Despite the different approaches and rates of fire, all these weapons operated at an effective rate of fire – rather than an actual rate – of around 120 rounds per minute. In other words, they all had their strengths and weaknesses. In an ideal world, both sides would have probably liked to have had a combination of all varieties. It is certainly not true, however, to say that the MG42 was the best machine gun of the war, as has been repeatedly claimed over the years. Fastest rate of fire, yes, and a fine weapon in many ways, but with disadvantages too. Overall, there wasn’t a huge amount to choose between the various small arms of the differing combatant nations.
While the merits or otherwise of German small arms has been the subject of feverish debate, this pales into insignificance compared with opinions about tanks and anti-tank guns. In this, the Germans have long since been held to have had the upper hand, while British tanks, especially, have been the object of exasperated contempt. This was true even during the war. In the summer of 1942, for example, the British minister of supply, Oliver Lyttelton, was forced to defend British tank and anti-tank production in Parliament, patiently pointing out that British anti-tank guns were as good as those of the Germans and ditto their tanks. At the time, he was quite right.
Allied combatants themselves really fed the debate, as they saw Tiger and Panther tanks and 88mms at every turn. Letters, diaries, memoirs and interviews all talk about being fired at by ‘eighty-eights’. Sometimes they really were 88mms – or Flak 36s as they were officially known – but the Germans had a lot of other artillery, such as heavy howitzers like the 150mm that Eberhard Beck was operating, as well as many others besides, and not just German ones, but also guns pilfered from all corners by their earlier conquering armies. It could make the quartermaster’s task tricky, because the German armies in Normandy were using a staggering number of different calibres, not to mention different firing tables. General Hans Eberbach, now commanding Panzergruppe West, reckoned he had 133 batteries, or some 400 guns, not including flak. ‘But since ammunition was so scarce that firing had to be kept at a ratio of 10:1 to the British expenditure,’ he noted, ‘the many guns and rocket launchers were of little use to me.’2 This was perhaps overstating matters, but certainly among Panzergruppe West’s arsenal were twenty-four Italian heavy guns that fired so badly that, once they had used all the available ammunition, Eberbach ordered their demolition; they were more hassle than they were worth.
Most German anti-tank guns, however, were not the 88mm dual-purpose anti-aircraft/anti-tank gun, although there were, admittedly, a good number of those. This was a heavy weapon of some 5 tons and, because it was designed primarily to shoot down aircraft, it had a high profile that made it vulnerable. It could, however, fire an 88mm-diameter shell at around 2,690 feet per second, which meant very often those coming under fire only realized what was happening once it had already reached the target – which could sometimes be too late.
All anti-tank guns, though, were high-velocity. That was the entire point: to hurtle a shell on a flat trajectory with an enormous amount of power and energy. Howitzers – field artillery – by contrast, were designed to lob shells great distances, and not in a direct-fire scenario but blindly, behind a hill, for example, with the aid of spotters and observers to direct their fire who would be further forward. For both types of gun, there were high-explosive and armour-piercing shells, depending on the target. As a rule of thumb, the bigger the shell, the bigger the explosion, damage and crater. Despite the term ‘88’ being used by Allied troops as a catch-all for all German anti-tank weapons, the mainstays were actually the Pak 38, which fired a 50mm shell, and the Pak 40, which fired a 75mm round. Both were lower-profile weapons, lighter, much more versatile and more easily towed by horses as well as by vehicles. Although these were the most common, there were also numerous others, mostly converted captured guns and also a specialist 88mm anti-tank gun, the Pak 43, which could fire at 3,280 feet per second and had a much lower profile.
By the middle of July, the number of German tanks and assault guns that had reached Normandy was around 2,500. Of those that would take part in the campaign, only two were King Tigers and a mere 126 were Tigers, despite the propensity for Allied troops to spot them lurking around every corner. There were many more Panthers, some 655 in all, but most common was the Panzer Mk IV, which looked a bit like a smaller Tiger and was therefore, unsurprisingly, the cause of a lot of misidentification. This was a medium tank comparable with the basic 75mm-gun Sherman; in fact, their guns were very similar. There were also a lot of StuGs, some 453 in all, which were assault guns with fixed turrets welded on to Panzer Mk III chassis. Although the turret couldn’t rotate, they were low-profile, reasonably reliable and easier to drive and maintain than most other German tanks. On top of these were some 114 Jagdpanthers, high-velocity assault guns, and also a miscellany of converted French tanks captured in 1940 and others such as those in 21. Panzer adapted specially by Major Becker. This meant that the number of high-velocity gunned tanks and assault guns amounted to less than 1,000 all told.
For the most part, Allied tanks were medium tanks of around 30 tons and equipped with medium-velocity 75mm guns and machine guns. Towards the end of the Normandy campaign, after much concern about the quality of British armour had been voiced at home, a number of crews were surveyed about what they thought of their tanks. Cromwell crews were generally pleased with their mount, including Reg Spittles and his fellows. They were fast, mechanically reliable and easy to maintain. ‘They have, of course,’ wrote the report, ‘the same complaint as Sherman equipped brigades, ie, that their armour and armament are both lighter than those of Panthers and Tigers.’3
This was true of the majority of Allied tanks, but they did also have up-gunned versions of the Sherman tank – the Firefly, in the case of the British and Canadians, which had the 17-pounder high-velocity gun, and the 76mm high-velocity-gun Sherman for the Americans. It is true they lacked the armour of the Panthers and Tigers, but they certainly had the killing power and, as the campaign continued, so their numbers grew. Most British Sherman-equipped regiments, for example, had one Firefly per troop, but increasingly this number was doubling. The Allies also had other fearsome weapons in their arsenals, such as the British and Canadian flame-throwing Crocodile. Incidents were recorded of enemy troops fleeing the moment they saw these monstrous tanks. Although Tigers were feared for both their gun and apparent immunity, Crocodile tanks seem to have prompted an equivalent level of terror among the Germans. ‘The two attacks were completely successful,’ ran a report on a Crocodile action near Secqueville on the Orne, ‘and the enemy decided to leave these villages as soon as he saw the Crocodile in action.’4 Who could blame them? Few weapons on display in Normandy were more horrifically brutal than a tank spouting a mixture of burning petrol, oil and rubber in a 120-yard-long jet. ‘The enemy are frightened of it,’ ran another testimony in the report, ‘and our own troops are encouraged by it.’5
None the less, most criticism of Allied tanks was directed at the comparative lack of armour and the weakness of the 75mm gun on the Sherman, Cromwell and Churchill, especially when compared to the Tiger and Panther. Even Tigers, however, were vulnerable to high-velocity anti-tank guns, and the Allies had considerably more of those and even more times the amount of ammunition. The British 17-pounder, American 3-inch and 76mm anti-tank guns all had high-barrel velocity and, with it, killing power. During extensive analysis of battle damage on their own tanks and on those of the enemy carried out by 21st Army Group, one Panther was shown to have been hit and knocked out by a 17-pounder shell that had first hit a soft-skin vehicle, gone straight through it, then through a barn wall of brick and stone 18 inches thick and only then hit the tank. ‘Actually,’ ran the report, ‘6 shots in all were fired, all of which passed through the barn.6 The strike on the Panther is on the lower nose plate and the tank was burned out as a result.’ What’s more, just arriving in Normandy were the new armour-piercing discarding sabot rounds – or APD
S. The armour-piercing shell was covered in a casing which discarded during its trajectory and which enabled an even greater velocity – some 4,000 feet per second – which made it comfortably the highest-velocity and most powerful anti-tank weapon/shell combination on the battlefield. It lost accuracy beyond 2,000 yards, but such distances were rarely exceeded and so this was not much of an issue. APDS-firing 17-pounders, soon to be arriving in some numbers, were very effective tank killers.
Both the British and Americans had really enormous numbers of anti-tank guns, way more than the Germans. Each British infantry division, for example, was supported by three field artillery regiments, each of twenty-four 25-pounders, so seventy-two in all, as well as an astonishing seventy-eight 6-pounder anti-tank guns and thirty-two of the phenomenal 17-pounders, which had a velocity that was slightly greater than the 88mm flak gun and the equal of the Pak 43. These guns had a low profile and were incredibly easy to move into position using a combination of trucks – ‘gun tractors’ – and half-tracks. A 17-pounder could be reversed into a hedgerow or similar cover, spread its forks, have a shell in the breech then fire in less than half a minute. On top of that, a light anti-aircraft regiment was attached to each division, including seventy-one 20mm cannons – the same calibre as used in Spitfires and Typhoons, for example – as well as thirty-six 40mm cannons and eighteen self-propelled 40mm cannons mounted on tank chassis. Since there was very little Luftwaffe to shoot at, especially during daylight hours, it was not at all uncommon for these anti-aircraft weapons to be used in a ground-attack role instead. Cannons such as the Bofors 40mm fired at around 2,890 feet per second, so certainly had the velocity to be effective direct-fire ground-attack weapons. They were quick-firing too, at around 120 rounds per minute.
The Americans had a similar level of support in terms of artillery and anti-tank guns, although the set-up was not quite as regimented as for the British and Canadians. Each infantry battalion had a heavy-weapons company, equipped with either six of the smaller 37mm or, increasingly, 57mm anti-tank guns, which were US versions of the British 6-pounder – so fifty-four in all per division. Each regiment also had attached six 105mm howitzers. In addition, the division would have four artillery battalions, three of twelve 105s each and one of twelve 155mm howitzers – so a lot of fire-power all told.
The 6-pounder was ideal in the close hedgerow fighting, as it was a lot lighter than the British 17-pounder. There was also the 3-inch anti-tank gun, pushed through by General Leslie McNair, the head of the army ground forces. The 3-inch, a towed gun, was too heavy and difficult to manoeuvre to make it effective in the bocage, but, although it was something of a pet project of McNair’s, the US was also unique in developing specific tank destroyer (TD) battalions and, of the thirty based in the UK on the eve of D-Day, nineteen were entirely self-propelled and included a number of exciting new high-velocity tracked armoured vehicles. The Tank Destroyer Center had been established in the US in 1942 to help develop and train what was, in effect, a new and separate branch of the army to sit alongside the infantry, armoured, airborne and other strands of the US army ground forces, although it never received official equal billing. McNair was one of the pioneers of the TD battalions and fervently believed that tanks should be kept free to operate with infantry and destroy unarmoured enemy troops, and that enemy armour should be taken on primarily by specialist mobile anti-tank weapons. Part of the new TD doctrine was a sense of fearlessness among its men; anti-tank operations were not to be essentially defensive but, rather, would be aggressive, with mounted anti-tank guns operating in tank-hunting parties.
McNair wanted these units to be powerfully armed, fast and agile. This way, they would be able to manoeuvre themselves better than the slower, more ponderous tanks, and so get themselves more easily into a favourable position from which to fire. In North Africa, however, they had proved rather unsuccessful, partly because commanders like General Patton had failed to understand how they should be used and partly because the TD battalions were aggressive in the face of enemy tanks, where their minimal armour worked against them, rather than being aggressive in their reconnaissance and ambushing. Nor was concealment particularly easy in the desert of southern Tunisia. Those, however, had been the early days; by D-Day the tank destroyer doctrine was more developed and its men better trained. They were now hard-hitting fighting units, of around 800 men each, and equipped with superb radios and communications – each TD battalion had no fewer than ninety SCR619 sets – as well as anti-aircraft protection and thirty-six towed or self-propelled 3-inch or 76mm high-velocity anti-tank guns. They were capable of destroying enemy anti-tank guns as well as panzers, and of acting as an advance guard and also covering withdrawals. The M10 tank destroyer was equipped with the 3-inch gun, while the M18 Hellcat had the 76mm, and both could zoom along at 50 m.p.h.
Although the TD battalions were not included in the initial waves on D-Day, they soon caught up and were deployed wherever needed; as a rule of thumb one TD battalion tended to be attached to each infantry division along with one tank battalion. In addition to the thirty-six anti-tank guns each battalion possessed, they also came with more than forty .50-calibre heavy machine guns and sixty-two bazookas. A TD battalion lacked armour, for sure, but certainly brought speed, agility and lot of fire-power into the equation.
Nor were the plain old Shermans quite so out of their depth against German tanks as is often depicted. A study of the actions of the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry was made during the ‘most unpleasant’ fighting Stanley Christopherson admitted experiencing in and around Rauray on 27 June. One Sherman struck a Panther on its side while it was travelling at around 12 m.p.h. at 80 yards’ range, ‘and he brewed it up with one hit through the vertical plate above the back bogie.’7 Then there was the Tiger attacked by John Semken and his crew, which was hit head-on at 120 yards. Three shots were fired in rapid succession before the Tiger could fire one in return. The Tiger crew bailed and Semken’s gunner then put in a further three rounds and the tank brewed up – four shots had scooped on and gone into the tank through the roof, with one ricocheting off the track and up into the sponson. Sergeant Dring, the SRY’s leading panzer ace, shot up a Panzer Mk IV at 200 yards and watched it burn. He then engaged a Tiger at 1,000 yards. The Tiger fired once at him but missed; Dring’s crew then pumped five rounds into the enemy beast without any further retaliation and the German crew bailed out. This tank was later recovered and sent to England. Next, the imperturbable Dring met a Panther at a crossroads and hit it at 500 yards with one shot of armour-piercing in front of the sprocket; again, the crew bailed and ‘It brewed up.’8 As if this wasn’t enough, Dring then took on another Tiger at 1,400 yards, just outside Rauray, firing six shots in rapid succession, of which four hit and the last set it on fire. Initially, Dring thought he had missed and hit the wall behind, but one of his crew pointed out, ‘you don’t see a brick wall spark like that.’9 ‘This tank has been seen,’ added the report, ‘and is much shot up.’ Nor was that the end of Sergeant Dring’s heroics. He then engaged a further Mk IV at 1,200 yards, fired two ranging shots of HE and then a further AP round, which went through the tracks, into the lower chassis and began burning.
What this and numerous other such incidents showed was that it was entirely possible for an ordinary 75mm-gun Sherman to destroy the best enemy tanks in Normandy. Admittedly, these all happened at comparatively short range, but the only time Allied tanks were engaging at long range was during the battles in the open country around Caen and, even then, as a proportion of the fighting as a whole, tank-on-tank engagements were actually pretty rare. At close quarters, as experienced in town or village fighting, the Sherman actually had some important advantages. First, it could fire more quickly. Second, its turret could traverse faster than those of German tanks. Third, because of its unique stabilizing gyro, its gun was more accurate while operating on the hoof. Fourth, it was generally more manoeuvrable, largely because it was less complex. The transmission on a Tiger, for example,
was a six-speed, semi-hydraulic pre-selector gearbox designed by Ferdinand Porsche. It sounded complex and it was. The Panther’s gearbox was also a work of engineering brilliance, but altogether too complicated for the average teenage driver straight out of basic training. To change gear required pulling on two levers simultaneously, while the driveshaft ran through the belly of the tank and was almost entirely inaccessible to the crew. To get to the engine required moving the turret into the right position, lifting one hatch, then unbolting a further, larger hatch and employing a heavy lifting crane. On the Sherman, by contrast, engine access was from the rear and sat on simple mountings. An engine could be taken out and replaced with only modest lifting gear in about a couple of hours. The gearbox, meanwhile, was a simple four forward and one reverse manual construction that operated in exactly the same way as that of a car – which, of course, Americans, and even Brits, had lots of back home, but which Germans did not.
Every tank was an incredibly complex piece of equipment, so the fewer parts the better and the less complex the better. But more than that, when the Americans, particularly, built tens of thousands of Shermans, they also built thousands of mobile workshops, tank transporters and tank wreckers. Knocked-out tanks were very swiftly pulled from the battlefield and either put back into action right away, taken to workshops further back, or broken up and butchered for parts. The entire system was incredibly well thought through and effective, and it helped enormously to ensure as many tanks as possible were available on any given day.
If Allied crews had their tank knocked out and they were still in one piece, they would try to lie low and keep out of the way, then, when the fighting died down or the immediate danger passed, they would hurry back to regimental headquarters either on foot or by catching a lift. In the case of the British and Canadians, within a matter of just hours a new Sherman would arrive, driven up by the men from the delivery regiments in the Royal Armoured Corps (RAC). These replacement tanks were brought in from England, shipped to Arromanches, driven straight off on to the jetties, then taken to the various rear military areas. Transports of various kinds would be shuffling back and forth continuously. In the meantime, the damaged tank would be rescued by the Light Aid Detachment (LAD). Sometimes a tank might be repaired on the spot by a mobile workshop – a truck with every conceivable tool in the back, as well as winches and lifting gear – but otherwise it would be either towed out or lifted on to a tank transporter. Only if it was completely burned-out would it be left on the battlefield, although eventually it would be cleared away and broken down for scrap.
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