941, the Lima Locomotive Works in Ohio,_*_ originally contracted to produce 400 Grants. The montage above shows the progress at the Hegewisch plant from February through April, 1941._ When the US government set up the Lend-Lease programme, the British government agreed to sign over its ownership share of the Lima Locomotive Works to the US, in return for a promise that the US would supply them with tanks free of charge for the duration of the war. The British also had some influence over the design of the Sherman, though reluctant to adopt British weapons into their arsenal, the American designers were prepared to accept proven British ideas, such things as the low profile, split hatch cupola, the loader's periscope, and immediately incorporated them into the design of the Sherman turret, as well as the loader's hatch. The British gave feedback and suggestions to improve the complex engine and tank generally. The difference from the first used by the British in North Africa to the E8 was vast to the point they were different tanks. Initially in north Africa they were found to be shaky and consume huge amounts of petrol. In 1942 the US were eager to supply about 250 unproven Sherman tanks. The US were desperate to get the tank blooded in battle, so the British could do that for them, giving them feedback and improving the tank. The Sherman’s first showing was at El Alemein. The Sherman tank supplied was complex, as they never had a proper tank. They never had a dedicated, light & powerful, tank engine, which was a great disadvantage at first. Neither did the British until they introduced the RR Meteor in the Cromwell. _In addition, the new equipment reaching Eighth Army greatly increased the problems of inexperience -8th, 9th and 24th Armoured Brigades for instance all received their new Shermans too late to gain any real practice with them before the battle began. They also found that there was a dearth of spare parts and many important items of equipment, such as compasses, were missing altogether. The Shermans later gained a deserved reputation for reliability but in those early days when neither their crews nor the maintenance units were used to them, _*_it is hardly surprising that, in the tactful words of Lucas Phillips, ‘several of them were found to be mechanically shaky’._* _…As a crowning misfortune, _*_the Shermans revealed another defect which had been concealed by the static nature of the fighting at Alamein: in these difficult conditions they consumed what the Official History calls ‘fantastic quantities of fuel’._* _…Currie’s brigade had been built up to 121 tanks of which seventy-two were Shermans or Grants and the rest Crusaders, but by this stage of the battle _*_a number of the Shermans in both 9th Armoured Brigade and 1st Armoured Division were very much ‘mechanically shaky’.”_* -Eighth Army's Greatest Victories: Alam Halfa to Tunis 1942-1943 by Adrian Turner Later in the war the British developed the much superior (to the ones they’d been using previously) Meteor engine 500-550 hp and by the end of the war pushing 600-650 hp. However the Meteor was effectively 80% a Rolls-Royce Merlin and the priority was the RAF and air effort for a large part of the war with great demand for these engines to go to planes such as the Spitfire, the Mosquito and the Lancaster so there was never enough. It made sense for the British to use Shermans not because the Sherman was so much more reliable than the Cromwell.
They both begin with D, what's the problem. Humourablness aside, there's plenty of examples like this floating around the mil-hist YT channels, probably the most egregious example being one called 'dark docs' I believe. That guy is notorious for posting random images in his videos.
No, you're not 'nit-picking', you just expect accuracy in what is supposed to be a history-based channel. If, either by ignorance or intent, they illustrate 'Dunkirk' with an image that is clearly and obviously an image of 'Dieppe', what other errors, slips or misinterpretations have they made in their historical analysis? Facts matter.
@0:38 "Spring 1940 Germany... ...forced the British to flee the continent. Leaving it's tanks on the beaches at Dunkirk" Looks alot like Canadian Churchill tanks on the beaches of Dieppe in1942 to me. Hope the rest of this is a bit more acurate
“Hope the rest of this is a bit more accurate”. Spoiler alert, no. Even the title of the video is misleading as they don’t get around to talking about the Cromwell until over halfway through the video.
@@frankanderson5012for what it’s worth it’s still a good little video to watch if you’re an average Ww2 and armor enthusiast, anyone should check sources and statements always if they want a guaranteed answer or best case
The narrator has the Cromwell armed with a 6 pounder and an additional 75 mm at 33:15. The British can't lose with such firepower, but as the one expert stated multiple times, they just don't know how to use the damn things. I think they equipped them with only smoke shells to hide the universal carriers sneaking around with anti-tank rifles.
One thing not mentioned here is that the Matilda II was so well armoured at the beginning of the war that the only thing that stopped them from stopping the Germans at Arras was an anti-aircraft unit that knew their guns were also designed as anti-tank guns, but had never been used that way. Rommel even had a captured Matilda II as his command tank in North Africa, so they can't have been all bad. But it was undergunned
Little known fact is that Rommel personally grabbed that AA unit and directed it's fire onto the advancing Matilda's. His adjutant was killed beside him.
The A30 Challenger is perhaps even more underrated and misunderstood than Comet. With a true 17pdr, 100mm frontal armour on later variants, and mobility equivalent to the Cromwell, the Challenger was a good tank. It would have even been better had its design not been hindered by rather unrealistic design requirements.
@@bobjohnston9154The Challenger's turret, although ungainly looking, wasn't as cramped as the Firefly. They gun wasn't rotated to an awkard position. The gun had better depression, IIRC, for hull down work. Despite its apparent height, it was actually lower in overall height than Firefly. Its lack of wading was only really an issue during the initial Normandy landing. The reconnaissance units that used it came to appreciate it. It was really, in some ways a better tank than the Firefly.
Funny that the method the German's used with the Blitzkrieg was actually a British idea from a singular British Army Officer which the German's seen the value of. That British Officer was not in vouge at the time and the British Army dismissed his ideas but the German's got as much information as the could about it and we see how that allowed them to dominate the Allies early in the war.
The Germans developed infiltration tactics toward the end of World War I. "When combined with armoured fighting vehicles and aircraft to extend the tactics' operational capabilities, this contributed to what would be called Blitzkrieg in the Second World War."
Cromwell and Churchill were flawed but adequate for their time. The Centurion however was the first true MBT and a world leader, in frontline service for 30 years. The real changes were doctrinal though, and that was slower to evolve: Losers work at new ideas, winners are prone to fight the last war.
the pictures of the Churchill tanks 40 and 9 minutes 30 seconds in were on the beaches of Dieppe, the disastrous raid that took place in 1942, "Operation Jubilee."
Re: the German 88mm in 1941/ '42 The Germans, especially Rommel, used their 88mm anti-aircraft gun as an anti-tank gun against British cruiser tanks, which in 1941 and early 1942 ONLY had 2-pounders, firing anti-tank shells, with NO high explosive shells at all. Yet the British also had an anti-aircraft gun - the QF 3.7-inch AA gun (with an even wider calibre of 94mm), which would've been just as effective as the German 88mm had it been deployed against tanks. So the lesson here: fighting is about tactics, training, and flexibility. BTW: British artillery, in the form of the 25-pounder, were effective against German tanks (in 1941 and 1942) and the British had AP-shells for them.
French and British tanks were actually superior to German tanks in 1939 - 40. The problem was strategy (Liddell-Hart pioneering ideas on breakthrough and rear flanking was ignored; De Gaulle’s innovative ideas developed before the war were similarly impeded and ignored by the French high command. As usual, generals fight the last war.
French tanks yes. British tanks no. The vast majority of German tanks were the small PzKpfw I and PzKpfw II light tanks. The more effective medium tanks such as the PzKpfw III and PzKpfw IV were available but in relatively small numbers. PzKpfw III and PzKpfw IV were light years better than the best of British tanks.
@@bennewnham4497 The Matilda could destroy any German tank up until the Panzer IV F in late 1942 it was also better armoured than the pre-1942 Panzers.
@@catinthehat906the Matilda was a death trap against the 88 in the desert as it was too slow to avoid them and had no HE shells to silence the guns, the Africa corps had so few tanks so they used tonnes of AT guns like the high velocity 50, 75 and 88s all could easily get through the armour of Matilda 2
Um, that was Dieppe, not Dunkirk. It's really not difficult to get footage to match the script. There's no excuse to mess it up in the first 50 seconds.
First of all, I have nothing but respect for these gentlemen and their story, so keep that in mind. At the 22 minute mark Mr. Pace refers to an engagement on the 19th of November at 'the wire', and talks about their Intelligence said these were Italian Lorries and uses the word 'thought' they were Italian transport. At 22:15, Mr. Gilman stated he was 'sure' they were hit by 88's in that engagement. The truth is they were in fact hit by '90mm Italian AA guns' which WERE mounted on Italian trucks. The Italians used these very successfully in that engagement. Just as in NW Europe where every AT gun was an '88' and every tank was a 'Tiger', it was a case of mistaken identity. Semper Fidelis! CWO4 USMCR [Ret] 17 February 1969 - 1 August 2004.
In the early war British tanks were not allowed to carry HE. If they did they came under the control of Artillery Dept. Foot 2 pdr. artillery could be equipped with both HE and AT rounds.
How effective was the HE 2 pdr round ? For infantry support, the Germans had the short 75 mm Stg, which worked. I can never understand how those responsible for tank production made such poor decisions. They sent good men to die in inferior weapons before retirement with their knighthood.
As your into was mentioning the BEF having to leave its tanks in France [1940] you were showing images of Mk l Churchills stuck on the shingle [Dieppe1942] The abandoned BEF "tanks" would have mainly been Infantry ["I"] tanks
Crusader issues; 1. not have a rivited turret, 2. not have a 2 pounder gun but a 6 pounder gun, and 3. not have an unreliable aero-engine to power the tank.
It was an informative and wonderful historical coverage documentary about tanks designed and adoption doctrines by English from 1915 to 1945..documentary showed French tanks ,German prototypes, Soviet 1935 designed, French and British didn't know how using tanks like Germans, French hadn't airforces coverage, Stalin purged in 1936 destroyed red army systematically and decisively. ..
Not entirely true as British tank design flourished in the inter war years with the Soviet Union, Poland, Japan and many other countries buying British tanks or building them under license. However the British Government severely restricted weapons purchases for its own army until 1938. The British did field some good tanks, the A12 Matilda, Vickers Valentine and Vauxhall Churchill. Followed in 1944 by the excellent Comet and A41 Centurion. It was the Cruiser Tanks 1940 to 1943 which had chronic reliability issues.
Interesting that there was accountability for the disaster at Villiers Bocage. Compare that to the lack of accountability in the US army command today.
This is an old video. I read recently that the reason the Meteor engine ( an un supercharged Merlin ) was slow getting into production , was the delay getting the required machine tools from the USA. Initial Meteor engines were from aircraft crashed !!
Not heard that before. The Meteor was eventually made by Rover after Hives (RR Boss) made a deal with the boss of Rover to take over gas turbine development from Rover in exchange for giving Rover the rights to manufacture the Meteor.
Unfortunately, due to the short-sighted head shed decision to only issue explosive 40mmm rounds to anti-tank guns. Which left the crusaders and Matildas pretty much defenceless against anti-tank guns.
Ha, old Corrigan. The Jeremy Clarkson of WW1 historians. "By 1917 they were very good at its use". Um, no. Command problems abounded at Cambrai (hence all the ground lost an momentary panic and the Germans counter-attacked), every other use of the tank a failure and some uses utterly disastrous.
The Russians selected out small men for service in the mechanized regiments. They made smaller vehicles which were harder to spot, harder to sight, saved much in materials and (most importantly) were very difficult to operate by larger men such as Germans :)
Love the guy who confidently states that 1st world war tanks did not have turrets and about a minute later they show a longish clip of French FT tanks and their turrets.
0.37 The narrative implies that these tanks were left on the beach at Dunkirk. Not so. They are Churchills used first on the ill-fated Dieppe raid in August 42 and were not available in 1940.
2:50 Are we going to forget about the Renault FT? Like the first modern(ish) tank that the French build literally in WW1 and entered service in May 1918.... 3:00 "Tanks during the first world war didn't have turrets" my god who are these "experts" the Renault FT had a turret...
The Tank would ve remained an idea if Churchill had nt championed its development ...for all his faults ...he was an able and inspired forward thinker..😮
Good story, nice footage.Although wrong tanks accompany the tekst. As so often is the case. It is like like showing a goose ina cooking programme whilst preparing a chicken.....
Look at how the Germans used their armor at the beginning of the war. Their undergunned Pz IIs and IVs plus their Czech-designed tanks outfought the big Char Bs and Matildas. Then later in the war, they moved on to the Tiger Is and Panthers. There were also plans for superheavy tanks like the Maus. It all went downhill very quick. The Germans didn't learn from their own success. Their designs could not keep up in the war of production. Furthermore, the Allies weren't prepared to fight at the beginning of WW2 so it's no wonder they got rolled.
cromwell woul'nt have stood much chance against Tiger tank, frontal armour too thin , should of had 90mm cannon to have any chance of penetrating Tiger frontal armour.
Maybe I'm just being a pedant, but I found the images of Churchills at Dieppe being used as examples of British armour abandoned at Dunkirk really irritating.
@@lyndoncmp5751 Would have been bizarre if it wasn't better than the Sherman, which even predated the Tiger never mind the Cromwell! How was it "very useful?" It barely made it into the war and offered nowhere near the level of protection that the late war German tanks had. Stand by what I said, it was last gen Tiger1 rip off armour set up.
@@fryertuck6496 "How was it "very useful?"" It helped get 2nd British Army across France, Belgium, Netherlands and Germany with good mechanical reliability, speed and reasonable protection. A "redundant" tank doesn't do that. Redundant means no longer needed, not required etc. A specific example of Cromwells being useful is when Cromwells of the 15/19th Hussars actually beat back the Panthers of Panzer Brigade 107 from taking the Son Bailey Bridge during Operation Market Garden on September 20th 1944. They managed to knock out some Panthers and Panzer Brigade 107 had to withdraw. Everyone knows the Panther and Tiger outmatched the Cromwell in gun and armour, but to claim the Cromwell was redundant and to question its usefulness is actually very ignorant.
@@lyndoncmp5751 Good Lord you're obtuse. You just admitted that the tank was inferior to older German Tigers. It was last gen tech that arrived too late to make a big difference. Allied air power and overwhelming numbers allowed victories not head to head tank battles.
@@fryertuck6496 I never said it was great and could go toe to toe with a heavy tank twice it's weight. I was arguing against your ridiculous childish assertion it was "redundant". It was actually useful in Normandy, the Great Swan across France, the battles through Belgium and the Netherlands and across Northern Germany. It didn't have to be state of the art fantastic in order for it to be pretty useful. Grow up. Even your user name is something a kid would come up with. Blocked so I don't waste any more of my time on such a pillock.
Though not state of the art when it made its debut in 1944, the Cromwell was actually more mechanically reliable than the Sherman for long advances with a higher survivability rate as well.
The British developed the much superior (to the ones they’d used previously) Meteor engine 500-550 hp and by the end of the war pushing 600-650 hp. However, the Meteor was effectively 80% a Rolls-Royce Merlin and the priority was the RAF and air effort for a large part of the war, with massive demand for the engines to go to planes such as the Spitfire, the Mosquito and the Lancaster, so there were never enough engines. It made sense for the British to use Shermans not because the Sherman was so much more reliable than the Cromwell. In September 1944 General Verney, commander 7 Armoured Division commented _I feel that I must write you a short note to tell you how superb the Cromwell tank has been during our recent activities, and I hope that you will pass on the gist of this letter to the various people responsible for the production of the magnificent machine… At dawn on August 31st we started our advance [and] it has carried us 250 miles in six days. We have lost practically no tanks through mechanical failure (I would guess four or five per regiment). Anyhow, so few that the matter has been no anxiety whatsoever. We have had actions every day [and] there has been no maintenance what- ever…The tremendous speed [has] alone made this great advance possible_ The Sherman got some stick _4th Armoured Brigade was extremely critical of the M4 and M4A1 (Shermans). The engines seem to have required replacement on average every 600 to 700 miles. Brigade workshops had already changed thirty and expected to deal with another one hundred in the near future…_ And _When the 3rd and 4th County of London Yeomanry amalgamated [in August 1944] officers from the latter reckoned the Cromwells they had given up were every way superior to the Shermans they now have to work with…….Maj Gen Verne, commanding the 7th Armoured Division…praised the Cromwells as ‘superb’ and claimed that mechanical breakdowns had been so few as to be negligible_
@@johnpeate4544 Excellent. Thanks for the input there. It was well known that the Cromwell was mechanically more reliable than the Sherman during the Great Swan across France. Cheers.
So both the Americans and the British tankers went thru much of the European war with smaller guns against the German tanks. The Germans really were ahead of us in this area.
The only problem with the Ronson nickname is the explanation that this was due to the slogan “lights first every time.” The issue is that this slogan appears in almost no surviving print ads, and not in any ads from the period right before or during the war. The most common slogan used in print ads for the Ronson is “The World’s Greatest Lighter.” To a leaser extent, the slogan “Flip… It’s Lit… Release… It’s Out” or “Press… It’s Lit… Release… It’s Out” appears regularly. Nowhere does the slogan “lights first every time” appear, except in a single ad from 1929 which states “Lights every time.” TANK AND AFV NEWS From the Editor: Lights First Every Time? page
The Ronson nickname came from British reporters, not American tank crews, after they saw an early M4 light up with a single penetration (the British crew had very likely stowed too much ammo inside, and turned their Sherman into a timebomb). Later Shermans had their ammo storage restricted to the wet stowage bins (plus larger hatches to more quickly exit the tank in an emergency) , which lead to them having the lowest casualty rate of any tank in the war. Panthers and T-34s were death traps when they were penned. Also, it was the British crews in North Africa that called them Tommy cookers because the relentless African sun made any armored vehicle into a boiling pot.
@@kong2552 "Let me take quite briefly two examples of equipment inferiority. The German Mark III or Mark IV tank is superior to ours in many respects. It has heavier guns, it is more adaptable and it is cooled. I remember that at the end of the last war-my noble friend Lord Strabolgi gave me details this morning-our tanks in Mesopotamia were arranged to be cooled. But our men in the tanks in Libya have been exposed to temperatures of 120° and 130°, whilst I understand apparatus attached to the German tanks will keep their temperature down to round about 80°. Most of our tanks-British-produced tanks-were equipped with a 2-pounder gun. The heavier American tanks, unfortunately too few in number, very excellent machines I believe, were equipped with good guns, but few if any of the British-produced tanks have 6-pounder guns on them." Temps in Fahrenheit. below 552 CONDUCT OF THE WAR. HL Deb 01 July 1942 vol 123 cc551-613
The 88 was designed from the start as a dual purpose flak and anti tank gun. Like many war stories, the opinion that Rommel repurposed the guns in the anti tank role are nothing more than stories.
At the end of the day a good tank just two years late for it's time. Same with the comet tank if the UK had been able to land those on D Day it would have been a lot better.
In a word, engines. Really one of the major issues Britain had with designing a good all round tank was until the Rolls Royce Meteor came along they did not have a really good tank engine, so they always had to make more compromises than they would have liked. The slowness in adopting Cromwell was as much about availability of the engines, and that was, in part caused by the whining of the Air Ministry who saw Rolls Royce as theirs, and did not like any of RR's engine production being diverted from Merlins. Add to that the Meteor was essentially (though not quite) a non supercharged, derated merlin and the Air Ministry lost their collective little minds and blocked production until they were essentially told to stop it. Unfortunately that was only one time the Air Ministry acted like a bunch of spoiled children. The Fleet Air Arm had ordered a redesigned gull winged Navalised Fighter (heavily based on the Spitfire but different enough to be a new aircraft) which got cancelled when the Air Ministry blew a head gasket, same with the replacements for the Fairey Swordfish. Essentially anything the FAA tried to order that had Merlin engines was essentially blocked by the righteous anger of the morons in the Air Ministry, which put the development of carrier Aircraft in the UK back by three or four years. We did not start catching up until the Hawker Sea Fury which did not enter service until late 45....
Please, please, please make sure the video matches the narrative. I get very confused when i hear you talking about the British leaving their tanks on the beaches at Dunkirk 0:35 but the visuals are of the beaches at Dieppe in 1942. They show Churchill tanks which weren't even available until 1941. At best it's laziness, at worst it's incompetence. I'm not even an expert (i don't play WoT). I was hoping to learn something, but it seems that the little knowledge I have is more than yours.
An upsized 40 ton Matilda with a meteor and with a 57 mm and then a 76.2 mm would have been fantastic. Don't know what they the ministry of supply were thinking about during the war. The Cromwell vertical front surfaces - what were the designers thinking about. Again should have been a 35 to 40 ton tank with the 17 pounder.
There was a larger gun fitted to the Matilda later in the war for close support work. As to front surfaces, problem comes with to having heavy tooling, etc, to produce them. Takes time to develop the ways to produce it.
Models of the same class shared first letter to assist in identification: a commander may not the exact specs of the model he is using/facing but the name will tell him what class he is dealing with.
I never have understood the theory behind an armour piercing only 2 pounder gun in 1941 by the British. They knew from France that the Germans used 37 & 75 mm combination AP & HE guns.
This observation points to a weakness of this documentary and many other videos. They focus on the technical side of the tank and might mention political and financial concerns as far as it impacted design and development. What they seldom do is how the tank was meant to be used and how it was used. . In the case of Cromwell, they need to mention that by that time, the English had developed a combined arms doctrine in which various units would operate together under one commander. You notice that it sometimes gets mentioned as an aside. This is a general problem of most of these documentaries as can be attested by their focus on comparisons with the tiger and the panther. It is very oriented on the technical.. as are most of these.
After Dunkirk the British put their only armoured division ashore in France where it was lost. No tanks. No AT guns. The 2 pounder was kept rather than change over their tooling to make the 6 pdr which was ready to be manufactured. It could take on the current 1940 German Mark I through Mark IV but in 1941 Germany started to uparmor their tanks to 50mm base armor and upgun them with a 50L60 gun for the Mark III and the 75L43 for the Mark IV. The Mk III and Mk IV "specials" to the British. One does have to question how the Infantry Tank Mk II, the Matilda, equipped with the 2 pdr was supposed to support infantry with a gun that didn't have HE? British armored division infantry in support of their tank regiments had very little infantry. A full company in twelve M3 or M5 half-tracks had the equivalent of four squads (sections) of infantry having a Bren team in each vehicle plus a 2" mortar team and PIAT in the platoon HQ vehicle. A British tank company (squadron) of about 16-18 tanks would have a platoon of infantry in support with four half-tracks and three BREN teams plus a HQ. This could be augmented. The 7th Armoured Squadron which was lost at Villers Bocage had a 6 pdr half battery, a FOO tank, and elements of the Motorized Infantry battalion's carriers. Except for the British 7th Armoured Division the other British armoured divisions had one out of three armoured regiments in Cromwell tanks as a Reconnaissance Regiment, although it was organized and used as a tank regiment. The Canadians didn't use the tank.@@RJM1011
Can anyone elaborate and tell the whole story about those 2 Cromwell tanks in Holland caught in the wrong part of town and having to jump a canal to get away !!….
It's described on the Lingebeige YT channel. From memory, one of the "jumping" tanks was later found to be a training tank with little or no actual armour!
Liddel-Hart wrote the core action policy for tank warfare [ which was copied as blitzkreig,] soon after the armistice and it was ignored then as it is in this presentation.!
The prescience award should probably go to Fuller who in his Plan 1919 written in that year, sketched out the concept of combined tank, mobile infantry, and aircraft tactics. After unsuccessfully attempting to convince Britain’s military to adopt this doctrine, he quit in frustration to become an academic. Meanwhile, the Germans adopted the doctrine, and Heinz Guderian gives all credit to Fuller for the ideas that Germany developed into the “Blitzkrieg”.
3:30 did he say CROWS? At 4:00 a toilet tank? At 33:16 so the Cromwell had a 6 pounder gun and a 75mm QF VA gun? No mention of the Cruiser Mk VIII Challenger tank
My dad was trained on Cromwells as crew replacement to go to Europe. The Germans surrendered so they started to ready him to go out to the far east. The Japanese surrendered so they sent him to Palestine to an armoured car regiment.
My comment is about the British and tank design and manufacturing. The British had the same amount of time as the Germans, Russians and Americans (including Canadians), so why were they so behind pre-war, mid-war and post war? My conclusion is that it is their culture; the culture of Lords, Ladies', Kings, Queens, Dukes, Earls, Baronets etc. All of whom were the leadership of the Army, Navy and Air force. Over loaded with this Royal and semi-Royal Class. In the US it is a meritocracy of can do no matter the obstacles and charge forward, the unsuccessful fall to the wayside. The US changed the entire it's economy d to a WAR economy. No Royal class, no castels no Grand Estates with "unless" Lords and Dukes in them with command decisions able to sway War decisions (in the wrong direction) and sucking up resources. This in-bread society with is glacial slow moving pathology and culture is the prime answer of the question: "so why were they so behind pre-war, mid-war and post war?".
So why were they so good with aircraft then? It should follow that they should have been behind in aircraft. They weren't. Why was America so behind in tanks post war and Britain so ahead?
That is a very bizarre (American) interpretation of events. First problem was the economic situation in the 30s. The main opposition party in Parliament (Labour) was led by a pacifist (Lansbury) who opposed defence spending on principle. The Conservative government (under Baldwin) was continually trying to cut expenditure to keep taxes low. The Empire required 'policing' by the army rather than warfighting - and the army didn't need tanks against tribesmen. However money was eventually spent on mechanising all the army's forces - and ironically a lot of its unneeded horses were then sold to the 'so advanced' German army! Within the army, the former historic cavalry regiments, now with their new tanks, wanted fast tanks and couldn't/wouldn't co-operate properly with infantry. Infantry support was considered the function of the slower tanks of the newer, less fashionable, Royal Tank Regiment. The blame for the early WW2 failures lies with the Army high command still thinking in WW1 terms.
The US, Germans and the Soviet Union were no longer using rivets in their tank designs in favour of the better way to fasten steel together ie: welding. Yet, here comes the Cromwell Tank - looks like we'll have enough built for the Normandy campaign and we must ensure that we use rivets rivets and more rivets.
The guns of Cromwell and Churchill was weaker than the Sherman's gun aginst it to be same 75 mm. The only god allied tanks in June of 1944 was the Firefly!
