British Armour/Weapons 1944

Sherman Firefly June 1944, France. German Anti-tank crews were trained to fire and focus their fire first on Armored command vehicles and the larger calibre Firefly to knock them out early.

For a variety of reasons tank design in the UK and, to a lesser extent in the USA, had one distinguishing feature. The tanks were always two years out of date. When the German armour had the equivalent of 4- or 6-pounder guns, the British tanks had 2-pounders. When the British upgraded to 6-pounders, the German tanks had the incredible 88 mm. When the three British armoured divisions and eight armoured brigades landed in Normandy their Churchills, Cromwells and Shermans were hopelessly outgunned.

Half the German tanks in Normandy were the Panzer Mark IV ‘special’. It weighed 25 tons, moved at up to 25 mph, and its 75-mm Kwk 40 gun could penetrate 84 mm of armour at 1,000 yards. Its own front armour was 80 mm. The Panzer Mark V or Panther accounted for nearly 40 per cent of German tanks in Normandy; that is, one of every two tank regiments in most German armoured divisions was equipped with Panthers. It weighed 45 tons, could move at 35 mph, and its 75-mm Kwk 42 guns with a 14-pound shell could penetrate 118 mm of armour at 1,000 yards. Its own front armour was 100 mm. The Panzer Mark VI, or Tiger, was very nearly impossible to knock out. It weighed 54 tons with a maximum speed of 23 mph and carried 100 mm of frontal armour. Its 20-pounder shell from a 88-mm Kwk 36 gun could penetrate 102 mm at 1,000 yards.

Many German tank units had one Panther per troop of Mark IVs, a situation similar to the British units, which had one Sherman Firefly per troop. The Allied Sherman tank weighed 32 tons and could travel at 25 mph, but its front armour was only 76 mm thick. It could be knocked out by any German tank at 1,000 yards, even at 2,000 yards, and so was known as the ‘Tommy-cooker’. Its 75-mm gun could at best penetrate 74 mm at 100 yards, 68 mm at 500 yards, and 60 mm at 1,000 yards. However, its Ford engine was reliable and easy to maintain.

Trooper John Thorpe was the ‘Jack of all trades’ in 4 Troop C Squadron, 2nd Fife and Forfarshire Yeomanry, equipped with Shermans:

I could be called upon to take any other crew member’s place and I was the disposable member of the crew. I was sent on foot reconnaissance to find the safest place to locate the tank without placing it in jeopardy when advancing slowly towards a vantage point in a hedge or out of a wood, or at a crossroads in a village, or to attach a tow rope to help extract a disabled tank in the thick of battle. I developed not only a sixth sense but a super sense, a soldier’s deepest sense, the sense to survive.

The reality of this equation was very disturbing. Unless a 76-mm Sherman could get very close to the opposition or by chance catch it sideways on (Tiger had 80 mm of side armour, Panther 45 mm and Mark IV 30 mm) the contest was inevitably one-sided. Only the 17-pounder Sherman Fireflies were capable of a level fight. A limited number of Challengers – 200 in all – were allocated to Guards Armoured Division and 15/19th Hussars in 11th Armoured. A 17-pounder anti-tank gun was mounted on a Cromwell chassis and allocated on the basis of one per troop, with a crew of five. However, the German dual-purpose 88-mm gun (ground and AA) was reckoned to be the best available during the Second World War. Its muzzle power could destroy any Allied tank at 2,000 m and its airburst fuse could put a shell on top of a crossroads eight times out of ten. Bill Close, squadron commander with 3 RTR throughout the campaign, was wounded three times and awarded two MCs. As author of Panzer Bait, and having had no fewer than eleven tanks knocked out from under him, his views on tanks have much authority!

Our ordinary 75-mm gun could not knock out either a Tiger or a Panther except at about 500 yards range, and in the rear, and with a bit of luck in the flank! The 17-pounder Firefly was our best tank but even it could not penetrate the Tiger head-on at over 1,000 yards. Whereas all our tanks would be knocked out at 2,500 yards by the German 88-mm gun.

Steel Brownlie, troop leader with 2nd Fife and Forfarshire Yeomanry, also fought throughout the campaign, was wounded and awarded the MC. He wrote The Proud Trooper, a story of the Ayrshire Yeomanry. His comments are:

The great snag was that the Sherman, mechanically reliable and available in great numbers, was inferior in many ways to the German tanks. The armour was thin, the ammunition was stowed in open bins so that it exploded if there was any penetration. A hit almost inevitably meant a brew-up. Some boffin hit on the idea of welding bits of extra armour to protect the bins but their effect was to provide an aiming mark. I certainly saw many brewed-up Shermans with a neat hole in the ‘extra armour’. Even if you fixed spare track plates to the front of the Shermans, the basic weakness remained. You were in a ‘Ronson’ and if you were hit it was best to bale out p.d.q.

He also stressed the fear generated by the awareness of inferior armour: ‘My crews got almost obsessive about NOT having a thick, sloping glacis plate in front like the Panther. I recall deliberately backing into a firing position so as to have the protection of the engine. There was the added advantage that if you had to get out in a hurry you had all the forward gears.’

‘Sandy’ Saunders, troop commander with 2nd Northants Yeomanry, wrote:

The regiment had been training since 1939 as an armoured regiment in both an anti-tank and reconnaissance role. It was a pity that their equipment was inadequate. The Cromwell was designated a cruiser tank, fast across country but under-armoured and under-armed. The 75-mm gun was only capable of knocking out German Mark IV and Panther tanks at point blank range while their 75 mm and 88 mm (converted AA guns) could knock out a Cromwell at extreme range. We only started to get 17-pounder guns in the Challenger version of Cromwells in August – too late for 2nd Northants Yeomanry to try out in action.

Simon Frazer, 15/19th Hussars, commented:

My appreciation of tank v. tank situations was coloured by three oversized factors favouring the enemy, viz silence, muzzle velocity and thick sloped armour. We had to match this with the speed, manoeuvrability and camouflaged outline of our Cromwells. ‘David and Goliath’ I told my dispirited crew to cheer them up. Our 75 mm became known as ‘the sling’ thereafter.

Reg Spittles, 2 Troop Corporal A Squadron, 2nd Northants Yeomanry, described some of his tactics:
I found that if in doubt to stand back and put a couple of ‘smoke’ shells into the area. If it was a possible anti-tank gun or infantry ambush that would often resolve the situation and cause an enemy withdrawal.

Tank maintenance itself gave few headaches because the Cromwell – Rolls Royce engine, transmission, tracks and traverse – was such a reliable vehicle. The 28-ton tank was reliable on the road, but its 75-mm gun shots bounced off Tiger full frontals. On dry hard fields Cromwell IVs and VIIs would do over 30 mph in fifth gear. But the story gets worse.

Every infantry battalion feared the noisy Nebelwerfer mortar, an ugly multi-barrelled brute on wheels, and easily towed. Its ‘moaning minnie’ stonks are said to have accounted for 75 per cent of infantry casualties in Normandy. They came in three sizes with a maximum range of 8,600 yards, and most of the five Nebelwerfer regiments (each of sixty projector-mortars) were concentrated on the British/Canadian front.

Only the British 25-pounder field guns with a range of up to 13,400 yards, and 4.5-in./5.5-in. medium guns meshed together in troop, battery and regimental and the larger ‘Uncle’ and ‘Victor’ targets were capable of inflicting dramatic large-scale protective barrages or defensive fire plans. Their pinpoint DF and DFSOS targets were praised by the infantry.

The Spandau was a faster firing weapon than the Bren, the Schmeisser better than the cheap little Sten gun. The Panzerfaust one-shot anti-tank missile was more effective than the British Piat. Major Ned Thornburn, Company Commander 4 KSLI, had these views: ‘The Bren was adequate, the Sten did nothing to heighten our chaps’ morale, the Piat was not reliable, often ineffectual – the Panzerfaust was better. Our 3-in. mortars were, however, as effective as their Nebelwerfers.’

The Germans laid hundreds of thousands of mines, mainly Teller mines, in roads or on verges. These could be gingerly excavated after location or lassooed with a long rope and towed away. Booby traps in houses were rarely defused by the REs, but simply blown up on the spot. But one of the greatest perils to infantrymen was schu-mines or S–mines planted randomly in fields and verges. The former were explosives contained in a wooden box more or less undetectable by the usual mine detectors. They exploded with the pressure of a foot on the buried lid. The latter were just as lethal – small anti-personnel mines activated by a trip wire, which exploded at waist height. The schu-mines would take your legs off and the S–mines would tear your whole body apart.

Field Marshal Montgomery, who had some capacity for deluding himself, wrote to Alan Brooke:

I have had to stamp very heavily on reports that began to be circulated about the inadequate quality of our tanks, equipment, etc. as compared with the Germans…. In cases where adverse comment is made on British equipment such reports are likely to cause a lowering of morale and a lack of confidence among the troops. It will generally be found that when the equipment at our disposal is used properly and the tactics are good, we have no difficulty in defeating the Germans.

Absolute rubbish of course, unless a ratio of five to one in tank losses was considered acceptable. Simon Frazer’s 15/19th Hussar troop peppered a Mark V tank west of Argentan and hit it twenty-two times. They found the Mark V the next morning. It had been abandoned by its very gallant crew because it had run out of petrol. Admittedly its turret superficially resembled a cheese grater, but not one hit had penetrated.

Lieutenent-General Horrocks, XXX Corps Commander, knew the score. He wrote: ‘Our Shermans and Cromwells had to approach within 500 m of the heavier Panther or Tiger tanks to knock them out, whereas the 88 mm or the Tiger could dispose of Allied tanks at 2 km. The Panther’s gun was superior to Cromwell or Sherman, and Mark IV was certainly their equal.’

With the benefit of hindsight, there should have been many more 17-pounder Sherman Fireflies available before D-Day. The meagre supplies were ‘reserved’ for British armour despite belated American recognition of their superiority in the field. Bill Close, 3 RTR, commented: ‘The Comet tank (finally issued early in 1945) was the last contributed by Britain’s tank manufacture during the war. With a maximum 100 mm of armour, 77-mm gun and speed of 30 mph, it could tackle all but the King Tiger.’

But at least the Allies had almost total superiority in the air. Although at one time or another most units were bombed by the Luftwaffe and the RAF, and almost inevitably were shot up by USAAF prowling Thunderbolts, the universal view was ‘Thank God for the Tiffies.’ 155 Typhoon pilots were lost over the Normandy battlefields engaging in a very close support against Boche strongpoints, tanks, or dug-in 88-mm anti-tank guns, but many individual ‘little’ battles were won and precious lives saved by the RAF intervention. LIMEJUICE was the magic radio call that produced – often from a cab-rank of circling predatory Typhoons – almost miraculous support. The FOOs who were given the opportunity of calling for LIMEJUICE via the regimental radio network, had a feeling of power, of waving a magic wand. There is no doubt that the RAF was very highly regarded by the front line troops despite the occasional ‘incidents’.

Revision or Correction

The Allies enjoyed a 3:1 superiority in tanks deployed in Normandy, and the vast majority of German tanks were of the same quality as British and US tanks. The powerful German Panthers, Tigers and King Tigers, some armed with improved 75mm and 88mm guns, were available only in small numbers, though the Panther was nearly as common as the Panzer IV, the most common tank. The Germans deployed only some 650 Panthers and 120–30 Tigers in Normandy. The Allied forces had over one armoured formation to two infantry, whereas for the Germans it was 1:4; for the British the ratio was about 1:1.

The million-strong British-commanded 21st Army Group that fought from Normandy to Germany (excluding attached US forces) was an extraordinarily armoured force. It had seven armoured divisions (four British, two Canadian, one Polish) and six armoured/tank brigades (three British, two Canadian and one Czech), as well as eleven infantry divisions. In terms of gun-power the German tanks were matched by the Sherman Firefly, a British adaptation of the Sherman to take the new British 17-pounder 76mm anti-tank gun. The 17-pounder was apparently superior to all German guns and with the new but rare discarding sabot round could destroy even the heaviest German tanks. The 21st Army Group had around 300 Fireflies at the beginning of the Normandy campaign, one for every three Shermans. The proportion of Fireflies increased to 50:50 as new HE ammunition for the 17-pounder became available. It was not until the very end of the war that Britain produced the Comet tank, armed with a gun related to the 17-pounder, firing discarding sabot shot if necessary, which was close to the Panther in overall performance. This is not to say that British tanks before the Comet were necessarily inferior in armour: the Mark VII Churchill was more heavily armoured than the Panther or Tiger.

Just as surprising is that British tank forces were better equipped than US ones. The US forces also acquired a Sherman with a 76mm gun, but this was inferior to the 17-pounder as an anti-tank gun. The Cromwells and the Churchills of the Anglo-Canadian forces were regarded as equal or superior to the Sherman. Except when they carried the 6-pounder these tanks had essentially the same gun as the Sherman; the Cromwell was just a little bit lighter than the Sherman, but faster and similarly armoured. The Churchill was considerably heavier, better armoured but slower. When mounted with the 6-pounder 57mm gun, the British tanks had a more effective anti-tank (though single-purpose) gun than the 75mm. 

Hobart's Funnies were a number of unusually modified tanks operated during World War II by the United Kingdom's 79th Armoured Division or by specialists from the Royal Engineers.

There was one other distinctively British aspect of the Normandy landings and the campaign in North-West Europe. Churchill appointed the pioneering tank officer Percy Hobart to command a special very large armoured division (the 79th) to hit the beaches of Normandy, and then proceed, with a whole series of wonderfully adapted tanks. Among them were swimming ‘Duplex Drive’ or ‘DD’ Sherman tanks, which could make it ashore on their own power; Sherman Crabs, with anti-mine flails attached; AVREs, Churchills armed with a spigot mortar, firing a ‘Flying Dustbin’ of explosive a short range to remove concrete obstacles; Crocodiles, Churchills armed with flamethrowers; and Grant CDL tanks, which had powerful searchlights to dazzle the enemy. Some of these machines were clearly useful in particular contexts, but whether they warranted the investment involved is not at all clear. The scale of the 79th Division was extraordinary. It had – at D-Day – three brigades: one of engineers with AVREs, one of Sherman Crabs and one CDL, its DD Sherman brigade having been attached elsewhere for D-Day. It would later have five brigades: one of AVREs, one of Sherman Crabs, one of Sherman DD swimming tanks, one mainly of Crocodiles and one of US-designed and US-built tracked landing craft. It is striking that the much larger US forces, while they adopted the DD tank for the D-Day landing, did not take up most of the other devices. As in the case, possibly, of Mulberry, and certainly of PLUTO, it is evidence of both the plenitude of resources available to British forces, and their tendency to go for complicated devices which the Americans avoided.

Despite this, some officers in Normandy claimed that British tanks were once again much inferior to German, and once again questions were raised in the House of Commons by Richard Stokes. Once again, historians followed, condemning British tanks and holding their low quality responsible for setbacks suffered by British forces. More generally, historians have overplayed the differences in quality between British and German equipment, systematically neglecting the good, sometimes superior qualities of the former. To an even greater extent they have underplayed the comparatively lavish scale of supply of weapons to the British army. It was not just a matter of tanks. The British forces had ample supplies of transport of all kinds, from lorries to jeeps to universal carriers, Weasels, Kangaroos, Buffaloes and Terrapins. The Germans relied on horses and carts. Although German infantry units had a notionally higher proportion of machine guns and submachine guns, in 1942 and 1943 Britain alone out-produced Germany in these weapons by a factor of four to five and both were producing about the same in 1944, without even taking account of overseas British production. In Britain, submachine gun (Sten) production was in peak years much greater than rifle production; German submachine gun production was never more than about a third of rifle production. Sten guns were not just used by British forces, with some 600,000 sent to resistance units by the SOE, but it seems highly unlikely that this explains the apparently low proportion in British units. The Sten was similar, though perhaps slightly inferior, to the German MP40, and both were copied by the Americans in their M3, introduced late in the war to replace the Thompson (or ‘tommy gun’).

The Crusader

The Crusader had some good features:
1. The 40mm gun.
2. Speed, and a pretty good ride over uneven terrain.
3. Armor

But tanks are, like ships at sea, a balance of:
Armor, Firepower and Speed.

It is with the firepower that the Crusader had problems.

While the 40mm (2pdr) gun was very good (with nearly the same penetrating ability of the American 37mm gun) it failed to have an HE round. This was a serious deficiency. One of the most common tricks of the Afrika Korps was to fight, and when necessary withdraw behind a screen of AT guns. A tank is a pretty good target, but AT guns are difficult to see, and more difficult to hit directly. With an HE round you could do damage to the gun and/or crew with a near miss, but not with an AP round. Without the HE rounds the British had to make a direct hit, not very likely.

In a frontal combat situation here are some penetration figures:

Crusader II vs. Pz. IIIF (its main opponent).
Turret Front: 1650 yrds.
Driver's Plate: 1650
Hull Front: 1650

Pz. IIIF vs. Crusader II
Turret Front: 1900 yds.
Driver's Plate: 950
Hull Front: 150
----------------------------------------------------
Crusader III vs. Pz. IIIJ
Turret Front: 2500 yrds.
Driver's Plate: 1800
Hull Front: 1800

Pz. IIIJ vs. Crusader III
Turret Front: 0 yds.
Driver's Plate: 1350
Hull Front: 600
----------------------------------------------------
Penetration does not always tell the whole story. When an AP round hits a tank a variety of things could result.
1. Metal fragments from the shell and the armor can fly around killing the crew.
2. Fragments might set off the ammunition, causing an explosion.
3. Fragments might kill one or two crew members, or possibly no one at all.

Source:
An OUTSTANDING BOOK - "Brazen Chariots" by Major Robert Crisp (a British tank commander in Africa - fighting not from a desk, but in "Honey's."

His tank, and others under his command were hit, and he recounts the different types of damage as a result.

The summary of this is that the Germans had a higher chance of destroying a hit tank with HE rounds than the British with AP rounds. From time to time the Germans ran out of HE rounds and had to use AP rounds, with the same disadvantage as the British had ALL the time.

People are always interested in the time it takes for a turret to traverse 360° so here it is for the Crusader:

10 seconds for a full circle. The Germans could do about the same on the Pz.IIIF. I'm not sure if the IIIF was any different, possibly not, but I cannot be sure.

The Pz. III had a three-man turret crew, as opposed to the Crusader's two. This was an advantage for the Pz. III since the Germans had a full-time loader, but the British commander also had to double as a loader.

The German tank commander had an armored cupola, an advantage that allowed him to observe while in combat, a far more risky job for the British commander without any protection.

The Pz. III had a gun elevated with gears, where as the Crusader II had a gun whose elevation was adjusted by the shoulder of the gunner pushing the rear of the gun up and down. The tightness of the up/down movement was controlled by a clamp. I cannot say if this was a plus or a minus. I would assume possibly a minus since the British eventually dropped the system. (It was probably no problem in the hands of a well trained, experienced gunner, but a problem for lesser trained personnel.)

There were mechanical problems, how serious they were I cannot say. The Germans had their problems as well, but had outstanding repair units. As Major Crisp commented, "We outnumbered the Germans, but it seemed they always had more tanks than we did." This was due to the German repair units that kept returning knocked out tanks to combat. (And remember AP rounds have less chance of starting fires or blowing up the tank, thus it was easier to repair.)

It was a better tank than it is given credit for. The main problem of the British was not the "front-line" tank, but the direction of the battle from Generals many miles away in the comfort (and ignorance) of their headquarters.

British Armour WWII

Matilda II

By nearly every standard the British army was much better equipped than the German army from the beginning to the end of the war. Even more surprising given the relentless impressions to the contrary is the fact that the British army had more tanks per soldier than the German army and the US forces in Europe. There was even a period when the much smaller British army had an absolutely greater number of tanks. In the latter part of the war, most of the tanks used by British forces came from the USA, but Britain’s own tanks, and adaptations of the standard US tank, were probably superior to US tanks. Some of these British tanks had the edge on German tanks too. Even if the Germans did achieve a certain qualitative superiority in some respects, they never achieved both qualitative and quantitative superiority.

Richard Stokes was a relentless critic of the quality of British tanks. Oliver Lyttelton recalled that the chief parliamentary troubles of the Ministry of Production concerned tanks, and that Dick Stokes was his principal opponent. As Stokes put it in a debate on production in July 1942:

I should not feel comfortable if I were sitting in a British tank with a 2-pounder gun with an effective range of 600 yards, or an even bigger tank with a 6-pounder gun which has an effective range of 1,200 yards, taking on a German tank with a 13 or 14-pounder gun with an effective range of 2,000 yards. A Minister who has no better to tell us than that, stands condemned, and the Government stand condemned, and the sooner those responsible get out the better. I want to know who was responsible for nothing being done from the period September, 1939, to July, 1940, and who has been responsible for apparently doing nothing from June, 1940, to the present time to bring out something equivalent to the German Mark IV tank.

Stokes was a supporter of 80-ton tanks designed from 1939 by a committee headed by the Great War tank design veterans. The actual design was by Sir William Tritton and his firm William Foster of Lincoln, the man and firm who had designed the first British tank of the previous war. The group were labelled ‘The Old Gang’ and the prototypes therefore labelled TOG 1 and TOG 2. In response Lyttelton accused Stokes of supporting a tank that the army did not want, which was too slow and unreliable. Stokes continued to attack on the issue of tanks right through the war. Such was the continuing pressure that the government conceded a Secret Session debate on the subject in March 1944, and after the war a parliamentary report was produced. These attacks were very influential in creating the general perception, which endures to this day, that there was a serious problem with British tanks.

Sir John Wardlaw-Milne complained that British tanks in Libya were no match for the Panzer IV. British tanks were armed with the 40mm 2-pounder gun while the Panzer IV had a 75mm gun.

Although it was widely believed from 1941–2 that British tanks in North Africa were inferior to German in quantity and quality, this view was shown to be incorrect by an official history published in the 1950s, by Sir Basil Liddell Hart’s history of the Royal Tank Regiment published in 1959, and in his later work. Throughout the North African campaign between 1940 and early 1943, British forces had a two- to threefold tank advantage in medium and heavy tanks over the German forces, a figure which would be reduced somewhat by including Italian tanks, but was still overwhelming. For the November 1941 offensive (Operation Crusader) British and imperial forces in North Africa had over 300 cruisers (mostly Crusaders) and 200 infantry tanks (Matildas and Valentines), together with large numbers of light tanks, and large reserves of all types. By contrast the Germans had fewer than 174 of the comparable Panzer IIIs and IVs, and the Italians 146 13/40s, with no reserves. Operation Crusader was a success.

Yet by early 1942 the Germans and Italians had counterattacked and were deep into Egypt. Their tank forces were still comparatively weak: at the end of August 1942 the Germans had only 166 Panzer IIIs and 37 Panzer IVs. On the eve of the Second Battle of El Alamein, which started the definitive rout of the Germans and Italians, they had 172 Panzer IIIs and 38 Panzer IVs fit for battle, as well as 278 Italian tanks. This compared with over 900 fit medium tanks with British forces, of which 488 were of British manufacture.

What the qualitative difference was between the tanks is very difficult indeed to establish, but the picture presented by critics in Parliament in 1942 in particular, and echoed ever since, is deeply flawed. That all British tanks in the Middle East had the 40mm 2-pounder gun until late 1942 is broadly correct, but the idea that many German tanks carried a much more powerful 75mm gun from around 1940 is misleading. The Panzer IV did have a 75mm gun, but it was a low-velocity gun firing high explosive. This turned out to be a very useful feature for a tank gun, which the British and Americans adopted by using a dual-purpose 75mm gun (as mounted in the Sherman and later in other tanks). But in regard to tank-mounted anti-tank guns the Panzers were no better equipped than British tanks. In North Africa up to May 1942 Panzer IIIs, which in contrast to the Panzer IVs did have anti-tank guns, had 50mm (short) anti-tank guns, which were no better than the 40mm 2-pounder. 

The other side of the equation was the armour. One study suggests that in 1941 all the main British tanks (Valentines, Matildas, Crusaders) and the US Grant were superior to any available German type in North Africa. Up-armoured Panzer IIIs capable of resisting British tank guns only started arriving in December 1941.

Where German forces had an early advantage was in the non-tank long 50mm anti-tank gun and in the very small numbers of 88mm anti-aircraft guns used as anti-tank weapons. Britain did not introduce a dual-purpose anti-tank/anti-aircraft gun of the 88mm sort but it had plenty of 94mm (3.7in) anti-aircraft guns. By May 1942 there were 100 6-pounder 57mm anti-tank guns with British forces in the Middle East. This was a successful anti-tank gun, which following its production in the United States became the standard anti-tank gun for US forces too.

Superior German tanks appeared in North Africa in the spring of 1942, but in small numbers. In May 1942 the new long-barrelled 50mm gun was first deployed on German tanks in Africa; and the long-barrelled 75mm gun in June 1942. In August 1942 there were 73 of the former on Panzer IIIs and 27 of the latter on the IVs. At the Second Battle of El Alamein there were 88 Panzer IIIs with the long 50mm and 30 Panzer IVs with the long 75mm. Improved British tanks were not far behind and arrived in quantity. In June 1942 the first 57mm 6-pounder Crusader arrived, of which 78 were fit in late October 1942. This gun was more effective as an anti-tank weapon than the US 75mm dual-purpose gun and, at least in later versions, as effective as the German long 75mm gun as well and would be used in tanks to the end of the war. The summer of 1942 also saw the arrival of very large numbers of Sherman tanks from the USA, armed with a 75mm long anti-tank/HE gun. Three hundred had been offered to Churchill in June 1942, and were put on seven ships in July, one of which was lost, but the tanks were replaced. By 11 September, 318 had arrived. In other words, if there was a German superiority in tank gun and armour quality it was very small and very short-lived indeed.

The old view espoused by Basil Liddell Hart that the British army was reluctant to embrace the tank has been decisively criticized by historians who now suggest the British army overemphasized the use of the tank, especially independently of infantry. British armoured divisions were, as of 1940, very tank-heavy, and based on the idea of fighting tanks with tanks equipped with anti-tank guns. 

Between April 1940 and May 1942 British armoured divisions had two armoured brigades, artillery and engineers, and very little infantry. Their medium tank strength was 300, three times that of a contemporary panzer division. From May 1942 until the end of the war one armoured brigade (150-plus medium tanks) was replaced with a whole infantry brigade, and the artillery increased. 

However, the armoured division was still thought of primarily as a weapon for fighting tank formations, with the infantry there to help the tanks. Only in 1942 and 1943, with experience from North Africa, was the role of the tank downgraded. This led to the recognition of the need to have tanks designed to attack things other than tanks, expressed in the introduction of the Sherman and its dual-purpose gun.

Of particular concern to some was the new heavy tank named after Churchill himself, which also had the 40mm 2-pounder gun. Oliver Lyttelton, in his poorly received speech, developed a defence which depended on the story of a profound weakness in British tank forces: ‘We started the war with no modern tanks, we lost all the armoured equipment which we had in France in June, 1940, although that equipment would by itself have had little value today.’  Lyttelton’s argument was that lots of tanks were needed quickly, and that had meant deciding to produce the Churchill tank with its 2-pounder even though the tank had not yet been made or tested. High levels of production and high quality did not go together.

Churchill, in a brilliant winding-up speech, also made great play of the weakness of British arms in 1940, especially tanks, attacking one of his antagonists in 1942, the Secretary for War responsible for tanks to early 1940, Leslie Hore-Belisha. He also insisted, as he had in earlier speeches, on the massive growth in British arms production since 1940, a point on which he was undoubtedly correct. 

He noted the huge amount of materiel which went to the Middle East: ‘from this country, from the Empire overseas and to a lesser extent from the United States, more than 950,000 men, 4,500 tanks, 6,000 aircraft, nearly 5,000 pieces of artillery, 50,000 machine guns and over 100,000 mechanical vehicles’. According to Churchill about 2,000 tanks had been sent to the Soviet Union. In his view the losses in the Middle East were not due to failures in production.

The critiques of early and mid-1942 were to cease with the reversal of British fortunes in the Middle East in the autumn. The 8th Army under Montgomery, supplied with huge quantities of equipment, including Sherman tanks and lorries from the USA, overwhelmed the weak German and Italian forces at the Second Battle of El Alamein. The imperial army marched west to meet up with US forces which had landed in Morocco, and the mostly British 1st Army, in Tunisia. In a great and conclusive victory in early 1943 North Africa was cleared with vast numbers of Germans captured, causing losses to Germany comparable to those of Stalingrad at a tiny fraction of the cost in lives. Churchill survived and prospered, never to be under such pressure again. Complaints about the quality of British tanks died away, though Stokes would take up the fight again in 1944.