Matilda as an infantry tank

Obviously the term "infantry tank" was, in itself, a statement that showed the British had not truly embraced the armored doctrine which they themselves had invented. That said, I ask the question why did the British label the Matilda II an infantry tank? I will give the obvious answer, that the thing was so slow they might not have initially considered it useful for anything else. But it that is the case why did they not equip it with any HE ammo with which to engage opposing infantry? It seems a paradox.

 

Infantry tanks where designed to have thick Armour and a gun to combat enemy tanks (the 2pdr was satisfactory at the time), so the Infantry could take care of the Enemy infantry.

 

Also, the tank's MGs were considered to be its anti-infantry weapon.

A failure of the imagination, I know

 

I read in a Stalingrad book that Germany wanted and did develope a tank for urban warfare.

Achtung Panzer! - Sturmtiger

 

The tragic thing is that (I think) the greatest 'armour minds' in the world were concentrated in the UK during the 20's and 30's. People like Fuller, Horstmann, Lindsay, Broad, Tilly, Wilson, Ricardo, Hobart etc. etc. were fully aware of what was really needed but sadly almost chose to remain sidelined in the face of genuinely hide-bound opposition when the decisions should have been being made. Leading to rather odd concepts like the I tank.
Recently found that the Neubaufahrzeug (despite it's lack of success, a seminal design for the Germans) was a near direct copy of the British A6E1/2/3 '16 tonner' series. A military cutting edge was rarely so misdirected.


Cheers,
Adam.

 

I like the way you single out Hobart in that list. He was a textbook example of someone who "knew better" but was never willing to stick his neck out and show it in front of his superiors. But I think the biggest element in the failure there was that the entire British officer corps was an "old school" type of organization. To get ahead in those days one had to excel at doing things the same old way, never do anything of consequence in an unconventional manner (although it was just fine to be "eccentric" in inconsequential ways) and never make a superior officer look bad in any way.

I suspect that this is why the two armies which took to new methodologies the quickest were the USA and Germany. The USA because they had no entrenched doctrines to overthrow and were basically learning from scratch; and the Germans because the gutting of their military after WWI not only enabled but forced them to look long and hard at new ways of doing things. It was Poland's and France's bad luck that those aforementioned minds in the UK were pioneering doctrines which they had no intention of using but which taught the Germans not only exactly what they needed to know to build a modern army on a tight budget, but also how to use it more effectively than anyone else was prepared to face.

 

Hobart definitely required the Italics , strikes me as one man who really could have made the difference, possibly the best of the interwar 'armour minds' but even he was never quite able to force the point home in the face of those entrenched ideas and the other, perhaps more important constraint, of cost (His own rather severe personality may well have played a major part in him not 'rocking the boat' at that time too). The Government (other than Churchill when he pops up in his various pre-PM roles) simply were not prepared to pay the large amounts required by armour development and production.

On general mechanisation the weird thing is that up until about 1934 the British were possibly, even within the above constraints, the Major world Army most serious about, and most advanced users of, mechanisation; and producing the best vehicle designs. The variety of stuff being produced and tested in that period was staggering, nearly all cutting edge & highly influential on other Countries putative designs of that period (Pz.1, etc.). The mechanised force exercises were leading to (arguably) the fastest mechanisation acceptance of any major power and some exceptionally experienced men and officers in the actual handling of motorised/mechanised/armoured units. The US in particular were in a parlous state of modernisation, I'd say they only really took to it properly when world events forced them to at the turn of the decade (but by god she certainly took to it when her industrial power was properly focussed).

So for me the tragedy comes from dropping the ball in the mid 30's, and the strange and largely cost-related reluctance to focus on medium tanks. Nazi Germany (and to some extent the USSR) picked up the ball in the mid 30's and ran with it. I still find it hard to blame any particular party for what happened as most countries were more focussed on recovery from the 30's depression, and not practising dilligently for world domination like Hitler and his men.

Cheers,
Adam.

 

Hi,
Most British tanks early in the war and as far as the desert campaign were for infantry attacks and support,

Later in the war for faster armoured assaults cruiser tanks evolved.

The Mathilda was ideal in both in the Desert and in the Burma campaigns.

Matt

 

Hmm, I disagree. Things are a bit more complicated than the way you seem to generalise. The British native tanks were (for the relevant period and according to Chamberlain & Ellis "Brit. and Amer. Tanks of WW2"):

* Light Tanks - IV, V, VI, Tetrach, Harry Hopkins

* Cruiser Tanks - A9, A10, A13, Covenanter, Crusader, Centaur, Cromwell, Challenger, Comet, Centurion

* Infantry Tanks - Matilda I, Matilda II, Valentine, Churchill

not counting numerous prototypes, variants, derivatives, etc.

 

Hi Za Rodinu,

You`ve missed my point and you`ve listed both early war and late war vehicles, the centurion was only trialed in 1945 and didn`t see action till Korea.
Tetrarch (airborne tank) was only used at Op Varsity.
After Market Garden,seeing the need to support Para`s when engaging German Armour.

The Infantry tanks were for a different tactics of infantry assault, whilst the faster cruiser tanks were used as cavalry to spearhead attacks.

The Mathilda Mkone, Mktwo and Barons were ideal for support but couldn`t take on a tiger tank as this was for the sherman fireflys and comets to deal with.

Matt

 

Which was kinda why the Matildas whernt used when the Tiger was around...

 

Pebble, then I didn't understand your point. Could you rephrase, then?

 

Well, if the Matildas were meant only to engage enemy armor in support of infantry operations, then wouldn't that classify them as tank destroyers rather than tanks?

I disagree on this point. It was useful in an Alamein-style straightforward bashing operation, where massive superiority of numbers enabled the British to disregard any worries about enemy flanking counterattacks. But the Matilda was just too darned slow for any kind of highly mobile battle, which was the single greatest factor in the failure of Battleaxe under Wavell. His Matildas were just too slow to respond when the much faster German panzers counterattacked around the British left flank and threatened their supply lines. Wavell knew it would be foolish to split his forces by trying to split off his faster tanks from the lumbering Matildas because they would then be outnumbered by the focused thrust of the DAKs armor and that would have enabled the Germans to defeat his forces piecemeal. So he was forced to withdraw the entire attack force, and then got sacked for doing the right thing because his superiors did not understand why the attack failed. (Even though Wavell had warned them beforehand that the Matildas were just too slow for battle in the desert against the much faster German panzers.)

 

Hi,

The technique was developed from post WW1 training manuals of Infantry assault-

The Infantry tanks were used as mobile bunkers which advanced with the infantry troops, they used the vehicle machine guns and their main arm 2pdr gun to pin down the enemy forces whilst the troops attacked.
fix bayonets etc and go for it at a walking pace with the artillery and vehicles firing creating a creaping Barrage and protecting the infantry troops sheltering around the hulls.

the Mathilda was heavily armoured for its age , 1940 with the luftwaffe pounding the country and the Germans across the channel, any tank is better than no tanks!!! Development was slow.

Unfortunately by the time it arrived in AFrica and Rommel unleashed his tigers, it had become obsolete as well as most of the Cruiser tanks (Regular Cavalry Vehicles).
Leaving Shermans, Lees and Grants to come into the limelight.

As with most British armour, it was never perfect, underpowered with poor steering clutches.

It was replaced by the newer Churchill, which could evolve with heavier armour and bigger guns.

The mathilda was still ideal for jungle warfare against the Japanese forces, their Moderner tanks were even worse!!!

Matt

 

I don't understand all this "Tiger tank" mentality. Rommel just did'nt have that many......no one did. But the 88 flakgun,that was another thing.


Matilda tank - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

<The mathilda was still ideal for jungle warfare against the Japanese forces, their Moderner tanks were even worse!!!>

I agree there. The Japanese had nothing to compare.

 

In fact, during the time the British were using Matildas in North Africa, Rommel didn't have any Tigers at all. It wasn't until after Monty had driven the Germans back all the way to Tripolitania that any Tigers were sent over, by which time the British had replaced all their Matildas in theater with Grants and the first wave of Shermans.

 

The main cause for alarm in the desert campaign was the flak 88MM gun,

The Mathilda was the only British tank that fourght in all theatres of Allied operations including the Eastern front(lend lease to the Soviets).
It was also the only British tank that was involved from the beginning to the end of the war.

Matt

 

I'm afraid I don't really follow this.

The Tilly2 may have soldiered on quite well in very specialist roles like those in the pacific, or as a chassis for assorted bridging, flame & engineer variants, even a CDL, but off the top of my head I can't think of her in Italy or Normandy as a gun tank(?), and her specialist engineer variants, which mostly were beginnings of later vehicles based on different chassis, would (again without checking, so excuse me if this is wrong) most likely be knackered by the later stages of the war and replaced by that next generation of vehicles.

The German Mark IV stands out as the most widespread 'A' vehicle, with service for the length of the conflict in every theatre except(?) the pacific. As the Tilly2 entered the fight in 1940 she rather missed the Polish campagn (there is however a fascinating picture of a Tilly1 apparently captured by German troops from the Poles, and none were supposed to have been exported then...).

Don't get me wrong, I love the Tilly2, (my brother named his first child after it ), I think I'm aware of where it shone (Arras and certain desert scenarios for instance) but it was far from anyones 'universal tank' .

Cheers,
Adam.

 

British doctrine and equipment was lagging behind all the way up till 1944.
The prewar thinking of Armd. Brigades and Army Tank Brigades led to Cruiser tanks and Infantry tanks respectiviely.

The development of the war did nothing to improve conditions. The massive losses of equipment in 1940 led to the continnued production of the 2pdr gun over the 6pdr gun, even though the lessons from France was that the 2pdr was getting obsolete. Faced with the facts that they could produce 4 2pdrs rather than 1 6pdr due to the factory conversions for new models, the argument was that it was better to have many 2pdrs than barely none 6pdrs.

During the summer of 1940 only the 3rd inf division was fully equipped. If I remember correctly.

Back to the armd problems. In the Book 'Military training in the British Army' and 'Raising Churchills Army' There are many clues to the (at times) lacklustre performance of the Army. There was no battle drill. This was frowned upon as it would dull the mind of the officers. Battle drill was fine with the Germans because they had the culture for it. However the British officer was quickwitted cunning and full of initiative. So he would know wat to do when the situation arose. Batte drills would kill initiative.

As we all know it was the opposite. The German Heer invested heavy in Battle drills and as a result the officers and NCO recognised situations and acted with their Drills increasing initiative and tempo in operations. The Heer identified the Battle drill as the best recipie to make the Combined Arms operations work. Standarised Drills would enable unknown units to function together because they had the drills in common.

During a German exercise in the mid 30ies a british observer wrote in his report that the Germans were highly unimaginative and predictable, because almoast all company commanders solved the problem in the same manner. He failed to spot that the Germans all worked according to the doctrine.

The spread of doctrine in the British Army was difficult. The army had a Combined Arms doctrine but failed to impose it on the army. The various depots around Britain interpered it differently. There was no manuals standarising the various tasks. Cooperation with tanks was erratic and never truely successful. The issue of command and control suffered because there was little in the way of drills for the exercise.

There were British officers championing the Battledrills. Alexander and Alanbrooke, both WW1 veterans from the sharp end knew first hand how effective the battle drills were. Battle drills were used during WW1 to compe with the large number of men that needed to be trained.

SO back to topic.
The development of armour in Britain would have been different if the Doctrine had been infused into all branches of the service. Cooperation between infantry and Armour would have given pointers in the direction of what AFV would be needed.

In my personal view the distinction between cruiser and infantry tanks highlights the problems facing the British army. What they needed was a Main Battle tank, and they got it in the end. Arguably one of the best tanks in history: the Centurion. Too late for WW2 though.

 

Gosh, I have two children but even I would never dream of calling one JS-II or Tetrarch or Shinhoto-Chi-Ha! Well, considering some names that are really applied to children I wouldn't be surprised if any of these were actually used.

One of mine was to be Galla Placidia but my wife threatened to drown her so I gave up.