Probelm for British Armoured Divisions Feb 1941/may42 in North Africa

The above shows the problem for a British division when attacked. At 3000metres, Panzer IVs could be destroyed by the British 25 pounder field gun.


However once through this range, the 25 pounder crew would be very vulnerable to HE fired by the Panzer IV. As it took 3 minutes to limber up the 25 pounder, the British Artillery could only stay a very short before

retiring.


So undergunned were the British tanks (2pounder gun) of the time they would only be effective at 500 yards - the Panzer IV would reach this point in 6 minutes after the attack. The 2 pounder British Anti tank gun had a similar 500 yard effective range.

Only in May 1942 did the British start to receive the 6 pounder AT guns and the American Grant Tank wit 75mm gun, capable of hitting the Panzer IV at a similar range.


British Tank Crews are widely criticised for "cavalry" tactics ie charging and shooting on the run.

BUT it is not clear to me what tactics they could have applied which would be more effective.

Of course in the Attack, the British Tanks would face the German 88mm - an event worse fate.

 

3000 meters? Sounds exzessice to me. In France ranges for tanks and AT-guns were almost always under 1000 meters. Sometimes French 47mm guns made 'longshots' as far as 1,500 meters.

 

Firing at ranges at 2,700 yards was the tactics deployed by Kampfgruppe Marcks during Rommel's counteroffensive after Operation Crusader. Marcks typically ordered indirect fire from his Panzer IVs' 75mm guns with HE shells on British AT guns. The British did not coordinate their 25 pounder guns' defense with their armor, and after Marck's Pz IVs destroyed or silenced the AT guns he would send his battle group into a general attack that usually resulted in the dispersion or destruction of British units.

 

Riiiiight! It's 1941,the IV has the super-small 75mm howitzer for indirect fire support = blowing up AT-guns. I guess in the desert any gun firing with a depressed barrel throws up a huge clould of smoke and thus reveals its position. Makes sense now.edit: It seems the Brits also did not coordinate AT and artillery. The 25lbr was an artillery gun and could have fired HE back at the IVs.

 

Is this not a tad dismissive of some of the 25pdr's rather effective use against armour over open sights? I'm not sure they were so willing to withdraw as quickly as is perhaps being implied, despite something of a lack of genuine AT ammunition.
eg.
The 25-pdr Field Gun 1939 - 1972: Part Two

The rate of fire of 25drs is also impressive when you see it 'in the flesh'. I can well believe the tales of captured German tankers asking to see the 'automatic AT guns'.

~A

 

The 25pdr could and did easily kill any German tank but if a Pz IV/Stug III is shooting HE from a save position that's a problem. With regard to the lack of AP - did it matter? Many German tanks still had 30mm glacis plates in mid-1941. I would not feel comfortable, thinking about what could happen if an 87mm HE shell hits that.

 

From what I have read, the Pz. IVs outranged the 25 pounders and used massed fire to wipe out the crew so it's not as if the gunners beat a hasty retreat upon being shot at. The Germans thought the British should have used their 3.7-in. AA guns which were as powerful as the 88s in antitank defense. The problem was probably as tactical as it was technical.

 

Marcks typically ordered indirect fire from his Panzer IVs' 75mm guns with HE shells on British AT guns.

Indirect fire? Without the firing platform having a direct line of sight/line of fire to the target? Usually controlled by a spotter? Or did you mean direct fire from outside the effective range of British tank or AT guns?

As always we have to consider the specific situation and terrain: but the scenario seems to have the Germans on the attack, which might offer the British an opportunity to place tanks or AT guns in hull down positions with the artillery 3000 yards or so to the rear; they'd need spotters unless the 25pdrs themselves could find a position commanding the battlefield. All-arms coordination was something the British needed to learn, unfortunately by a lot of suffering in the early battles.

 

The 25lb outranged the 75/L24 by far but the problem is it needed a direct hit to get results on armour while the 75mm HE shells are powerful enough to make life very unpleasant for the gunners even with a near miss. Against the 2Lb the situation is even worse as IIRC the 75 actually outranges the British gun and a hit is not sure to penetrate even 30mm armour at 2000m. The chances of scoring a hit on a moving tank with indirect fire are pretty slim so the gunners need to have the tanks in sight which means the tanks will spot them as soon as they open fire.
The 3.7" controversy has been hashed to death, AFAIK the 3.7" AA, while having impressive balistics, lacked the sights and quick setup of the 88mm Flak 18 that was designed as a DP weapon, the British AA gun weighted twice the German one and would have suffered massive losses had they been deployed in the front lines, even the much more nimble 25lb often had problems pulling out before being overrun. the British also lacked an all terrain prime mover in the class of the Sdkfz 7 and that would limit the gun's mobility even more.
IMO the one gun in the allied arsenal that could best counter those tactics was the venerable French 75 Mle 1897, it fired the same ammo as the US M2 of the Grant (that was derived from it), had a low profile, a good shield, quick setup, and was probably more accurate for direct fire than the 25lb gun/howitzer. But the real issue was the allies took a long time to develop combined arms tactics, a handful of Pz IVs, I believe Rommel usually had less than 50 of them operational at a time, would have made little impression against a defence that made good use of the numerical and supply superiority the Commowealth forces enjoyed for most of the NA campaign.

 

I am sure it was indirect fire. Panzer IV with the short barreled 75 was equipped to be capable of indirect fire, much like the American Sherman 75. I do not know if the fires were observed; Marcks did use his motorcycle troops aggressively to spot for his artillery, however, and it seems natural that they might observe fires for the Pz IVs.

 

Quick question: How would the old 3"AA-gun have done? Better or the same problems, albeit involving less weight? The Brits still had a few hundred around and with a ceiling of 15k feet it was of no use in the UK.

 

I wanted to mention that while the 25pdr was a good AT gun, it was also a good artillery piece (wink) which might have been effective against German AT guns, blinding the panzers and maybe even the 88mm Flak gun. I'm not clear as to when the British put a FOO in an armoured vehicle and up with the tanks.

My recent reading has given me the impression that between the wars the RA had limited its standards to the pace of infantry assaults. Perhaps the armour officers saw things this way. IIRC the British had eight gun batteries which may have been unwieldy in a mobile action(?).

 

I don't think the Pz IV crews were trained for firing under control of an external observer, possibly the Stug crews were but there were very few nof them in NA, so "indirect fire" probably means firing at high elevation with a curved trajectory, as was required by the low velocity 75/24 at medium and long range not observed fire.

I would question the 25lb as an AT gun, while it was effective when used as such early in the war any divisional gun worthy of the name could defeat 30mm armour, even the puny Italian 75/18 firing fuseless ammo proved effective against lightly armoured tanks in the USSR. Against better armoured tanks things were different, even 105mm weapons had often problems defeating 50 to 80mm plates especially if sloped, I also doubt it's separate loading ammo could achieve the same ROF as the single piece rounds of the AT and AA guns most of which could easily exceed 10 rpm.
Recycling the 3" AA as an AT gun would probably not be worth the effort, to be effective they would require a strengthened carriage for sustained all terrain towing, an all terrain prime mover of sufficient power, AT shells, and new sights so you are probably better off with an entirely new gun. Self propelled mounts that did away with the first two requirements make more sense but AFAIK the only attempt was on a Churchill chassis and by the time it was ready the 17lb was available making it redundant.

 

Hey guys,just a quick remark here,but did the British/Commonwealth armd regts not use C.S.tanks,with 3in,and 95mm howitzers.One would imagine these would be"useful",in defense and in advance.Cheers,Lee.

 

Good comment, Lee. As I understand it, they had approximately two CS tanks per squadron or six per regiment, but we see very little reference to them in accounts of the North African campaign.

The CS may have been a better concept than building a separate model tank to carry the HE gun as the Germans did. The PzIII was only slightly smaller than the IV. As it turned out the PzIII could also carry the short 75, and at one point they considered mounting the 50mmL60 in the PzIV. They did luck out in that the PzIV could be upgunned to a turret-mounted long 75.

 

I believe the Pz IV was partly born out of "industrial politics" to give Krupp part of the cake after they lost the initial competition to Daimler Benz, the Pz III had a more sofisticated suspension, was heavier (it started life at 20t vs the 18 of the early Pz IV) but had the fatal flaw of a turret ring too small for the long 75.

 

As Guderian describes it in his memoir Panzer Leader, there were intended to be two types of tanks: a light tank armed with an anti-tank gun to equip three of four companies in the panzer battalion, and a medium tank with a 75mm gun for firing HE and smoke and engaging targets beyond the range of the light tanks; these would comprise the fourth company. Sionce they were intended to operated together, other characteristics were vary similar, speed, range, armor, hull and coaxial machine guns, wireless, and the five-man crew/three-man turret which largely determined the size of the vehicle. This caused the "light" PzIII to come out almost the same size as the medium PzIV and only about 7% more economical to produce, and of course it is usually referred to as a medium tank.

There was no designated role for the PzI or II; they were purely stopgaps until the "real" tanks could be designed and manufactured. This makes the resumption of PzII production in that Polish factory particularly perplexing; it strikes me as an example of "industrial politics".

The design process for the PzIII was more protracted than the PzIV, so that the numbers in service as of 9/1/39 were 211 PzIVs and only 98 of the PzIIIs that were intended to outnumber them 3:1. That is to say, they had the "medium" tank in production and were introducing a "light" tank which offered almost no advantage in terms of production. I wonder if it occurred to anyone to just standardize on the PzIV?

 

Close Support tanks were developed mounting a 3.7in Howitzer instead of a 2 pdr, but they mainly fired smoke rounds, a HE shell was produced but only issued in small numbers in the desert, maybe four or five per tank, there is an interesting story concerning the 3 RTR, when it arrived in Calais in May 1940, they found that the HE shells, for their A9 CS tanks, had been left on the dockside back in Britain.


The German 75mm L/24 carried by the early marks Pz IV could achieve a maximum range of 4.500m with a HE round, Rommel did receive three Stug III Ausf Ds early in 1942, they fought with the Sonderverband 288 unit and seen action at both Gazala and Tobruk, one was destroyed during these engagements.


Yan.