Matilda as an infantry tank

Ah yes, but he could sneak 'Matilda' under the feminine radar far more easily . The game might be given away when one's affectionate term for a daughter is 'A12' though...
I tried to sneak in 'Cromwell' as a middle name for one of mine but foolishly left a vehicle encyclopedia lying around and she realised I wasn't really referencing Cromwells of the Oliver variety...

 

For the sake of accuracy, this is not correct. 6th Airborne used them on D-Day, but the vast majority were destroyed or immobilised (or the crews were killed or wounded) in the landings. The soft ground at Arnhem was seen as an even greater problem to land them, and from memory I don't think 1AB Recce ever trained with them.

 

The British did supply some Tetrarchs to the Russians and these were used in combat by them. I actually have a photo in a book with a bunch loaded with tankii desant being led in a charge through artillery fire by a T 34 somewhere in Southern Russia.

 

I suppose the Russians would have been mightily impressed

 

As a footnote, Tetrarch also served at Madagascar during Operation Ironclad, 1942.

Cheers,
Adam.

 

It must be nice to have the surname "Gunn": just think of the possibilities!

For boys, you have Lewis and Maxim, of course, and for girls there's Brenda (or Bren for short...)

 

>>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.<<

The Infantry tank concept was faulty but the fitting of the two pounder made the Matilda 2 a useful A/T weapon it was recognised as not being effective and a number usually about 1 in 6 were equiped with a breech loading 3 inch mortar. This was often badly handled and carried too much smoke and not enough HE but was a useful support weapon if properly used and in part made up for the lack of an effective HE shell for the two pounder.

 

>>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.<<

Not sure this is quite fair the US didn't get into the war till 1942 and the initial engagements were not a huge success (Kaserine pass etc) by this time the British were up to speed in terms of tactics having learned the hard way.

Doctrinally the British had moved a long way in combined arms by the time of the Torch landings and were chasing the the africa korps. They had always been well motorized beyond the level that the germans used and had developed the originally faulty cooperation between infantry and armour and air support.

I remember having this discusion with family members who were staff officers in the German army of the time and they said that by 1942 the British forces had overcome their problems ith infantry armour coordination.

>>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.<<

The probem before the war was in part conservatism and the idea of Hobart were not put into place till the african campaign but a lot of the problem was money.

The Germans could afford to buy as many weapons as their factories could produce because they were only planning up to the war if a war had not occured the German economy would have collapsed as they were essentially paying for weapons on a mountain of credit. In a democracy you cant build an army on credit in the expectations that a war your trying to avoid will occur and knowing that you will be bankrupt if war doesnt come. The Germans balanced their war time budget by looting the countries they over ran.

It is doubtful that the British army could have changed the course of the war in France in 1940 they were outnumbered by 8-1 by the Germans and the French army was beaten before it fought torn apart by Frances political divisions and the trauma of world war 1 and based on faulty doctrine. If the large french army had had the mobility of the BEF with the same level of motorization its doubtful the Blitkreig tactics would have worked as they could redeploy out the circling spearhead units and counter attacked. Thats why the tactics were not descisive in North Africa they could beat the British on occasion but they rarely succeeded in encircling them decisively. Thats why the BEF made it to the coast in 1940.

The US army was basically built up from a small army to a large one in the same way as the British had both had been about 100,000 but the process was done over a much longer period (3 years) and the lessons of France and Poland could be absorbed and new weapons systems designed and produced at leisure.

Remember in terms of equipment the british were force to retain weapons that they considered obsolete because necessity meant they could not stop production and retool because the weapons were needed now. The six pounder was available as a prototype even before the war and the seventeen pounder was available in 1941 but production could not be switched till the pressure for equipment eased. The army defending Singapore shows this deperate dearth of any type of equipment 3/4 of it was made up of poorly armed and trained local troops and the force lacked any anti tank guns, tanks and was short of radios, trucks and artillery.

The same was true of tanks the churchill was prototyped before the war and could have been in production in 1940 but production pressure meant the first time it could actually be produced was 1941. The Comet was available in 1943 and the Centurion in 1944 but need to keep production going meant that British army units often were behind the times in terms of equipment. This was eased in 1943-4 because the US supplied Shermans in such numbers that whole factories could be retooled so British units got the comet just after d-day and the Centurion early 45.

The US once engaged fully as well had the same problems retaining the Sherman even when it had dropped well behind the curve of tank development because they could not spare the lost production needed to retool.

In most other areas the US had enough surplus production to constantly update weapons and retool. One example is aircraft production the US upgraded aircraft types throughout the war and because of britains large prewar aircraft factories built as part of the shadow factory scheme so did Britain.

Regarding officers the US was just like britain very short of really talented generals and short of enough officers for the expanded army. The British had huge problems in the far east initialy because the good officers available were all transfered to the UK or Afrika.

A similar problem occurred with Junior officers though like the British army the original small professional army provided a pool of hardened veterans capable of being promoted as NCO's to lead the vast conscript armies.